Django, Stephane And A Century Of Hot Gypsy Jazz

 

Jazz manouche - gypsy jazz - swept the clubs of Paris in the mid-1930's. The club responsible for this new sound was the Hot Club de France, founded by jazz fans and promoters, Hugh Panassie and Charles Delaunay. They brought together two performers who would become the core of their house band, the Quintette. That band's music continues to both influence jazz and entertain listeners today. Our post commemorates those two performers, guitarist, Django Reinhardt, and, violinist, Stephane Grappelli, who share birthdays this week.

The 20th century produced a number of fine guitarists in the fields of classical and popular music. And then there was Django Reinhardt, born January 23, 1910 in Belgium. He was a poor gypsy who by the age of twelve could earn his way playing the guitar in the streets and small clubs around Paris. At seventeen a trailer fire left him with a severely injured hand but he soon developed a new fingering style and with it a unique sound. By 1930 Reinhardt developed an appreciation of American jazz and began incorporating its elements in his playing. In a few years he would go on to meet the violinist, Stephane Grappelli, an equally free musical spirit and innovator. They soon formed a new group, the "Quintette du Hot Club de France", and a "hot swing" sound that would make music as well as music history for the next twenty years. At its core was the Reinhardt style that has influenced guitarists for more than eight decades.

And here is the Reinhardt sound as part of the group he co-founded with Grappelli.

Reinhardt died in 1953 at the age of 43, but his impact has lived on for decades. Even today, almost every celebrity guitarist in the world of popular music, jazz, blues and rock and roll would acknowledge Reinhardt as an influence in their music. Here is an entertaining musical link to an NPR Jazz Live blog expanding on Reinhardt's legacy.

Stephane Grappelli, born in Paris on January 26, 1908, was an unsurpassed master of the jazz violin who entertained audiences almost to the very day he died in 1997. There was happiness and optimism in virtually every note of his music, even when those notes brought nostalgia and its touch of sadness to mind. No question he loved what he did and it flowed straight to his listeners.

Like his friend, Django, he was a self taught musician who developed a unique playing style that would have broad influence in the worlds of jazz and popular music. Fortunately, much of that influence was direct as he outlived Reinhardt by nearly fifty years. 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, performing both solo and with many of the jazz greats of the twentieth century.

Stephane Grappelli, London         Allen Warren, 1976

One would think that a jazz virtuoso would be well known in the country that birthed the genre but he was little known in the United States even after thirty years of success in Europe. His American debut in 1969 brought him wide publicity and the international "rediscovery" that followed kept him on tour before adoring audiences for almost three decades.

Yep. Simply stunning.

To conclude, here is the Quintette du Hot Club de France in their classic performance of Minor Swing, composed by Reinhardt and Grappell in the mid-1930's:

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
Reinhardt photo, William P. Gottlieb Collection, Library of Congress
Grappelli photo, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/

Text:

wikipedia.org
theguardian.com, Nigel Kennedy article, December 19, 2007

nytimes.com, Stephane Grappelli obituary, December 2, 1997
Louis Miner, Paris Jazz: A Guide From the Jazz Age to the Present, The Little Bookroom, New York, 2005