Django Reinhardt overcame a crippling injury to his left hand by devising a innovative method of playing guitar. In the process, he and his musical partner, Stephane Grappelli, created a captivating, swinging jazz genre called "Gypsy Jazz" which combines the sounds of hot jazz, gypsy melodies and rhythms, and French folk and dance music. Many current musical groups emulate his group's distinctive sound. (Photo: Duncan P. Schiedt Collection) Click here for more photos.

Under the Spell of Django:
The Gypsy Jazzers

YERBA BUENA BOUNCE: HOT CLUB OF SAN FRANCISCO (Reference Recordings RR-109)
Mystery Pacific; Hot Lips; I'm Happy Just to Dance with You; Sway; Number Two; Souvenir de Villigen; Tickle Toe; Black and White; Lullabye; Rythme Futur; Yerba Buena Bounce; Stardust; Borneo; Georgia Cabin; Improvisation; Gong Oh; Some of These Days.

SAMMO: CLEARWATER HOT CLUB (CWHC 2003)
All of Me; Minor Swing; Nuages; Made for Isaac; Barcelona; I'll See You in My Dreams; Anouman; Troublant Bolero; Dark Eyes; Night and Day; Montagne St. Genevieve; Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

SOME OF THESE DAYS: SAM MILTICH AND THE CLEARWATER HOT CLUB, 2007
Honeysuckle Rose; Sorriso de Crianca; In a Sentimental Mood; The Mooche; Nuages; Flambee Montalbanaise; Anouman; Some of These Days; Improvisation #6.

SWING IN DJUNE: PARISOTA HOT CLUB, 2002
Troublant Bolero; Nuages; Swing 42; Anouman; Cavalerie; Oriental Shuffle; Douce Ambiance; Diminishing; Micro; Daphne; Django's Tiger; Limehouse Blues.

TWIN CITIES HOT CLUB
Honeysuckle Rose; Dark Eyes; Manoie des Me Reves; Artillerie Lourde; Minor Swing; Sweet Chorus; Butterfly; Bossa Dorado; Jersey Bounce; All of Me.

GYPSY TENDERCIES, ROBERT BELL (rjbgj01)
Jersey Bounce; Djangology; Minor Swing; I'm Confessin'; Ain't Misbehavin'; Bossa Dorado; Minor Blues; Artillerie Lourde; You Were Just There; Douce Ambiance.

POUR LE ZAZOUS: GYPSY JAZZ CARAVAN (Potto Publishing)
Pour le Zazous; Darla's Theme; Torment in A-Minor; Do the Promenade; Europa Swing; The White Hotel; Django's Monkey; Land of the Lonely; Bossa Roma; There's a Party Goin' On; Modernistique; Blues for Louis; Song for New Orleans; Good-bye for Now.

Reviewed by William J. Schafer

Unless you have been living on another planet or have been incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay for the last dozen years, you probably know there has been a worldwide revival of the string jazz popularized by gypsy (Franco-Flemish family Manouche) guitarist Django Reinhardt and his fiddling partner Stephane Grappelli with the Quintette of the Hot Club of France from 1934 through the 1940s. Nearly 50 years after Django's death in 1953, dozens of bands have sprung up like dragon's teeth, carrying on the happy mission of Reinhardt and Grappelli.

The music is sometimes called "gypsy jazz" or "string jazz" or identified by Django's unusual monicker. It began in the late 1920s as Django (b. 1910) emerged as a prodigy of the guitar-banjo, and after the catastrophic fire in which he nearly lost his left hand, as a solo guitarist. He knew the pioneering hot jazz of Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang. With that model in mind, he miraculously retrained himself with only two operative fingers on his fretting hand to be an inimitable guitar soloist in a tradition that merged the gypsy music of his childhood with hot jazz and French dance music. When he met Grappelli in 1934, he found his violinistic doppelganger, and the two set up a small band for the new Hot Club of France -- violin, solo guitar, two rhythm guitars and string bass. It became the matrix and formula for all followers.

June 2008 issue | © 2008 The Mississippi Rag

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