I was born in Maryland and spent my first thirty years living there, first in the Appalachian Mountains, then on the Eastern Shore, and later in suburban Washington. After a year in South Carolina, I moved to Georgia in 1977. I soon met another park ranger who worked in Florida. She was a wonderful woman who became my best friend. then my wife, and soon the mother of our three children. I spent over eleven years working in the historic city of Savannah, Georgia, and on the moss-draped sea islands nearby before moving to Atlanta.. In 2007, I retired from the National Park Service and a career dedicated to preserving and interpreting resources and themes in the cultural and natural history of the United States. It was a most rewarding experience. Today, I enjoy living in the rolling hills and woods of the Appalachian Piedmont east of Atlanta.
A Birthday For Stephane Grappelli: He Put The Violin In Hot Jazz
Earlier in this week of birthday commemorations, we introduced Django Reinhardt as one of the co-founder of the 1930s hot jazz group, Quintette de Hot Club du France. Today happens to mark the birthday (1908) of the other founder, the jazz violinist, Stephane Grappelli. We introduced both artists in a video appearing in Monday's post. Readers who missed it should take the time to view it as Grappelli appears in several interviews. Like his friend, Grappelli was a self taught musician who developed a unique playing style, and made a big influence in the world of music. Fortunately, much of that influence was direct as he outlived Reinhardt by nearly fifty years and performed with perfection almost to the end of his life on December 1, 1997.
He loved people almost as much as he loved music and brought his jovial, upbeat personality and style to audiences young and old, large and small.
Here he is playing in Warsaw in 1991 - he's 83:
And here he is in a conversation with George Gershwin:
Finally, with the Hot Club in Paris in 1938:
It's interesting to note that Grappelli was almost forgotten in the U.S. until he began touring in the 1970s when he was well into his 60s. One would think that a jazz virtuoso would be well known in the country that birthed the genre. How thankful we should be that he was "rediscovered" here and lived to entertain us for another twenty years.
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