Daniel Huck (Daniel Henri Huck) was a Paris-born alto saxophonist, clarinettist and scat singer whose career in the French swing and traditional-jazz scene ran from the late 1960s into the late 2010s. He was born in Paris on March 22, 1948, and passed away on April 25, 2026, aged 78, at Saint-Christol-lez-Alès in the Gard. French Wikipedia credits him with more than a hundred records, and the Académie du Jazz honored him twice, with the Prix Sidney Bechet in 1982 and the Prix Django Reinhardt in 1997.

He first tried the trombone as a schoolboy at the lycée Montaigne, then dropped it. At eighteen he worked as a waiter at the Jazzland, a club in the Latin Quarter, where he heard French players such as Stéphane Grappelli, Raymond Fol, Gérard Badini and Eddy Louiss and Americans passing through, among them Erroll Garner, Milt Jackson, Sonny Rollins, Art Taylor and Dexter Gordon. He taught himself the alto saxophone from 1967, by ear and by listening, and later described himself as an "amateur professional": a listener's enthusiasm kept alive inside a working career, and a preference for projects with adventure and swing over running a band as a business.

English Wikipedia places him in the Famous Melody Boys in 1968 and with the Jazz O'Maniacs in 1970 and 1971, and in the traditional band of the cornettist Jean-Pierre Morel from 1969 to 1973. That band's Kansas City Kitty (Pragmaphone, 1972), recorded at Gill's Club and the Caveau de la Montagne in Paris, lists him on alto and tenor saxophones and clarinet. He worked with the washboard player Gilbert Leroux in 1974 (a 1980 Soleil Masqué LP credits him on saxophone and vocals, with a Daniel Huck Trio among the billed acts) and from 1975 to 1979 with the trombonist Raymond Fonsèque. Sources also place him in the Anachronic Jazz Band from 1976, which recorded for the Open label (Anachronic Jazz Band, 1976, and Volume 2, 1978). In 1979 he toured with Fonsèque as accompanist to the trumpeter Cat Anderson and the trumpeter Bill Coleman; an April 27, 1979 concert at La Celle-Saint-Cloud with Anderson, Fonsèque and the pianist Philippe Baudoin was later issued as Ellington Moods (Milan Jazz, 1992).

The early 1980s brought his own groups and prizes. Happy Feet and Friends (Open, 1981), recorded in Paris in March and April 1981 with Baudoin, has him on alto and tenor saxophones and voice. Orphéon Célesta recorded C'est pas d'la tarte ! (Manusic, 1981) with him on clarinet, three saxophones and scat vocals. He founded Slapscat, a scat-and-swing group with the trombonist Patrick Bacqueville, the guitarist Patrick Diaz, the bassist Gilles Chevaucherie and the drummer François Laudet, in homage to Slim Gaillard; it was active from 1981 to 1987, and Gaillard himself later played with the band during a tour of France. The Prix Sidney Bechet followed in 1982. He also joined Les Primitifs du futur, the group of the guitarist Dominique Cravic, on Cocktail d'amour (Média 7, 1986, cover art by Robert Crumb) and Trop de routes, trop de trains et autres histoires d'amour (La Lichère, 1995). French Wikipedia says the second record won a Choc from Le Monde de la musique.

From the late 1980s he worked intermittently with the organist Eddy Louiss into the end of the 1990s. He is credited on alto saxophone on Louiss's Multicolor Feeling - Fanfare (Nocturne, 1989), on Multicolor Feeling Fanfare - Live (Nocturne, recorded on April 6, 1991 at Sevran for the Banlieues Bleues festival with 70 musicians from Seine-Saint-Denis), and on Louiss's Récit proche (Dreyfus Jazz, 2001). In the same years he soloed with the Ornicar Big Band, whose L'Incroyable Huck (BIG Blue, recorded in September 1991) takes its title from him, and with the TSF vocal group on Drôlement vocal (Ida, 1987). He won the Prix Django Reinhardt in 1997, the year Esquisses for a Walk... (Nocturne) appeared: a session with the American pianist Dave Burrell and a small band, recorded in Paris on March 10 and October 16, 1996.

Small-group records under his own name run through the 1990s and 2000s: Easy (Coda, recorded in December 1996 at La Rochelle with the pianist Alain Mayeras, the bassist Gilles Naturel and the drummer Jean-Pierre Jackson), How Deep Is the Ocean (recorded at Clermont-Ferrand in November 1997 with the Verne brothers and the pianist Jean-Marc Montaut), and two albums of French songs and scat with the singer Monique Hutter, L'air de rien (2004) and Il scatte... (Nocturne, 2007). He recorded with Michel Pastre's big band on Diggin' the Count (Djaz, 2001), as a guest with Miss Lulu White's Red Hot Creole Jazzband (My Sweet Lovin' Man, Stomp Off, 2002), and with Jean-Pierre Morel's later Petit Jazzband (Delta Bound, Stomp Off, 1999). Late records include the Anachronic Jazz Band's Back in Town! (Jazz aux Remparts, recorded in Bayonne in January 2013) and Cryin' for the Carolines (Frémeaux & Associés, 2014), made with the saxophonist Nicolas Fourgeux's Oracles du Phono and the drummer Stan Laferrière, which carries his name on the front. He also appears on three tracks of Pauline Atlan's Le Monde de Fats (2018).

His death was reported by Jazz Magazine on April 25, 2026, whose tribute called it a great loss for French jazz and praised his deep knowledge of an era of jazz that is wrongly forgotten, passed on through the oral tradition. The Syncopated Times published an obituary on May 31, 2026. A filmed interview with Philippe Baudoin, shot at his home in August 2021, was released online in 2025.

Huck played an alto saxophone with a full, vibrato-rich tone and sang in the scat tradition, and sources agree on the showman in him: French Wikipedia names Cab Calloway as an inspiration and describes him as one of the few French musicians with a real command of jazz history. His repertoire runs from Jelly Roll Morton tributes and New Orleans stomps to swing-era standards, musette-tinged hot jazz and the scat routines of Slim Gaillard that gave Slapscat its name. His records sit in French trad, swing and hot jazz and in the vocal and scat tradition: the standards, blues and ballads of Easy ("My Old Flame", "Good Bait", "September Song", "Laura"), the hot-jazz material of Cryin' for the Carolines and the scat numbers of the Slapscat recordings. He was also a wide-ranging collaborator, moving between the Parisian traditional scene, Eddy Louiss's fanfare and the American pianist Dave Burrell's small band.