At times his playing is dizzyingly avant-garde, but often also distinctly melodic in a very late-20th-century sort of way. Reinhard combines the melodies of Lang with the faster rhythms of Romani music, turning this formerly decorative, textual instument into the lead, the centre of the sound.
Their antecedents are, naturally, Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti, but while that pair made some beautiful records, the way the Hot Club stretch this simple combination of instruments into such a vast array of styles, displaying such effortless virtuosity, well, it’s just breathtaking. Reinhardt and Grapelli’s playing is still, 85 years later, without equal.
Aside from a short spell where he bafflingly shifted to piano, Grapelli’s life from the age of 15 was spent mostly playing violin professionally, first in a silent movie theatre, and after a few years in concerts put on by a student organisation for the promotion of jazz in France, the “Hot Club de France” Like Reinhardt, Grapelli had an instrument bought for him at the age of 12 – a violin bought by his father after pawning a suit – and while he did attend the the Conservatoire de Paris for a time, he was mostly self-taught. He was passed first to Isadora Duncan’s dance school, then to a Dickensian orphanage, and only rescued when his father returned at the end of the war. Grapelli’s French mother died when he was five, and his Italian father was drafted into the army when he was six. Nevertheless, it was my first introduction to jazz.
I remember seeing Stéphane Grappelli on TV when I was very young, and was impressed enough to ask for an LP, which I did not really listen to. It was in one of these that he first met jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli. Inspired by Eddie Lang, the father of jazz guitar (sadly the two never played together as Lang died during a routine tonsillectomy in 1933) he was soon traveling throughout France, playing in any bar or club that could pay him. With only three fingers left to form chords, Django had to devise for himself an entirely new way to play the guitar. If that were not enough disadvantages to be dealing with, in 1928 he suffered severe burns after his caravan caught fire, and ended up spending 18 months in hospital, losing two of the fingers on his left hand. He was almost-completely illiterate until late into his life, and managed to spend a year in New York despite speaking no English. Born to Romani-Belgian parents, Django played the guitar (initially a banjo-guitar) from the age of 12, but otherwise had little in the way of education. The most well-known of this Quintette is almost certainly Django Reinhardt.
This group of musicians recorded under a variety of names (and with a host of other musicians) but are best-remembered as Quintette du Hot Club de France. Now and again, though, we have seen it temporarily shift – to New Orleans and to Chicago, and now, in one of the peak years of swing, we find ourselves in Paris, near to the closing moments of the Third Republic, with two Belgian-Romani guitarists, a French-Italian violin player, a French double-bass player and a French guitarist. Recorded music has a centre of gravity, and it’s usually New York. MP3 preview download | Patreon | Apple | Mixcloud | Spotify | Castbox | Stitcher | RSS This show would not be possible without my supporters on there, so please consider signing up or sharing this with someone who may be interested.
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