[3] The club was founded by jazz enthusiasts and amateurs for the sole purpose of helping to spread the music to the rest of the world.
The members joined together to promote the music in whatever form they could, leading to such developments as the first of many concerts in 1933, the creation of Le Jazz Hot, the club's official magazine, the founding of the Swing music label in 1937, conferences, rare-disc listening sessions, radio talks, and the birth of regional Hot Clubs, among others.
"[5] One example of this rigidity lies in the forced resignation of Charles Delaunay in 1947 over his growing interest in bop during the 1940s; his acceptance of the music alienated other members, notably Hugues Panassie.
[6] The Hot Club's library is housed at the Discothèque Municipale in Villfranche-de-Rouergue in Southern France; it was begun with Hugues Panassie's core collection, numbering in excess of 6,000 78 rpm records and 9,000 LPs, and has since expanded.
[3]: 55 He likely acquired this position because of his work in Revue du jazz, a magazine that from 1929 to 1931 contained articles written by Phillipe Brun, Stephane Mougin, and the amateur Panassie.
Among the musicians whom the Hot Club presented here were Garland Wilson, Bill Coleman, Benny Carter, and Eddie South.
[21] The Hotel Claridge, at 74 avenue des Champs-Élysées, featured the double bass player Louis Vola's orchestra which played as the evening entertainment during the daily the dansant; this group gave both Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli, who were members, the opportunity to jam between sets.
[3]: 57 The Salle Gaveau at 45 rue La Boetie was regularly used for jazz concerts; Pierre Nourry organized an appearance of the Quintette du Hot Club de France on 20 October 1937 and the group performed there again in March of the next year.
[21] The Salle Pleyel at 252 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honore was the venue for several important jazz performances beginning in the years before World War II.
The Quintette du Hot Club de France and several American artists, including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Cab Calloway, performed there in the pre-war years.
Nourry paid 80 francs of his money to have them recorded and even tracked down a bassist, Juan Fernandez of Martinique, to round out a trio.
On Django's advice, they brought American singer Bert Marshall from the Hotel Claridge band to make for a more commercial recording.
Nourry, dismayed but undeterred by the rejection by Odeon of the trio's music as too "modernistique" arranged an opening concert for the quintet at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris at 78 rue Cardinet on 2 December 1934.
[22] The Quintette was a quartet until Django decided he wanted two guitarists to back him on his solos to make the sound of the music more even when he and Stephane switched off during songs.
[24] The Hot Club de France, pushed by Charles Delaunay, sponsored recording sessions on the Swing label.
The first festival featured Coleman Hawkins, Kenny Clarke, John Lewis, Erroll Garner, and Howard McGhee, among other artists.
The festival in 1949 featured Sidney Bechet and the Charlie Parker Quintet with Miles Davis, along with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Gerry Mulligan, Tadd Dameron,[31] and Lips Page.
Charles Delaunay convinced Barclay and her associates to join forces to create a bigger festival, for which they were able to give Bechet an increased wage.
[31] During the Second World War, the Hot Club provided the French Resistance a great cover to use to gain information on German troops and defenses to send back to Paris and, ultimately, to transmit to England.
By 1943, the Germans had caught on to his intelligence work; they raided the Hot Club and took Delaunay and his secretary, Madeleine Germaine, for questioning.
Delaunay was freed after five and a half hours of interrogation but both his secretary and the head of the Marseille branch of the Hot Club were sentenced to concentration camps, where they perished.
[3]: 85 Jacques Bureau (fr), co-founder of the Club, also began working for the Resistance; in 1944 he returned to France with help from the British and joined the maquis to defend his country.
[3]: 86 Django Reinhardt's song "Nuages" became one of the anthems of the French Resistance; it was recorded with the "Nouveau Quintette du Hot Club de France" on 1 October 1940.