Composers' names were omitted or altered to French ones; Louis Armstrong's songs, for example, were attributed to Jean Sablon.
French jazz enthusiasts helped to further this general positivity towards jazz by creating an elaborate myth that it was a French creation. Delaunay organised conferences exploring its French history and showing it to be an outgrowth of Debussy. The Hot Club circulated brochures in 1940, echoing this. In 1942 André Coeuroy published Histoire Générale du Jazz (A General History of Jazz) in which he affirmed that jazz was French, and explained how it could be annexed to the Nazi cultural project as proof of the emergence of a new European culture under German influence. In 1943 Hugues Panassié followed up with La Musique de Jazz (The Music of Jazz) which refuted the Vichy fear that jazz could not carry the French patriotic message, and claimed that jazz so far had been misunderstood. He cleverly mixed Bible quotations, Catholic idioms, and Pétainist phrases into his book, so that it was more palatable to Vichy readers, in the hope that this would make them more amenable to the genre. Jazz performers supported these initiatives by Frenchifying American titles. For example, 'St Louis Blues' became 'Tristesses de St Louis', and 'In the mood' became 'Dans l'Ambiance'. Composers' names were omitted or altered to French ones; Louis Armstrong's songs, for example, were attributed to Jean Sablon. Whether or not the Germans were taken in by this is perhaps immaterial; ultimately, the depoliticisation made it easier for jazz to survive.