Presented here is the complete soundtrack music recorded by Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers for the French film Des femmes disparaissent (Women Disappear, 1958, directed by Édouard Molinaro). The music for Des femmes disparaissent, which was also originally released on the Fontana label. “The recording session for Des femmes disparaissent,†explained producer Marcel Romano in 1988, “took place during the Jazz Messengers’ first French tour. A few months before, Daniel Filipachi had introduced me to Art Blakey in New York, and I booked him at once for his first tour in Europe. This was the period of ‘Moanin’,’ ‘Blues March,’ etc, and the group was a phenomenal success; recordings of the time, made at the Club St. Germain (RCA) and the Olympia (Fontana) show the level of intensity reached during those concerts. This, in a word, was the beginning of ‘Blues March Mania,’ and Edouard Molinaro decided to hire the Jazz Messengers for his new film, on my advice. I must say that the recent success of Ascenseur pour l’échafaud due mainly to Miles Davis’ music, had set the trend for this. The session went off very quickly, as Benny Golson, who was then the band’s musical director, was quite used to this kind of work: as a professional arranger, as well as a soloist, he had been anonymously involved in many American sessions for television and the cinema. So he took charge of things, and in a few hours it was all over. Practically no new material was used, and they were happy to adapt their current book to suit the scenes in the film.â€
