Aimé Barelli was a trumpeter and bandleader, and an occasional singer, who rose in the Paris swing scene of the early 1940s and then spent most of his career leading a dance and show orchestra in Monaco. He was born on March 1, 1917 in Lantosque, a village in the mountains behind Nice. French Wikipedia says he began playing professionally at 16 at the Palais de la Méditerranée in Nice and went on to the Palm Beach in Cannes.

At the start of the Second World War he moved to Paris and played in Fred Adison's orchestra. In June 1940 he joined the orchestra of Raymond Legrand, and he was one of the co-founders of the Jazz de Paris, the band he started with the saxophonists Alix Combelle and Hubert Rostaing and the trumpeter Jerry Mengo. On October 22, 1940 he recorded for the Swing label with Hubert Rostaing: "Indecision" and "Oui, c'est ça" (SW. 87) are billed to Rostaing and Barelli and their orchestra and feature Django Reinhardt on guitar, with Combelle and Rostaing on tenor saxophone and Christian Bellest as the second trumpet. A Jazz de Paris single, "Midi à Jalopi" and "Fou" (SW. 94, dated January 10, 1941), has him on trumpet beside Bellest and Séverin Luino, with Combelle conducting. His first records under his own name followed on the same label in 1941, among them "Flots bleus" and "Riviera" (SW. 111), an eight-piece band of three trumpets, trombone, tenor saxophone and rhythm section, with Combelle on tenor saxophone. German Wikipedia adds that he played the Grand Festival Swing at the Salle Pleyel in 1941, and the AllMusic credits list him on trumpet on several compilations of Reinhardt's wartime and radio recordings.

From 1943 he led his own group, and by 1944 he had a large orchestra that at its biggest numbered 26 players and took its sound from the American big bands. French Wikipedia places it at L'Aiglon in 1946 and at Les Ambassadeurs until 1948. On record for Pathé, "Gipsy" and "Hey Ba Ba Re Bop" (PA 2369, 1946) show a ten-piece band with five saxophones around him, and on November 22, 1946 he was the trumpeter in a Swing jam session with Rostaing, the tenor saxophonist Jean Aldegon and the guitarist Léo Petit. German Wikipedia says he worked with Charles Trénet in February 1945 and accompanied Coleman Hawkins at the Théàtre Marigny in 1948, and English Wikipedia says his group performed with Dizzy Gillespie in 1948 and that he played informally with Sidney Bechet and Charlie Parker in the late 1940s. German Wikipedia lists him on the closing jam session of the 1949 Paris international jazz festival, where Bechet and Parker both played, and on two 1952 recordings with Bechet. A last session in the same line is "Blues 1950" (Swing SW. 331), recorded on December 15, 1949 by an All Star Français with Hubert Fol, Rostaing, Jean-Claude Fohrenbach, Benny Vasseur and Léo Chauliac, in which he is on trumpet.

In 1949 he settled in Monaco, where his orchestra played for many years at the casino of the Sporting Club. The congas player Claude François and, from the age of 15, the drummer André Ceccarelli were among the young musicians who passed through it. His records from the 1950s and 1960s are mostly dance and show repertoire, for Pathé and then Barclay: a long-playing record made for the wedding of Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly in 1956, mambos and cha-chas, a Barclay EP of "Petite Fleur" and other tunes in 1960, and the 1962 album Midnight at Monte Carlo Sporting Club. He also conducted for the singer Lucienne Delyle, whom he met in Legrand's orchestra and married; many of her Pathé singles carry his name as conductor or co-billed orchestra leader, up to her death in 1962. Their daughter, the singer Minouche Barelli (1947 to 2004), sang with the orchestra for a year, and he conducted for her at the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna in 1967 and, according to the Discogs biography, took Monegasque nationality. He appeared as a musician and actor in several films, including Les Joyeux Pélerins (1951), and recorded Bossa Nova (1963) with the German singer Peter Kraus.

He passed away in Monaco on July 13, 1995, at the age of 78.

No interview in which he names his influences was found, so this section sticks to what the records show. His 1940s work is Paris swing: hot-club-era trumpet with Combelle's and Rostaing's reed sections, then a bigger orchestra modelled on the American bands. The Pathé single "Hey Ba Ba Re Bop" (1946) shows him taking up the new bebop vocabulary as it reached France, though the record itself is still a dance-band date. From the early 1950s the repertoire moves to light orchestral, Latin dance and chanson accompaniment, and Discogs files most of his later releases as pop, Latin or easy listening, so his place in jazz rests mainly on the decade from 1940 to 1950 and on the jazz references that tie him to Reinhardt, Rostaing and Bechet. He is credited as trumpeter and vocalist, and the 1956 live album {A} l'Alhambra, filed by Discogs under music hall and big band, shows the spectacle side of his orchestra.