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Barney Wilen's mother was French, his father a successful American dentist-turned-inventor. He grew up mostly on the French Riviera; the family left during World War II but returned upon its conclusion. According to Wilen himself, he was convinced to become a musician by his mother's friend, the poet Blaise Cendrars. As a teenager he started a youth jazz club in Nice, where he played often. He moved to Paris in the mid-'50s and worked with such American musicians as <a href="spotify:artist:570vCzcespB48HIQyTbDO6">Bud Powell</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:78NDaMzmcDKjt7mkXs7AuG">Benny Golson</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:0kbYTNQb4Pb1rPbbaF0pT4">Miles Davis</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:3hZ5sdhYTvgrmXIwtVwqmS">J.J. Johnson</a> at the Club St. Germain. His emerging reputation received a boost in 1957 when he played with <a href="spotify:artist:0kbYTNQb4Pb1rPbbaF0pT4">Davis</a> on the soundtrack to the Louis Malle film Lift to the Scaffold. Two years later, he performed with <a href="spotify:artist:6QQuESLtKhAOcLW2TeWC2t">Art Blakey</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:4PDpGtF16XpqvXxsrFwQnN">Thelonious Monk</a> on the soundtrack to Roger Vadim's Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1960). Wilen began working in a rock-influenced style during the '60s, recording an album entitled Dear Prof. Leary in 1968. In the early '70s, Wilen led a failed expedition of filmmakers, musicians, and journalists to travel to Africa to document pygmy music. Later Wilen played in a punk rock band called Moko and founded a French Jazzmobile-type organization that took music to people living in outlying areas. He also worked in theater. By the mid-'90s, he was working once again in a bebop vein in a band with the pianist <a href="spotify:artist:7Iupw9PXaMDkdkQ3oqtDOj">Laurent de Wilde</a>. Much of Wilen's later work was documented on the Japanese Venus label. ~ Chris Kelsey, Rovi
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