Gus Viseur, born Gustave-Joseph Viseur (15 May 1915 – 25 August 1974) was a Belgian

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

/French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 button accordionist

Accordion

The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....

.

Gus Viseur was a virtuoso in the musette

Bal-musette

Bal-musette is a style of French music and dance that first became popular in Paris in the 1880s.Auvergnats settled in large numbers in the 5th, 11th, and 12th districts of Paris during the 19th century, opening cafés and bars where patrons danced the bourrée to the accompaniment of musette de...

 genre, during the swing era in the 1930s. He is the only jazz accordionist who is a member of the famous Hot Club de France

Quintette du Hot Club de France

Quintette du Hot Club de France was a jazz group founded in France in 1934 by guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli, and active in one form or another until 1948....

, conducted by Charles Delaunay

Charles Delaunay

Charles Delaunay was a French author, jazz expert, co-founder and long-term leader of the Hot Club de France....

.

Biography

Gus Viseur began his career playing in the streets of Paris. He managed to get a great sound from a chromatic button accordion

Chromatic button accordion

A chromatic button accordion is a type of button accordion where the melody-side keyboard consists of rows of buttons arranged chromatically. The bass-side keyboard is usually the Stradella system or one of the various free-bass systems. Included among chromatic button accordions are the Russian...

. It was clear that he was doing something innovative: He helped create the accordion-jazz style known as manouche

Gypsy jazz

Gypsy jazz is an idiom often said to have been started by guitarist Jean "Django" Reinhardt in the 1930s. Because its origins are largely in France it is often called by the French name, "Jazz manouche," or alternatively, "manouche jazz," even in English language sources...

. Meeting Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...

 and performing with the legendary Quintet of the Hot Club of France was an important new chapter in his life. Later he even played bebop

Bebop

Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...

 in the fifties. He was the first to draw a link between Musette and Jazz, but he never forgot Musette. That was his main voice. There is an unbelievable strength in his playing, that gives him the ability to improvise in all those different music genres. In addition to his numerous recordings he also performed in cabarets and nightclubs.

He recorded his first record in 1937 and accompanied Édith Piaf

Édith Piaf

Édith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...

 in 1940. He recorded all the genres of the musette repertoire: valse, tango

Tango music

Tango is a style of ballroom dance music in 2/4 or 4/4 time that originated among European immigrant populations of Argentina and Uruguay . It is traditionally played by a sextet, known as the orquesta típica, which includes two violins, piano, double bass, and two bandoneons...

, paso doble,...

Representative Recordings

• "Flambée montalbanaise"
• "Joseph, Joseph"
• "Automne"
• "Douce joie"
• "Josette"
• "L'imprévu" (with Joseph Colombo)
• "Nuit de Paris" (with Tony Murena)
• "Soir de dispute"
• "Souvenir de Bruxelles"
• "Swing accordéon"
• "Swing-valse" (with Pierre "Baro" Ferret)
• "La valse des niglos"
• "Le Bal du p'tit jardin"
• "Jeannette"
• "46ème avenue"
• "5 Juin"
• "El Victor"
• "Lorsque Django jouait"
• "De Clichy à Broadway"