Roger Chaput (Roger Marcel Chaput) was a French guitarist and banjoist, the rhythm guitarist of the first line-up of the Quintette du Hot Club de France and a steady Paris studio player from the early 1930s into the 1950s. He was also a cartoonist and oil painter. He was born on May 19, 1909, in Montluçon, in the Allier, and grew up in Ménilmontant, the working-class district of northeastern Paris, where he learned guitar and mandolin. He first played in public on banjo, in the bal-musette bands of Michel Péguri and Albert Carrara. His earliest record under his own name, "Suprême étreinte" and "Je ne saurai jamais dire ça" (Tri-Ergon 6510), was billed to Roger Chaput et son orchestre musette and was recorded in Paris around February 1932, according to Discogs.

In 1931 he joined the jazz orchestra of the double bassist Louis Vola, whose band that spring was playing at the Lido in Toulon with Django Reinhardt in it. By 1934 Vola's orchestra was working at the Hôtel Claridge on the Champs-Élysées, with Reinhardt, the violinist Stéphane Grappelli and Chaput among the players, and the backstage jam sessions there turned into the Quintette du Hot Club de France. Chaput was one of its two rhythm guitarists, beside Reinhardt's brother Joseph, with Vola on bass.

The Discography of American Historical Recordings lists him on guitar for the quintet's Decca sides of 1935: "Lilly Belle" (March), "Ultrafox" (April), "Avalon" and "Clouds" (July), and "Some of These Days" and "Djangology" (September). It also lists him on the Decca session of January 31, 1938, which produced "Honeysuckle Rose", "Sweet Georgia Brown", "Night and Day", "Souvenirs", "Daphne", "Black and White" and "Stompin' at Decca", and on four Grappelli titles cut the next day. The BnF records him as a member of the quintet in 1934 to 1935 and in 1938, and he left the group in 1938.

Away from the quintet he was a regular rhythm guitarist on Swing-label and other Paris sessions. On July 12, 1937, he played in the rhythm section of the American trombonist Dicky Wells's Paris date (Swing SW. 39, "Dinah!" and "Nobody's Blues But My Own"), with Sam Allen on piano and Bill Beason on drums. On September 29, 1937, he was on the Swing single "Dinah" and "Daphne" by the violinists Eddie South and Grappelli, with Reinhardt and the bassist Wilson Myers. The saxophonist Alix Combelle used him on side A of "Exactly Like You" (Swing SW. 52, 1937), a date with the trumpeter Bill Coleman. From 1938 to 1943 he was a member of the Hot Club Swing Stars, a studio band that recorded for the Swing label "Every Tub" and "Morning Feeling" (SW. 48) in December 1938 with Combelle, Vola and the pianist Louis Richardet.

He kept working through the Occupation. Discogs credits him on Combelle's "Fariboles" and "La Da Da La La" (SW. 144, 1942, with the saxophonist Hubert Rostaing), on Noel Chiboust's "Ermitage" and "Ermenonville" (SW. 154, recorded June 25, 1942), on a Pierre Fouad session recorded July 8, 1942 with André Ekyan and Combelle, on the accordionist Gus Viseur's "Gus & Gus" and "Harlem Swing" (Decca, 1942, with Joseph Reinhardt on second guitar) and on a 1942 Pathé record by the pianist Charles-Henry's Piano Swing. After the war he is on Combelle's "Jam-Session" No. 1 (SW. 227, 1947), with the pianist Jack Diéval, and the BnF lists him in Grappelli's Hot Four in 1947. The latest credit found is Combelle's Vogue LP with the American trumpeter Buck Clayton, recorded on October 20 and 21, 1953, where he is on guitar without a label credit.

Chaput drew as well as played. English Wikipedia describes him as a cartoonist and oil painter whose work appeared in the magazine Jazz Hot, and the BnF lists a work of his titled Croquis hot jazz, dated only to the 1950s. As a leader he made two LPs for Disques du Cavalier, Tonton Guitare 1 (MG 750) and Tonton Guitare 2 (MG 850), with Jean-François Gaël on a second guitar and a bassist, and on the second album a drummer. He passed away in Toulon on December 22, 1994, at the age of 85.

Chaput's job in the quintet was to keep the time. The group had no drums and no horns, and Reinhardt had brought in a second rhythm guitarist so that he could solo over a fuller rhythm section; Chaput and Joseph Reinhardt supplied that rhythm while Grappelli and Django played the lead lines. Outside it, his credits show a swing rhythm guitarist who fitted equally well behind the American players who passed through Paris in the 1930s, such as Dicky Wells, Eddie South and Bill Coleman, and behind the French swing saxophonists and bandleaders of the Swing label. His own Tonton Guitare albums turn to lighter repertoire: the track lists include "Blaze Away", "Tico Tico", "Sonny Boy", "Caminito" and a piece titled "Ménilmontant", the district where he grew up.