Alphonse Floristan Picou (October 19, 1878 – February 4, 1961)[1] was an important very early American jazz clarinetist, who also wrote and arranged music.

Alphonse Picou was born into a prosperous middle-class Creole of Color family in downtown New Orleans, Louisiana, United States.

As his family frowned on music being a person's sole trade, Picou trained and worked as a tinsmith, including putting the copper sheeting on church steeples.

The light-skinned Picou, with majority European ancestry, sometimes worked with white bands as well in his youth, including at least on occasion with Papa Jack Laine.

Picou rearranged it giving it a gentle swing and paraphrased the piccolo part to create his famous clarinet solo.

In the 1940s, he was able to return to playing professionally regularly, made his first recordings,[1] and opened a bar in a building he owned on Claiborne Avenue.

For years into the 1950s, he was a regular on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter with Papa Celestin's Band (with whom he also did radio broadcasts) and leading his own group.