Bill Coleman (William Johnson Coleman) was an American-born swing trumpeter and singer who spent the larger part of his working life in France. He was born in Paris, Kentucky, on August 4, 1904, and his family moved to Cincinnati in 1909. He began on clarinet and C-melody saxophone before settling on the trumpet, studied with the Cincinnati trumpeter Theodore Carpenter and played in an amateur band led by the trombonist J.C. Higginbotham. In Cincinnati he worked with the bands of Clarence Paige and Wesley Helvey, then with Lloyd and Cecil Scott, and in December 1927 he went to New York with the Scott brothers. In late summer 1929 he joined Luis Russell's orchestra, and his first recording session with it, on September 6, 1929, produced a solo on "Feelin' the Spirit".

Europe came early. In June 1933 he crossed the Atlantic with Lucky Millinder's band for a trip that lasted until October, and after a stretch in New York with Benny Carter and Teddy Hill he sat in on a session with Fats Waller in early 1935. In the summer of 1935 he went back to Europe for a longer stay. In Paris he worked with the entertainer Freddy Taylor and began a run of recordings under his own name, among them sessions made in Paris between January 31, 1936 and September 28, 1938 on which Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, the saxophonists Alix Combelle and Eddie Brunner and the pianist Herman Chittison are heard. French Wikipedia adds that he joined the Quintette du Hot Club de France on those recordings. Between the Paris spells he played in Bombay with Leon Abbey's orchestra in late 1936, came back to Paris in April 1937 to join Willie Lewis and His Entertainers, and later worked in Cairo before returning to the United States in March 1940.

The 1940s in America put him in some of the best swing bands of the period: Benny Carter in 1940, Teddy Wilson in 1940 and 1941, Andy Kirk in 1941 and 1942, Ellis Larkins in 1943, Mary Lou Williams in 1944, John Kirby in 1945, Sy Oliver in 1946 and 1947 and Billy Kyle in 1947 and 1948. The photograph at the top of this page dates from that New York period. In 1948 he went back to France for good, partly, according to English Wikipedia, to escape racial segregation, and he lived there for the rest of his life apart from short visits to the United States in 1954 and 1958. He played Paris cabarets and dance halls, toured the Continent, appeared at festivals, among them Antibes in 1961 alongside Count Basie, and recorded for French, Swiss, Italian and British labels. A Lausanne radio session of 1949 with the tenor saxophonist Don Byas has since been issued, and his recordings for Philips are collected on The Complete Philips Recordings.

From the late 1950s his records were mostly French productions. From Boogie to Funk (Brunswick, 1960) was cut in Paris on January 21 and 22, 1960 with the tenor saxophonist Budd Johnson, the trombonist Quentin Jackson and the pianist Patti Bown. Next came Jazz Pour Dieu (1966), a Christian-themed work by the bandleader Jef Gilson in which he plays trumpet on four pieces and sings on "Jericho", and two LP volumes of Bill Coleman in Paris (1966 and 1968) that gathered his 1930s Paris sides. In March 1968 he recorded Sings and Plays 12 Negro Spirituals in Paris, with Gilson directing and the organist Eddy Louiss. Together at Last (Pathé, 1969) teams him with the tenor saxophonist Buddy Tate and the pianist and organist Georges Arvanitas, and he also recorded with Raymond Fonsèque's Original Jazz Band in 1971 and 1972. Swingin' in London, a session with Ben Webster recorded at Olympic Studios in April 1967, was issued in 1972, and he made a Milan album with Lino Patruno and friends in 1973. With the tenor saxophonist Guy Lafitte he played the Montreux Jazz Festival on July 4, 1973, a set released as Mainstream at Montreux with Daniel Humair on drums, and the two recorded Really I Do in Toulouse on May 15, 1980. In 1974 he was made a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite, and from 1975, according to French Wikipedia, he lived in Cadeillan, in the Gers department of south-west France, close to Lafitte. English Wikipedia places the two of them at the first Jazz in Marciac festival in 1978 and describes him as later honorary president of its organisation. In March 1979 he recorded Cave's Blues with the vibraphonist Dany Doriz, the owner of the Caveau de la Huchette, the Paris jazz club that gives the album its subtitle.

He passed away in Toulouse on August 24, 1981, at 77. His autobiography, Trumpet Story, translated into French by his wife Lily, appeared in French in the early 1980s and was later issued in English and, in an expanded illustrated edition, in 2004 as De Paris (Kentucky) à Paris (France), ma trompette sous le bras. He is buried in the cemetery at Cadeillan. French musicians and listeners called him the "gentleman de la trompette". Born and raised in America, he lived in France for more than 32 years from 1948 and for much of the period from 1935 to 1940, and the bulk of his later recordings were made there.

Coleman's model was Louis Armstrong, but he played with a lighter tone and a light vibrato, closer in sound to Jabbo Smith, and with an unhurried, balanced phrasing that reference books describe as elegant and restrained. English Wikipedia relates him stylistically to the swing-era trumpeters Roy Eldridge and Buck Clayton. Encyclopedia entries describe him as a reliable, respected soloist rather than a major star, and the Paris sides of 1936 and 1937 with Reinhardt and Grappelli are the clearest document of him at his peak. He also sang, as on Sings and Plays 12 Negro Spirituals and on Really I Do, and his later records for Black Lion, Black & Blue and other European labels are mainstream dates in the swing and Dixieland vein. In France he was a regular partner of Lafitte, Fonsèque and the vibraphonist Dany Doriz.