Michel Gaudry was a French double bassist who worked in Paris from 1957, at first in clubs and on the records of visiting American musicians and then, for three decades, in French jazz and studio rhythm sections. He was born on September 23, 1928, in Eu, in the Seine-Maritime département of Normandy, and passed away on May 29, 2019, in Saint-Lô, in the Manche, at the age of 90. Trained as a technical draftsman, he learned piano and clarinet and began as an amateur clarinetist in the clubs of Paris, among them Le Lorientais, where he had the chance to play with Claude Luter. He studied at the Geneva Conservatory, and in 1955 he turned professional in Switzerland, in Lausanne, alongside the vibraphonist Michel Hausser and Gérard Le Coat. It was there that he began to take the double bass seriously.

Back in Paris in 1957 he quickly became a bassist in demand. After meeting the American pianist Art Simmons during a radio broadcast, he joined Simmons's trio at the Mars Club, where the guitarist chair passed from Pierre Cullaz to Pierre Cavalli and then to Elek Bacsik. The guitarist Jimmy Gourley also played the newly opened Mars Club in the spring of 1958 with Simmons and Gaudry. In the later 1950s he worked as well with Billie Holiday, the trombonist Quentin Jackson and Carmen McRae.

The early 1960s were his busiest years on record. He is the bassist on the vocal group's session built on arrangements by Quincy Jones, issued as Meet Quincy Jones in 1960 (see Les Double Six), and on Georges Arvanitas's quintet album Soul Jazz the same year, with Daniel Humair on drums. In 1962 he is on four tracks of Elek Bacsik's The Electric Guitar of the Eclectic Elek Bacsik, recorded in Paris. On July 31, 1964, at Acousti Studios in Paris, he played bass behind Bud Powell and the drummer Art Taylor on the session that became Blues for Bouffémont, and in 1964 he recorded with the organist Lou Bennett, Kenny Clarke and Jimmy Gourley. On October 10, 1962 he recorded the four-track EP Blues pour flirter (Polydor, 1963) with the alto saxophonist Sonny Criss, the pianist Henri Renaud and the drummer Philippe Combelle, and he is the bassist on Stuff and Steff, the violin duet of Stuff Smith and Stéphane Grappelli for Barclay with René Urtreger on piano. English Wikipedia also lists Billy Strayhorn among his early-1960s partners and says he held a long-running place in the group of the pianist Jack Diéval, with whom he is credited on the 1969 Philips album Le Chemin and the live double album 30 Years of Jazz From Gershwin to Duke Ellington (1976). On December 1, 1963, he played in Paris for the blues singers Sonny Boy Williamson and Memphis Slim.

Parallel to his jazz work he was a busy studio musician. Discogs lists him on records by Serge Gainsbourg, Barbara, Claude Nougaro, Georges Moustaki, Serge Lama and Jeanne Moreau from the 1960s into the 1980s, and French Wikipedia adds Charles Dumont, Nancy Holloway and Joséphine Baker to the stars he accompanied. He also took part in Paris sessions led by American visitors, among them Barney Kessel and Sonny Criss.

In the 1970s he was part of the first Swing Machine, the band of the tenor saxophonist Gérard Badini, with the pianist Raymond Fol and the Ellington alumnus Sam Woodyard on drums. The Swing Machine was recorded on May 30, 1975, and the trio of Fol, Gaudry and Woodyard made Duke's Moods in 1976, issued in 1977. He was a regular at the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice. In April 1980 he recorded French Cooking for Vogue in a new Badini Swing Machine with the pianist Alain Jean-Marie and the drummer Philippe Combelle, and in the 1980s he also played with Jimmy Owens and Irvin Stokes. He is on the clarinet-guitar-bass record Paris - Dublin with Maurice Meunier and Louis Stewart (Bloomdido, 1986) and on Five Notes of Blues, recorded live at Les Alligators in Paris on December 19 and 20, 1991, with the clarinetist Buddy DeFranco, Alain Jean-Marie and Philippe Combelle (Musidisc, 1992). French Wikipedia lists Guy Lafitte and René Urtreger among the French musicians he accompanied over the decades.

In his later life he devoted himself to the history of the Second World War occupation of Normandy, and he spent his last years at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont in the Manche. France Musique broadcast a tribute to him on its program Jazz au Trésor in June 2019.

Gaudry was a rhythm-section bassist whose range is the main thing his credits show: the bebop piano of Bud Powell in 1964, the swing and Ellington repertory of the Badini and Fol groups in the 1970s, the organ quintet of Lou Bennett, the vocal arrangements of Les Double Six and the French song records of Barbara, Georges Moustaki and Serge Gainsbourg. He recorded mostly as a sideman. The releases that carry his name on the sleeve are the co-billed Swing Machine albums and Duke's Moods, the 1986 trio record with Maurice Meunier and Louis Stewart, and Five Notes of Blues; Discogs lists no record billed to him alone. His career is best followed through the leaders he served: Art Simmons, Elek Bacsik, Bud Powell, Jack Diéval, Gérard Badini and Raymond Fol.