Spring is my worst enemy!
- Stéphane Grappelli on Django’s vagabond nature
I was introduced to the sounds of Django Reinhardt very early in my musical journey.
The town I grew up in, and the Twin Cities in general, were big Quintette du Hot Club de France fans. As a young boy, I would see groups playing their music all the time at schools, fairs, and dinner clubs around the cities. Their music was played often on the local radio stations I listened to back then. I found their music, Stéphane Grappelli’s violin as much as Django Reinhardt’s guitar, alive and fun. It would be many years later before I would fully appreciate the influence Reinhardt had on European jazz and American guitarist. However, as much as his music, what fascinates me about Django Reinhardt is his story - how a gypsy from Belgium, born in a caravan in 1910, became one of Jazz’s most exotic legends.
Django Reinhardt was a Manouche, the French-speaking gypsy tribe that settled in Belgium, Holland, Germany and the Alsace region of northern France. He grew up living and traveling in a caravan. Even before his teens, he was playing professionally. As an itinerant gypsy musician, he would often return to his wanderlust and commune with nature - the consummate free spirit.
On May or June 1928, Django Reinhardt made his first known recording with L’orchestra Alexander, which consisted of Maurice Alexander on accordion and an unidentified trap player. Reinhardt played banjo-guitar.
Here is that recording:
In November of that same year, when he was eighteen years old, a caravan fire seriously damaged his hand for the rest of his life, and he was forced to deploy a clawed finger approach on his fret hand. After the fire, as a form of rehabilitation, Reinhardt took up guitar and developed a highly individual technique.
In May of 1931, Reinhardt entered the studio for the first time with his guitar, recording with Louis Vola et son Orchestra du Lido de Toulon. Throughout the early 1930s, he continued to record mainly with orchestras and vocalists. Perhaps his biggest break came in 1933, accompanying Jean Sablon and Eliane De Creus in Pascal Bastia’s operetta Dix-neuf ans.
Written under the pseudonym Irving Paris, Pascal Bastia made his debut at the age of 19 with Ma Femme (1927) and the following year with Un joli monsieur (1928). However, he encountered real success under his real name with the 1933 operetta Dix-neuf ans.
Dix-neuf ans was presented 300 times at the Théâtre Daunou.
The work was also performed in the provinces, in Amsterdam, and Algeria. All together, there were more than 1,500 performances.
In March 1933, the popular Jean Sablon, one of the first French singers to immerse himself in jazz, and Eliane De Creus, accompanied by Django Reinhardt, recorded some fine songs from Dix-neuf ans. I think these two recordings feature some nice early guitar work by Reinhardt.
First, Si, J’aime Suzy:
…and the wonderful Parce Que Je Vous Aime:
Interestingly, in February of 1934, Jean Sablon’s sister, Germaine, as part of Michel Warlop’s Orchestra, recorded a number of songs with Reinhardt. However, she would go onto much bigger fame as a WWII French Resistance fighter and record Le Chant des Partisans - the most popular song of the Free French and French Resistance.
It was during this time in Paris that Reinhardt began to capture the attention of the Hot Club de Paris.
In 1928, Jacques Bureaux, Hugues Panassie, Charles Delaunay, Jacques Auxenfans, and Elvin Dirat came together to listen to jazz and, later, promote its acceptance in France. Their mission was to make the public aware of jazz and to defend and promote the style in the face of all opposition - a noble and worthy cause. The club began in the fall of 1931 as the Jazz Club Universitaire, as the members were all still students. In 1932, it was reborn and reimagined as the Hot Club de France.
It was the determination of Hot Club member Pierre Nouray that helped bring to wider public attention an innovative, all string quintet that would become known as the Quintette du Hot Club de France, which at this time included Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli.
After the Odeon record company failed to release recordings Reinhardt made for them as “too modern”, Nourry became more determined than ever to promote this new “hot Jazz” sound, as the group’s music was described on a poster for the famous concert at the École Normale de Musique on December 2nd, 1934 – the event which definitively marked the launch of the Quintette du Hot Club de France and from which can be dated their rise to fame:
As described on last week’s journey, the Swing record label, founded in 1937 by Hot Club members Hugues Panassié and Charles Delaunay, was one of the first record labels devoted exclusively to jazz. Swing’s first jazz recording featured Coleman Hawkins along side saxophonist Benny Carter playing with Reinhardt on guitar and Stéphane Grappelli on piano. Swing would become an early and important vehicle for the music of Reinhardt’s quintette.
Here is My Serenade, a favorite from their Swing recordings:
Some of my favorite Reinhardt recordings are his solo work. Like this wonderful song, Improvisation #2, recorded in London in September 1938:
Here’s a good chance to see Django Reinhardt along with Stéphane Grappelli playing live in 1939, just before the Quintette du Hot Club de France broke up at the outbreak of WWII, leaving behind them an incredible legacy of fine recordings.
And one more for the road. In Paris on March 10, 1953, playing an electric guitar, Reinhardt recorded for Clef Records a great 10” album, The Great Artistry of Django Reinhardt:
From that album, here is Nuages:
Gérard Levecque, who arranged the big band music for the sessions featuring Django et son Orchestra du Boeuf sur le Toit, in 1972 recalled:
“(At the March 1953 recording session) Django had found freedom again, and he went wild, exulting in it. This was a one man fireworks display. And yet there is something intangible that I find disturbing as I listen to this ultimate recording of Nuages - the most beautiful version he recorded - and the coda to Manor de mes Reves, so full of nostalgia. Something leads me to believe that Django, and many others of his people, had the gift of premonition. Two months later, as if it were a last performance, the curtain fell, never to rise again. This record remains for us to remember Django Reinhardt’s passing.”
Unexpectedly, on May 16, 1953 Django Reinhardt died of a heart attack. He was only 43 years old.
Next week on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in and explore the waters of the V-Disc ("V" for Victory), a record label formed in 1943 to provide records for U.S. military personnel.
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Until then, keep on walking….