Several of its early contributors are credited for helping to intellectualize jazz journalism and to draw attention to it from fine arts establishments and institutions.

Jazz Hot was published in March 1935 in Paris on one page in the back of a program for a Coleman Hawkins concert at the Salle Pleyel on February 21, 1935.

[2][4][ii] In August 1938, the club was dissolved and reestablished with Panassié as president and Charles Delaunay as secretary general.

Before World War II, Jazz Hot was instrumental in the club's efforts to curate, restore, and import live and recorded Dixieland.

Panassié spent the war years at his chateau in the unoccupied zone of Southern France and Delaunay, using the Hot Club as cover, gathered intelligence that was transmitted to England.

He also traveled around France, organizing concerts, and giving lectures on music — all sanctioned by the Propaganda-Staffel.

Unable to publish Jazz Hot, Delaunay issued clandestine, one-page publications.

Following the Decree of July 17, 1941, Delaunay began issuing a clandestine, one-page duplex sheet, Circulaire du Hot Club de France from September 1941 to June 1945 that was inserted in the programs of Hot Club concerts.

An excess of culture atrophies inspiration.For music is, above all, the cry of the heart, the natural, spontaneous song expressing what man feels within himself.When Panassié heard a bebop recording of "Salt Peanuts" in 1945, he refused to accept it as jazz and frequently admonished its artists and proponents.

[16][17] From June 22, 1940, to November 11, 1944, Germany occupied Northern France, Panassié spent that time safely at his family's château in Gironde[18] in the unoccupied zone of Southern France, isolated from developments in jazz.

Delaunay had been speaking of tolerance for modern jazz and "old white traditionalist" such as Eddie Condon and Jack Teagarden.

Henceforth, Delaunay was the publisher, Hodeir, editor-in-chief, Ténot, editorial secretary, and Jacques Souplet (fr), director.

Jazz Hot's registered office was 14, rue Chaptal (fr), Paris 9e[a] Delaunay remained as the financial backer for 34 years — until 1980.

In December 1946, Panassié resigned as editor-in-chief of Jazz Hot, claiming that "our correspondent in the United States, Franck Bauer (fr), was used to compare Bunk Johnson to Louis Armstrong!

Notable contributors included Lucien Malson (fr) (born 1926) and André Hodeir (1921–2011).

Other influential magazines, notably Down Beat of Chicago, had been publishing articles that extoled bebop as serious music since 1940.

Bebop, however, continued to develop and spread globally into a jazz mainstay but has never been big in a commercial sense.

In it, he stated that the French never developed a strong taste for white swing bands such as Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Benny Goodman.

And also, the French developed a preference — strongly expressed by Panassié, Delaunay, and Vian — for African American musicians.

[29] Jazz,[30] a magazine published by the Hot Club of Belgium, ran from March to November 1945, Issues 1 through 13.

[33] In October 1947, Boris Vian, a Sartre protégé, contributed an article to Combat, a leftist daily underground newspaper established in 1943, mocking Panassié[24][34][35] In 1947, Delaunay co-edited some essays called "Jazz 47" that were published in a special edition of the French publication, America.

As of February 2025, the publication has endured 77 years as the official magazine of the Hot Club of France.