Continued: CD Reviews

Django and Grappelli not only knew American string jazz but were acolytes at the altar of the Great God Armstrong in the decade of his greatest powers. They absorbed all his secrets of rhythmic variety and swing and transposed them to their string sounds. They explored the whole range of earlier jazz as it was transmogrifying into Swing and learned a huge swatch of the Great American Songbook. They also drew on folk music of France and of the gypsies (more respectfully called "Romany" nowadays), along with the immensely popular bal musette music from the Parisian dance halls.

Their work tended to oscillate between two poles -- from red-hot driving jazz to melancholy and romantic balladry. A strain of dark sentimentality ran through everything they created, setting it apart from the happy-go-lucky insouciance of American Swing and its jumping-jive frenzy. The fusion of old world pensiveness and fresh new world allegro was a fetching sound that attracted many listeners beyond the jazz-blues mainstream. It was also informed by more than a touch of French Impressionism -- the reveries and daydreams of post-Debussy music. The style was easily absorbed by American popular culture, and it turns up in odd places like Woody Allen's very funny comedy, Sweet and Lowdown (1999), with Sean Penn playing a brooding Djangoesque guitar virtuoso in a string jazz band.

The recent revival of Django's large repertory of string arrangements began with a neo-gypsy band in the 1960s and `70s called Waso, featuring the amazing gypsy guitarist Fapy Lafertin. Many gypsy groups of Django's relatives and followers had flourished since the 1950s but were less jazz-oriented and less derivative of Django's pathway. Waso tried to recreate the old Hot Club magic and was largely successful and well known. Shortly thereafter, a Swiss group, Hot Strings, took up the torch and worked steadily to make gypsy jazz with a high quotient of Swing. They recorded first in 1990, and thereafter the floodgates opened on a virtual tide of quintets and quartets echoing the Django-Grappelli style and band book. The CDs detailed above are some of the latest fruits of this harvest, from the years after the Millenium.

The Hot Club of San Francisco is one of the oldest revival bands, beginning ca. 1991 and issuing a first CD in 1993. It has recorded prolifically and played widely, with a very broad repertory and a precision mastery of the style. Solo guitarist and band founder Paul Mehling has the authority and technique to pull off an eerie Django impersonation, and after some 15 years of playing, the group is both driving and relaxed, sure enough of itself to veer from the path of photocopy replication. Both driving and relaxed, HCSF remains sure enough of itself to avoid the path of photocopy replication. The personnel is Evan Prive, violin; Paul Mehling, solo guitar; Jeff Magidson and Jason Vanderford, rhythm guitars, and Ari Munkres, string bass. Yerba Buena Bounce includes some fairly esoteric Django numbers like "Mystery Pacific," "Number Two" (aka "Quien Sera") and "Rythme Futur") but also includes an original like "Yerba Buena Bounce" (an homage to Lu Watters and the San Francisco jazz revival of the 1940s-50s) and jazz sidelights like "Borneo" (cf. Bix) and standards, including "Stardust" and "Some of These Days." The band is tight and resilient and has a persistent unobtrusive swing that keeps it fresh sounding.

For unfathomable reasons, the Twin Cities region of Minnesota became a hot spot for string jazz in the past decade. Long snowbound winters with nothing else to do? An affinity for cross-border Canadian-French sensibilities? A throwback to the intense folky days of Bob Dylan, Koerner, Glover and Ray, et al.? Who knows? In any event, some of the best string jazz now going has been accessible for years in Minneapolis, St. Paul and outstate. Two sets of CDs illustrate some of this: one pair of older and newer recordings from Sam "Sammo" Miltich, solo guitar sparkplug of the upstate Clearwater Hot Club and a pair of CDs from the Twin Cities Hot Club and their solo guitar voice, Robert Bell.

The Clearwater Hot Club is a Northern Minnesota enterprise fueled by guitar prodigy Sam Miltich and encouraged by his bassist father Matt Miltich. The CD Sammo dates from 2003, when Sam was just getting his public start, and Some of These Days measures him and his band as of 2007. Sammo features Sam Miltich, solo guitar; Matthew Miltich, string bass; Mark Kreitzer, rhythm guitar, and Raphael Fraisse, violin. (For more on Fraisse, see the Parisota Hot Club below.) Miltich is a brash, self-assured soloist and, to a large extent, dominates his band. Violinist Fraisse has a sweet and lyrical voice that sometimes gets lost in the fierce drive generated by Miltich. On a number like "Night and Day," when Fraisse has a clear solo lead, he is an enjoyable and rhythmically sophisticated player. The guitar-bass "rhythm section" is unobtrusive but supportive, but it is the nimble, gymnastic lead by Sammo that focuses this band. He may have looked like an urchin, but he played like an old gypsy master packed with experience and secrets. He even swings a little bal musette waltz like "Montagne St. Genevieve." He spreads "Over the Rainbow" into a long and lugubrious solo cadenza that makes it unbearably poignant.

On the more recent CD, Some of These Days, Sam Miltich is accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Don Vidal, soprano, alto and tenor saxes plus bass clarinet; Matthew Miltich, bass, and Mark Kreitzer, rhythm guitar. The absence of fiddle and presence of Vidal's skillful and subtle reed work makes the group sound like one of Django's sessions from the height of the Swing era. Miltich seems more at home with a sax partner than with the violin, and Vidal provides a distinctive voice, not just generic honking. He supplies a generous rhythmic boost, too. On this CD, Sam Miltich sounds fully mature and thoughtful, and a Latin-flavored tune like "Sorriso de Crianca" transcends the "gypsy jazz" category as does a soulful ballad like "In a Sentimental Mood." This is pure jazz-inflected pop that would satisfy even the most casual listener. Vidal takes advantage of his multi-instrumental skills to overdub himself as a sax section on "The Mooche," and Sam Miltich shines on Django standards such as "Nuages," Anouman" and the brief solo "Improvisation #6." This CD ought to impress all listeners.

June 2008 issue | © 2008 The Mississippi Rag

P.O. Box 19068, Minneapolis, MN 55419.