Jazz Musician. He was a American performer whose trumpet playing helped define jazz in Paris for six decades. Born James Arthur Briggs in Grenada, he spent some of his childhood in Charleston, South Carolina and studied music at Jenkins Orphanage along with his cousin and tuba player Pete Briggs. As a youth, he began playing trumpet with James Reese Europe's 369th U.S. Infantry Band and was a trumpeter with the Southern Syncopated Orchestra after arriving in Europe during World War I in 1919. Briggs did not serve during the war because he was too young. Once the war was over, he joined other band members who returned to Europe to fuel the fire that their military jazz band had begun. Briggs worked and recorded in Berlin extensively in the 1920s with a band of mixed European and American origin, performed with saxophonists Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins (who he recorded the classic, "Blue Moon" with in 1935). He also performed with guitarist Django Reinhardt and the French violinist Stephane Grappelli in the 1930s. His orchestra played in Paris and London and introduced jazz to classical conducter Ernest Ansermet, who wrote glowingly of the new music. Briggs gave a command performance at Buckingham Palace for King George and Queen Mary in England, founded Hot Club de France (a nightly Parisian hot spot) and helped define jazz in Paris over six decades. He also organized the Savoy Syncopated Orchestra in 1922 with a multinational roster in Brussels. A student of Louis Armstrong, Briggs also performed in Germany and Austria and played in Noble Sissle's Orchestra, along with Sidney Bechet. Briggs was one of the Americans interned during the German occupation of France in World War II for four years by the Nazis when he refused to leave Paris prior to their invasion. After which he led his own bands and taught in French music schools beginning in 1964. Briggs continued to live in Paris until his sudden death from kidney failure in 1991.