Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli, Sam Coslow, Mireille, Harry Brooks, Euday L. Bowman, Walter Donaldson, Fats Waller, Johnny Green, Henry Lange, Ted Fiorito, Don Raye, Henry Busse, Alex Kramer, Joan Whitney, Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, Kahn Keene, Carl Bean, Frank Masters, Addy Britt, Jack Little, Henry Roberts, Harry Pepper, Harold Arlen, Saxie Dowell, James V. Monaco, Prince Sheelby
Artist:
Teddy Wilson, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli, John Simmons, Erroll Garner, Alvin Stoller, Jack Teagarden, Larry Adler, Gene Krupa, Benny Goodman, Beryl Davis, Billy Eckstine, Dorothy Carless, Dave Fullerton, Lionel Hampton, Fats Waller, Tommy Dorsey, Lester Young, Glenn Miller, Henry Busse, Earl Hines
Conductor:
Arthur Young, Dennis Moonan
Ensemble:
Stephane Grappelli Musicians, Hot Club de France Quintet, Louis Armstrong All-Stars, Lester Young Trio, Stephane Grappelli Quartet, Fats Waller Rhythm, Stephane Grappelli Hot Four, Hatchett's Swingtette, Stephane Grappelli Quintet
Orchestra:
Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, Lionel Hampton Orchestra, Buddy Baker Orchestra, Billie Holiday Orchestra, Henry Busse Orchestra, Jack Teagarden Orchestra, Coleman Hawkins Orchestra
Jazz’s most famous and most popular violinist, Stephane
Grappelli was born in Paris on 26January 1908. His Italian father Ernesto
(translated by the Parisians to Ernest) had come to the French capital as a
refugee at the age of nineteen. A studious and refined individual who in his
youth had been an aspiring dancer, he served in the Great War and although
subsequently a struggling business entrepreneur did his best to encourage
Stephane’s artistic inclinations. Stephane’s mother had died when he was three
years old and he spent his early life in a Paris orphanage. Largely self-taught
at first in piano (a sample of his playing on “It Had To Be You” opens Stephane
Grappelli Vol.1, Naxos 8.120570), he also trained at the Isadora Duncan school
of dance but, inspired by classical music began to take a serious interest in
the violin at the age of twelve.His father taught him tonic sol-fa and having already mastered the
harmonium at twelve he enrolled in piano and violin classes at the
Conservatoire, paying his way meanwhile by playing violin on café terraces.
In 1921, Stephane first heard Louis Mitchell’s Jazz Kings at
the Coliseum and, by 1924 was himself actively playing (mainly piano) in summer
seasons and in silent cinemas. Already an avid student of the latest
developments of American jazz, he was greatly impressed by the recordings of
Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke and, especially, by the Philadelphia-born
violinist Joe Venuti (1903-1978) who, like Grappelli, had entered the world of
jazz via more classical channels. At first his engagements were centred around
small jazz ensembles at Parisian society functions but from 1926 he performed
in a piano duo within the band of Grégor et ses Grégoriens, a Jack Hylton-esque
band resident at the Casino de la Forêt, and it was at this time that he first
made the switch from piano to Venuti-style violin. In June 1930 the group
sailed to Buenos Aires and, on their return in October, toured the south of
France.At the end of 1930,
Grappelli was back in Paris and by 1931 was regularly engaged at the Croix du
Sud, an avant-garde bohemian establishment frequented by, among other talents,
Django Reinhardt.
By October 1932, he was playing piano once more with Grégor
at the Paris Olympia. With this group he toured to Zurich, Lugano, Milan and
Rome and, prior to its permanent disbanding, to St. Jean-de-Luz, in 1933. The
following year (with Django, Django’s brother Joseph and Roger Chaput on
guitars and Louis Vola on bass) he formed the Quintette du Hot Club de France,
which made its first recordings in December 1934 and swiftly won renown
throughout Europe and the USA. Soon, the Club’s two major protagonists were
household names and from 1935 Stephane and Django also recorded with Coleman
Hawkins’ jazz ensemble before the Quintette first visited London, in 1938.
Their reputation on several recorded imports (including
tracks 1–6 here) having preceded them, the much-fêted Hot Club made another
appearance in London (at the Palladium) at the outbreak of World War II, in
September 1939. By this time Stephane was already domiciled in England and, on
leaving the Quintette, remained to pursue a more solo profile, particularly
with George Shearing. Although in poor health and speaking little English
Stephane was kept working in London throughout the blitz, assisted primarily by
vocalist Beryl Davis and her father, Harry Davis, who fronted Oscar Rabin’s
band. During late 1939, at the invitation of his friend the pianist Arthur
Young, he joined the resident band of Hatchett’s Restaurant in Piccadilly
which, rivalled only the Café de Paris, ranked among London’s plushest eating
and dancing establishments.Although a group known as the Swingtette was already in existence at the
restaurant, Grappelli’s arrival on 3 December 1939 was viewed as a major coup
both by Hatchett’s and by Stephane himself.Up to that time little more than a well-intentioned society
band, the Swingtette now boasted a hot Parisian extra in the form of “The
World’s Greatest Swing Violinist”. Stephane, too, had cause for jubilation,
having found a new niche as well as a new home: “I always think of England as
my second country”, he later averred, “because I was welcomed during the war
like a brother, and I will never forget it”.
From 29 December 1939 the group (on average a ten-part
ensemble, plus vocalist) recorded on a regular basis for Decca (the first
session included Ting-A-Ling, a seemingly unlikely revival of a British pop
number of 1926 vintage and a characteristically swung version of Frankie
Masters’ imported American novelty Scatter-Brain). The “corny element” of the
Novachord offset by Grappelli’s swinging fiddle set the trend for an extended
further series of popular recordings, which ranged from various jazz
‘revivals’, including Euday L. Bowman’s Twelfth Street Rag (1916) and Johnny
Green’s Body And Soul (1930) to Lying In The Hay (an Anglicised version of
French cabaret-star Mireille’s 1933 tune ‘Couchés dans le foin’) and the latest
American dance and film material (by Don Raye, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen and
the like).In the summer of 1940,
soon after the outset of the Battle of Britain, Arthur Young was injured in an
air raid and had to resign from Hatchett’s.His place was taken in the Swingtette by the blind,
twenty-year-old American George Shearing, heard here in the sessions of
28February and 9April 1941 and 7July and 6October 1943.
We use cookies to improve the use of our website, our products and services, and confirm your login authorization or initial creation of account. By clicking "Ok" or by continuing to use our website, you agree to cookies being set on your device as explained in our Privacy Policy. You may disable the use of cookies if you do not wish to accept them, however, this may limit the website's overall functionality.