Hal Singer (Harold Joseph Singer) was born on October 8, 1919 in Greenwood, the Black district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and passed away on August 18, 2020 in Chatou, west of Paris, at the age of 100. He was a tenor saxophonist and bandleader who topped the American rhythm and blues chart in 1948 with the instrumental "Corn Bread" and who, after staying in France in 1965, spent the last fifty-five years of his life as one of the American jazz musicians settled around Paris, recording and touring in Europe, Africa and Asia. He was American by birth and training, and his working life divides into about twenty-five years in the United States, from 1940 to 1965, and fifty-five years in France, from 1965 to 2020, where he made most of his jazz albums, taught young players and received state honors. French Wikipedia adds that he became a French citizen in 1986.

His family's home in Tulsa was burned during the 1921 race massacre, and the child and his mother waited out the violence in Kansas City. He studied the violin first, then moved to reed instruments and settled on the tenor saxophone, with Ben Webster and Lester Young as his models. At his father's urging he took a degree in agriculture at Hampton Institute in 1939, playing with local bands while he studied, and he turned professional in 1940. He worked in the territory bands of the Southwest and Midwest, among them the orchestras of Ernie Fields, Lloyd Hunter and Nat Towles, and in 1943 he joined the Kansas City orchestra of Jay McShann before moving to New York. There he played with Willie "The Lion" Smith, Don Byas and Lucky Millinder and in the orchestra of the trumpeter Roy Eldridge. In 1947 he joined the band of Oran "Hot Lips" Page and took part in sessions for King Records behind blues singers including Wynonie Harris and Lonnie Johnson.

In 1948 he left Page to lead a small group of his own. Savoy signed it that June, and its first record, "Corn Bread", cut in New York with the sixteen-year-old pianist Wynton Kelly and the trombonist Milt Larkin, reached number one on the rhythm and blues chart in September and gave him a nickname he kept for life. The follow-up, "Beef Stew" (1949), sold less. Through the early 1950s he recorded for Mercury, Coral and Savoy and worked as a session saxophonist and on touring package shows with rhythm and blues acts. From 1958 he moved toward jazz: he began recording for Prestige, made Blue Stompin' (1959) with the trumpeter Charlie Shavers and the pianist Ray Bryant in the Rudy Van Gelder studio, played on Blues by Lonnie Johnson (1960), and appeared at the Metropole Cafe in New York with Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Shavers.

In 1965 he toured Europe with the band of Earl Hines and chose to stay, settling near Paris. In March and May 1966 he recorded in Paris with the trumpeter Buck Clayton and the guitarist Mickey Baker for the Polydor LP later reissued as Buck Clayton and Friends. In 1968 he made two records for the Black & Blue label, Milt and Hal with the organist Milt Buckner and A Funky Day in Paris with the trumpeter Johnny Letman, and in 1969 Paris Soul Food for Polydor, which won the Académie du disque award for the best international LP. In March 1969 he was the tenor soloist behind Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson at a Paris session with T-Bone Walker and Jay McShann, issued as Wee Baby Blues and reissued in the United States as Kidney Stew Is Fine. He recorded Blues and News (1971) with the drummer Art Taylor, the pianist Siegfried Kessler and the trombonist Jacques Bolognesi, made the single "The Soukouss" with Manu Dibango, and in 1974 recorded Soul of Africa with the pianist Jef Gilson, the vibraphonist Bernard Lubat and Malagasy percussionists. The same year he toured Africa with the pianist Horace Parlan on a United States State Department tour, and on June 30, 1976 his quartet, with the pianist Alain Jean-Marie, recorded Soweto to Harlem in Johannesburg.

The French records continued with Le Grand Voyage (1977), an album of spirituals and protest songs with Georges Arvanitas on piano. In June 1981 he made Swing On It in London for JSP with the organist Mike Carr, the guitarist Jim Mullen and the saxophonist Peter King, took part in Jimmy Witherspoon's Big Blues for the same label and recorded an album with the British band Rocket 88. In Paris on June 19, 1981 he was one of the horns on the Philly Joe Jones Octet date released in 1992 as Filet de Sole, alongside Philly Joe Jones, Roger Guérin and Glenn Ferris. He appeared as himself in Pavel Lounguine's film Taxi Blues (1990), made Royal Blue (1990) in the United States with the pianist and singer Al Copley and the guitarists Duke Robillard and Snooks Eaglin, and recorded Senior Blues (1991) and Prints in the Sand (1997) with the pianist Bernard Maury. In 1992 the French state named him a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and in 1999 the director Guetty Felin made the documentary Hal Singer, Keep the Music Going about him.

He lived in Chatou from 2002, taught young musicians and kept recording into his nineties: We're Still Buddies (2002) with the Massimo Faraò Trio, recorded in Livorno, Italy in November 2001, and Challenge (2010) in Paris with David Murray and the drummer Hamid Drake. A music conservatoire in Chatou has carried his name since 2013. He turned 100 in October 2019, and the town hall of Chatou announced his death on August 18, 2020; the funeral was private.

Singer came out of the Southwest and Kansas City tenor tradition and kept its big, blues-soaked sound. His 1948 hits were jump blues, and Discogs files "Corn Bread" under that style; the Prestige and Black & Blue records of the late 1950s and 1960s are filed under soul jazz, Paris Soul Food under jazz-funk, and Soul of Africa under post bop and modal jazz. He named Ben Webster and Lester Young as models, and on record he is a blues player first, whether leading a quartet through standards, as on Prints in the Sand, or sharing the front line with Charlie Shavers, Milt Buckner or David Murray. He wrote many of his own pieces, sang on several albums, and played the Varitone electronic saxophone on Paris Soul Food. In France he also worked as a teacher, and the 1999 documentary about him follows him with young students. Where jazz critics once treated him as a rhythm and blues figure, his long French and European career, from Paris clubs to African tours, made him a reference for American blues-based tenor playing in Europe.