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Jacques Demêtre and Marcel Chauvard took loads of pictures on their 1959 trip to Chicago they went to to visit the blues scene there (yes, there actually were blues fans in France back in the 50's !).
Basically, Jacques was suposed to write about it and Marcel was the photographer, but Jacques took a lot of pictures himself, including that famous John Lee Hooker pic (they also visited Detroit on that same trip) that was long used by everybody and their brother and only started being credited to him in the last few years :



These two French, white guys stayed at Champion Jack Dupree's home first, visited Muddy and the Wolf in their own homes, and met a truckload of bluesmen there.
Their articles about this trip were published in a French jazz revue.
Later Jacques Demêtre joined the Soul Bag team, and Soul Bag has since re-issued them all in a book entitled Voyage Au Pays Du Blues, in both English and French (you get both in the same copy of the book) :



I was lucky enough to meet Mr Demêtre but once, when he was in his mid-seventies about 15 years ago. The man shared his memories for about 2 hours and it's one of my cherished blues lover memories.

While Marcel Chauvard unfortunatly passed away a long time ago, Jacques Demêtre is still with us, and still reviewing CDs for Soul Bag (though he hasn't written a lot lately).

I remember one of his concerns was that, as we was aging, he was wondering what would happen to his recordings collection (thousands of 78, 45, 33 rmps as well as tapes and CDs), as his children and grandchildren didn't seem to care for the musics he loves. I may have drooled a little when he said that.

He did say that's what he'll probably end up doing, so many people interested in such recordings may have access to them.

Now that we have a (very young) European Blues Union, maybe we should submit the idea ?