COUPé CLOUé Vinyl Records and CDs

... Gesner Henry had the ability to cut (Coupe) the velocity of the speedy ball and reduce it to a full stop, and nail it (Cloue) with a super kick right back to the other side. Each time he made this soccer stunt he used his cabinetry jargon Coupé Cloué to describe it. Soon his teammates and other players started to call him Coupé Cloué and the name stuck. It’s also during that time that he started to sing and play the guitar, usually before important games and during team curfew. Despite his talent as a soccer star Coupé Cloué moved on to playing music but this time as a guitarist jamming and entertaining his friends and local businessman with some members of the band Trio Crystal composed of Georges Celestin, Rene Delva and Andre Serant. Briefly, during the same period, Jean Gesner Henry joined the military where he spent few times. By 1956, Jean Gesner Henry devoted himself completely to music. Upon his initiative, the group “Trio Select” was created on September 6, 1957 playing the style of Canjo, the father of the Twoubadou style of music in Haiti. Using his enthusiasm and connections, he started to promote the group to radio stations in Port Au Prince notably Radio Caraibes, Radio Quisqueya, Radio MBC, Radio Cacique and Radio Haiti. The Trio surprised the crowd of the famous venue Theatre De Verdure at their first live performance as they were the opening act for Haiti’s most popular band of the 1950s, Jazz Des Jeunes. After the show, they became the talk of the town. All the top radio stations and others were after the artist for interviews and recordings. In 1958, Trio Select released their first album with producer Marc Duverger. One can not talk of the beginning of Trio Select without talking about talentuous guitarist Bellerive Decelian who spent more than twenty years in the group before leaving us in the late 80’s. He was considered one of the best guitarist in Haiti at the time. Up to then, the guitar as an instrument has not integrated the main stream in all the major bands of the time. He and Trio Select were among the first to use the guitar as a lead instrument preceding by a few years the new wave of groups in the early 60s known as Mini Jazz. The Trio Select soon gained momentum in the early 1960s as it got a regular Friday night show at Cric Crac Ciné as well as many gigs at the Club Bamboche both venues located in Port Au Prince. Afterwards, Trio Select started playing at the Citadelle Garden then, they went on to play at Week End Paradis where they started to get a huge following. By the late 1960s, the singer Luc Raphael Benito from the group L’Etoile Du Soir joined the group. It’s also around the same time that songs like “Juge”, “Plen Kay”, “Chada”, “Kilibwa”, “Kribiche”, “Kousi Kousa”, “Deux Pigeons”, “Saint Antoine”, “Bambou” and “Socis” among others started to hit the air waves. One of his first hit “Juge” was censored by the government. The song was then remake cleverly by Coupé Cloué under the name of “Ti Sourit”. The voice of Coupé Cloué became one of the most recognizable of the airwaves even with the evolution of the Mini Jazz movement. As Trio Select was getting more shows playing with other popular bands with heavier sound, Coupé decided to introduce more sophisticated and amplified instruments in his group. In 1973, at the club L’anolis Vert located in Thomassin, Trio Select changes its name and became “L’Ensemble Select”. This decision was one of the best by the entrepreneur as the introduction of talented musician like Prosper Saint Louis on bass, Jean Rene Petion on Bongo, and Colbert Desir on congas contributed greatly to his early success. In March 1974, after returning from a tour in the U.S., the group added other talented musicians suc