Ray Ventura
Illustration — Ray Ventura Raymond Ventura (16 April 1908, Paris, France – 29 March 1979, Palma de Mallorca, Spain) was a French jazz pianist and bandleader. He helped popularize jazz in France in the 1930s. His nephew was singer Sacha Distel.
Ray Ventura

Spaarnestad Archive · CC0
- Full name
- Raymond Ventura.
- Born
- 1908. · 9th arrondissement of Paris.
- Died
- 1979. · Palma.
- Nationality
- France.
- Occupation
- conductor, bandleader, composer, singer and musician.
- Fields
- jazz.
- Education
- Lycée Janson-de-Sailly.
- Languages
- French.
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Documentary summary
Illustration — Ray Ventura Raymond Ventura (16 April 1908, Paris, France – 29 March 1979, Palma de Mallorca, Spain) was a French jazz pianist and bandleader. He helped popularize jazz in France in the 1930s. His nephew was singer Sacha Distel.
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Authority files
wikidata · Q513644
In this article
Career
Career
Ventura was born to a Jewish family. In 1925 he was the pianist for the Collegiate Five, which recorded as the Collegians for Columbia beginning in 1928 and for Decca in the 1930s. A year later he led the band, and it became a dance orchestra resembling a big band. His sidemen included Alix Combelle, Philippe Brun, and Guy Paquinet. In the early 1940s he led a big band in South America and in France during the rest of the decade. One of his band's popular songs from 1936 was "Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise" in which the Marquise is told by her servants that everything is fine at home except for a series of escalating calamities. It was seen as a metaphor for France's obliviousness to the approaching war.
Filmography
Filmography
• American Love (1931) • Beautiful Star (1938) • Whirlwind of Paris (1939) • Prince Bouboule (1939) • King Pandora (1950) • Never Two Without Three (1951) • Desperate Decision (1952) • Women of Paris (1953) • A Hundred Francs a Second (1953) • Open Letter (1953) • Stopover in Orly (1955) • The Hotshot (1955) • Forgive Us Our Trespasses (1956)

Ray Ventura fixe l'objectif, cheveux noirs coiffés en arrière sur un front dégarni, sans émotion particulière. Il est vêtu d'un complet veston gris foncé à rayure avec gilet assorti, d'une chemise blanche à grand col et d'une cravate à motifs à rayures.
Inconnu
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1908
Ray Ventura born at 9th arrondissement of Paris.
1979
Ray Ventura died at Palma.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
9th arrondissement of Paris.
Birth place
Palma.
Death place
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Michel Laplace, Ray Ventura, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz.
- 2.Archives de Paris 9e, acte de naissance , année 1908 (page 24/31) (avec mentions marginales de mariage et de décès).
- 3.« Les confidences de Sacha Distel », publiées dans le journal L'Écho républicain de la Beauce et du Perche du 2 août 1961 : « J'allais tous les dimanches chez mes grands-parents, Boulevard de Beauséjour. Mon grand-père n'était pas du tout musicien. Il était joaillier en appartement et fréquentait beaucoup les milieux de la bourse, les milieux politiques. Il appartenait à ce type de bourgeois qui pouvait se permettre de recevoir les ministres chez lui. »
- 4.Archives de Paris, état-civil numérisé du [[9e arrondissement de Paris| ]], acte de mariage 648 du entre Abraham Albert Ventura, voyageur de commerce né le à Constantinople, et Sarah-Alice Landauer, née le à Paris.
- 5.Centenaire du lycée Molière. Mémorial 1888-1988, La Châtre, 1988, 93.
- 6.BNF data 13891936 Philippe Brun .
- 7.BNF data 13929523 Guy Paquinet .
- 8.Tout va très bien Madame la Marquise : fox-trot humoristique. Bibliothèques spécialisées de la Ville de Paris.
- 9.Le principe thématique de Tout va très bien Madame la Marquise fait écho au passage XXVII, Exemplum de Maimundo servo, de la Disciplina Clericalis du de Pierre Alphonse. Lire un extrait (As anedotas do Negro Maimundo) en ligne.
- 10.Le Hall de la chanson.
- 11.Sacha Distel.
- 12.Jacques Hélian, Les Grands Orchestres de music-hall en France, paru en 1984 chez Filipacchi.
- 13.MORT DU CHEF D'ORCHESTRE AIME BARELLI. Le Soir Plus.
- 14.melody.tv/actualites-musicales….
Bibliography printed in the source article · 4
- C. Brunschwig, L.-J. Calvet, J.-C. Klein, Cent ans de chanson française, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1981.
- Pierre Saka et Yann Plougastel, La Chanson française et francophone, Paris, Larousse, 1999.
- Michel Laplace, article « Ray Ventura », The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz.
- Diverses notices de disques enregistrés par l'orchestre Ray Ventura.
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
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