Sunday, November 15, 2015



Guylenn Delassus launched Fort Wayne Jazz Cabaret with two concerts in October 2014. She is the neice of Rose-Aimee Butler, who has been innkeeper at the LaSalle Bed & Breakfast in Fort Wayne since 2002. Previously she was Youth Director of Fort Wayne Ballet for a decades. She and Clark Butler celebrated their 46th anniversary on November 7, 2015

Guylenn grew up in a jazz family. Her rather Guy was a jazz trumpeter. Her mother Gypsy was and is a jazz pianist. She began her career at fourteen years old in Madagascar when. After her parents thought she had gone to bed, she climbed out of her bedroom window and began playing the piano under contract to a local night spot frequented by the future King of Morocco. He was then exiled from French Morocco prior to the country's independence in 1956,

In 1974-1975 Guylenn, whose legal name is Guylenn, lived with her aunt and uncle in Nottingham, England, where Guylenn learned English at a British comprehensive school. She turned fourteen in that school year, and three years later began singing jazz. She became known in France by returning eleven weeks on a nationally televised talent show. She then began to be picked up by Paris clubs and cabarets, and joined the Claude Bolling Big Band as lead singer for a decade, recording  for BMG solo and Columbia Record with Bolling. On the BMG label she did the vocals for the only complete recording of Duke Ellington's Black, Brorwn, & Beige. 

After touring four continents with the Bolling Band, she settled in Paris where for over fifteen years she has been the jazz voice teacher at the Paris municipal Nadia and Lilli Conservatory.  Among the many professional singers she has taught, probably the best known is the South Korean jazz singer Youn Nah Sun.

In October 2014 Julia Meek, who hosts Meet the Music for radio station NPR WBOI in Fort Wayne, devoted a program to an interview with Guylenn. Part of that interview is available at \
http://wboi.org/post/jazz-vocalist-guylenn-brings-taste-paris-fort-wayne#stream/ 


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