" data-original-title="" title="">James Reese Europe, playing formal military music employing some jazz expression. However, jazz took root in France through amateur bands at US Army supply depots on the Atlantic coast and in Marseille, where African-American soldiers in a Pioneer regiment formed the "Receiving Station Jazz Band" in November of 1918. These were decidedly not official military bands. The terrible trench warfare in the North of France was ending, but American withdrawal from France continued for another year. By then, jazz in America was already over 21 years old and the Roaring Twenties were about to begin.

Jazz began in France in the same way as it did in many places. African-American men with time to spare and often with limited musical experience to constrain them, picked up on syncopated ragtime music and started to play. The American soldiers may have heard the first jazz recording "Livery Stable Blues" (Victor, 1917) by The Original Dixieland Jass Band. They may have heard jazz in New Orleans, a major military shipping port, or they may have heard jazz in dance halls and bars as it spread out across America.?

A full 30 years after jazz arrived in France,? Nice was home to the first jazz festival which still thrives today. Louis Armstrong came to play the first edition. It seemed fitting that Nice would be a place to celebrate the 100th anniversary of jazz in France.

Replete with magnificent gilt cherubs, painted ceilings and red velvet hangings the Nice Opera House welcomed The Nice Jazz Orchestra to play "La Route du Jazz" (Jazz Road) organized by the local Rotary to support cancer cures. This performance was a retrospective of the history of jazz, delivered in a series of tableaux representing Ragtime, Blues, Spiritual, New Orleans, Swing, Bebop, Latin, Cool, Funk, and Rock. The artistic director of The Nice Jazz Orchestra Pierre Bertrand(saxophone and flute) was assisted by Christian Pachiaudi (bass) and Alain Asplanato (percussion).

They began at the beginning, with