French band leader and clarinetist Claude Luter, a star of Paris's post war jazz scene, died on Friday at the age of 83. Regarded as one France's greatest jazz exponents, Luter, who played alongside the likes of Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong, discovered New Orleans jazz during his teenage years and became an active performer in Paris during the Nazi occupation. After the war, his band became a fixture at the famous Lorientais jazz club.
Luter met Louis Armstrong at the Nice Jazz Festival in 1948, and it was in the following year that he began working with Sidney Bechet. His working relationship with Bechet continued for the next ten years, ending only with Bechet's death in 1959.
French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres called Luter "a very great name in French jazz", adding: "For me as for so many, the name of Claude Luter will be for ever associated with Saint Germain des Pres in the post-war years, with its innumerable jazz clubs where one ran across Camus, Sartre, Giacometti, Boris Vian, Raymond Queneau and so many others. Now and for ever he will be remembered as one of the remarkable men who symbolised this highly talented epoch."