Gérard Badini, known as "Mr. Swing," was a French tenor saxophonist, clarinettist and bandleader who worked in French swing and mainstream jazz from 1952 into the 2000s. He was born on April 16, 1931 in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, and his father was an opera singer. AllMusic describes him as self-taught: he began as a classical singer, took up the clarinet in 1950, and made his professional debut in 1952 at the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo as clarinettist in the New Orleans-style orchestra of Michel Attenoux.

His son Jérôme Badini told France Musique that the band had won a public-radio contest whose prize was a spot opening for Sidney Bechet, which led to a tour with the American clarinettist and soprano saxophonist. In 1954 he made a longer tour with Bechet's group. In those early years he also played New Orleans-style jazz with Jimmy Archey, Lil Armstrong, Bill Coleman and Peanuts Holland. In 1955 he formed a trio with the pianist Claude Bolling, a partnership that lasted more than twenty years, and he toured the world with Jack Diéval's orchestra. From 1958 he played mainly tenor saxophone, working with Bolling, with the trumpeter Roger Guérin and with Geo Daly.

In the 1960s he worked with the Swedish singer Alice Babs on an album that also involved Duke Ellington, and with Jean-Claude Naude, Cat Anderson, Paul Gonsalves, Jef Gilson and François Guin. From 1968 he played in Guin's band Les Swingers, which appeared at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1970 and toured Africa. In 1973 he founded his own group, the Swing Machine. Its first Black & Blue album was recorded in December 1973 and February 1974, and in 1975 he made records with the former Ellington drummer Sam Woodyard, the pianist Raymond Fol and the bassist Michel Gaudry. In February and March 1975 he recorded live in Geneva at the Popcorn jazz club with the organist and pianist Milt Buckner, the bassist Jimmy Woode and Woodyard, and in 1976 the drummer Sonny Payne joined him. He toured Europe with the singer Helen Humes in 1974.

From 1977 to 1979 Badini lived in New York, where he played with Roy Eldridge, Major Holley, Oliver Jackson, Dick Katz, Clark Terry, Gerald Wiggins and Reggie Workman and led his own quartet. His son later said that American musicians took him in, and Le Monde wrote that he won genuine recognition in the United States. Back in France he formed a new Swing Machine with the pianist Alain Jean-Marie, the bassist Michel Gaudry and the drummer Philippe Combelle, and recorded French Cooking for Vogue in April 1980.

On February 14, 1984 he launched the Super Swing Machine at the Paris club New Morning, an 18-piece big band that went on to play major European festivals, including Montreux and Nice, and appeared on television. Its albums include Mr. Swing Is Still Alive, recorded in December 1985 and issued in 1987, Mister Swing Meets Claude Debussy (1991), a set built on Debussy's piano music, a 1994 album titled Swingin' Marilyn, Certains Leeb Jazz (1997) with the singer and entertainer Michel Leeb, and a new French Cooking in 2003. In 2006 came Scriabin's Groove, a set of Alexander Scriabin piano pieces in jazz arrangements, with the pianist Igor Tchetuev and production by Jérôme Badini. On the 2003 and 2006 albums the credits list him as conductor rather than as a player. He received the Grand Prix du Jazz of the SACEM in 1992 and the Prix Boris Vian of the Académie du Jazz in 1993.

Badini lived in Deauville in his later years. He passed away there on October 25, 2025, at the age of 94. Radio France and Le Monde reported his death, and TSF Jazz noted that he had accompanied his idol Duke Ellington.

Badini was a swing player first. AllMusic calls his approach straight-ahead swing, notes that he was a Benny Goodman man on clarinet, and adds that he could solo capably, with a sense of adventure inside well-tested stylistic limits, on both tenor saxophone and clarinet. TSF Jazz called Duke Ellington his idol, and the repertoire on his records bears that out: "It Don't Mean a Thing," "Stomp, Look and Listen" and "Take the 'A' Train" appear on his 1975 albums, next to his own pieces such as "Sam Woodyard Is Back in Town" and "Fingers Poppin' at the Popcorn." His roots were in New Orleans-style bands, and from 1958, when he moved mainly to the tenor saxophone, he worked in the wider swing and mainstream world around Claude Bolling and the Ellington alumni who visited Paris.

The nickname Mr. Swing stuck for good reason: his son Jérôme said his father could be summed up in two words, swing and sound, and recalled being taught that one note should be able to say everything. The listening at home was not limited to jazz. Jérôme Badini remembered hearing Ravel, Debussy and Stravinsky with him, and that taste shows in the classical projects of the Super Swing Machine, whose 1991 and 2006 albums turn Debussy and Scriabin piano pieces into big-band arrangements. As a bandleader he worked with arrangers and soloists from the French big-band scene, among them the trumpeter and arranger François Biensan on his 1980s and 1990s records, and with American veterans from the Ellington orbit, including Sam Woodyard, Cat Anderson and Paul Gonsalves.