Hot lips [3.06]
Ain’t misbehavin’ [2.55]
H.C.Q. Strut [2.58]
Swing from Paris [2.33]
I’ve had my moments [2.59]
Time on my hands [2.42]
Scatter-brain [3.12]
Ting-a-ling [3.27]
Lying in the hay [2.58]
Playmates [2.56]
Sweet potato piper [3.02]
Twelfth Street Rag [2.54]
Beat me Daddy, eight to a bar [3.01]
I never knew [2.36]
Body and soul [3.24]
The folks who live on the hill [3.30]
Weep no more, my lady [3.07]
That old black magic [3.02]
Heavenly music [3.08]
Featuring Django Reinhardt (guitar) and George Shearing (piano)
Menuhin, a great admirer of and collaborator with Grappelli once
commented, ‘Stephane is like one of those jugglers who sends ten plates
into the air and recovers them all’. Despite his dominance, it’s hard
to know on which musician to focus here. The incredible technique,
some of it breathtaking from not only Grappelli but also guitarist
Reinhardt, is exemplified by the track (4) from which this disc takes
its title. The two met at the Croix du Sud Montparnasse nightclub
in early 1934. ‘One day’, recalled Grappelli, ‘ he was strumming on
his guitar, and I started to improvise with him’. With Reinhardt’s
brother, Joseph, and Roger Chaput on guitars and Louis Vola on double
bass, the idea of the quintet was born. ‘There were no microphones
then, so it was hard for a violin to be heard. It was a revolution
to play jazz only with string instruments’.
Then there’s the music’s atmospheric French quality
in ‘I’ve had my moments’ exemplified by the chordal textures before
Grappelli even appears, followed by its unpredictable, occasionally
sexy, rhythmic kicks from the accompanying players. This is a wonderfully
evocative disc from mid-1930s Paris, with Grappelli’s Quintet of the
Hot Club de France taking centre stage, before he moved to London
as the shadows of mid-Second World War extended further across Europe.
In London, Grappelli joined the Swingtette at Hatchett’s restaurant
in Piccadilly, on average a ten-part ensemble plus vocalist such as
Beryl Davis. Soon after the start of the Battle Britain, the group’s
pianist Arthur Young was injured in an air raid and his place taken
by the blind 20 year-old George Shearer, heard here in sessions made
in 1941 and 1943.
Grappelli uses all possible violin techniques, pizzicato,
harmonics, double-stopping, glissandi among them, and integrates them
smoothly into his jazz style. The wartime recordings tend either to
be cheerily upbeat in character, perhaps to keep public morale high,
such as in ‘Sweet Potato Piper’ with its cartoon-like silly sounds
of novachord and pipes, or there’s a retrospective nostalgia using
popular revivals of tunes from as far back as 1916 (‘Twelfth Street
Rag’). For sheer variety of instrumental colour, listen out for four
violins, harp, cello, guitar, bass, drums, vibes and the first of
Shearing’s appearances in ‘I never knew’.
‘I play best when I am happy or sad’, said Grappelli,
‘or when I was young and in love. If I have ordinary troubles, I forget
everything when I play. I split into two people and the other plays,"
he said. And that’s just how it all sounds here.
Christopher Fifield
CD Reviews
NAXOS
JAZZ LEGENDS 8.120688 [58.05]
