Marcel Zanini (born Marcel Zannini, September 9, 1923, in Istanbul) is remembered by most of the French public for one record, the 1969 hit "Tu veux ou tu veux pas", and for the moustache, bowler hat and round glasses that went with it. Before and after that record he was a working jazz clarinetist and tenor saxophonist who grew up in Marseille, spent four years in New York as a correspondent for the magazine Jazz Hot, led a sextet in the Paris clubs and recorded swing sessions with American players such as the organist Milt Buckner and the drummer Sam Woodyard. This profile covers the jazz career alongside the pop years.

His father was of Neapolitan origin and his mother was Greek. The family moved from Istanbul to Marseille in 1930, when he was six. He began to learn the clarinet in 1942 and in 1946 joined the orchestra of Léo Missir, the man who would later, as artistic director at Barclay, hand him his hit. In the early 1950s he founded his own first band. In 1954 he left for New York, where he stayed four years and wrote from the United States for Jazz Hot; French press accounts say he heard Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday there. In 1958 he returned to Marseille and formed a new group, and by the late 1960s he was based in Paris.

In 1962 he met Eddie Barclay and made his first single for the label, "Oui, oui". Discogs also lists a 1961 record under the name Zanini et ses Challengers and a long run of singles on the Riviera label between 1968 and 1974. The breakthrough came in 1969, when Léo Missir suggested a French adaptation of "Nem vem que não tem", a Brazilian song by Wilson Simonal written by Carlos Imperial. "Tu veux ou tu veux pas" reportedly sold more than a million copies and became his signature record, and it made his look as famous as his playing. Other singers, among them Brigitte Bardot, later recorded it.

The hit did not end his jazz work. He kept playing clubs and festivals in Paris with his sextet and worked with the pianist Georges Arvanitas and the organist Eddy Louiss, among others. In 1971 he is listed as a tenor saxophonist on a live album from Super Besse with the trumpeter Bill Coleman and the trombonist François Guin's Swingers, alongside the tenor saxophonist Gérard Badini. His most important jazz documents came through the Black & Blue label. Blues and Bounce!, recorded at Barclay Studio on July 5, 1976 and credited to Zanini and Milt Buckner, pairs him on tenor saxophone and clarinet with Buckner on organ, Sam Woodyard on drums, Jean-Pierre Lindenmeyer on vibraphone, Michel Gaudry on bass and the guitarist Marc-Édouard Nabe, his son, who later became a writer. The album Lotus, recorded on March 26 and 27, 1985 at Sysmo Studio with the pianist François Rilhac, the bassist Pascal Chebel, Woodyard and Nabe, adds one 1976 track with Buckner.

He also appears as clarinetist and tenor saxophonist on the sessions in which Georges Brassens's songs were played by Moustache's Petits Français with American guests, among them Harry Edison, Joe Newman, Cat Anderson, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Dorothy Donegan; the 1979 recordings were issued by Philips and later reissued as Giants of Jazz Play Brassens. In 1980 he made Joue et chante Marcel Zanini for the Free Bird label with Badini, the trombonist Claude Gousset, the trumpeter Xavier Chambon, the pianist Marc Hemmeler, the bassist Jack Gregg and Woodyard. The publisher Frémeaux & Associés then brought much of his later work back into print: Peu de choses in 2002, the two-disc Rive Gauche 1976-1985, which collects the complete Black & Blue recordings with ten swing and vocal bonus tracks, in 2003, and Tu veux ou tu veux pas ? in 2008. He also acted in small parts, among them two Bertrand Tavernier films, Autour de minuit (1986) and La Vie et rien d'autre (1989).

French Wikipedia gives his years of activity as 1946 to 2019. Marcel Zanini passed away on January 18, 2023, aged 99, in Paris; his son Marc-Édouard Nabe announced his death.

Zanini was a swing player in the mainstream tradition: warm clarinet, and a husky tenor saxophone that Frémeaux's own notes on his Black & Blue sessions compare to Don Byas, Ben Webster and Earl Bostic, with ballads, relaxed medium-tempo swing and shuffles with Sam Woodyard. His other strong thread was song. He sang in French, adapted standards and wrote his own tunes, and his records move between jazz instrumentals, vocal swing and the variety songs of the 1960s and 1970s. For that reason the Subgenres above describe the jazz side only; much of his best-known output is French pop of the 1960s and 1970s, and that part of his catalogue is outside what is tagged here. His longest-running partnerships on record were with Milt Buckner and Sam Woodyard.