Stephane Grappelli

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THE IMPROVISER (Part 1)
- Jazz Violinist Stéphane Grappelli (1908-1997)

By Christopher M. Wright
© 2004 Christopher M. Wright
All Rights Reserved

Part 1 - "Malnourished Waif, Dressed in Rags"

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When I first heard the music of Stéphane Grappelli, I pictured an elegant champagne brunch with corks popping, ice sculptures slowly melting, and waiters in cummerbunds and bow-ties bustling about. As it turns out, I was not far off the mark. Between 1967 and 1972, Grappelli's main gig was in a restaurant on the 10th floor of the Hilton Hotel in Paris where he entertained socialites, tourists, and other upscale diners.

The 'rooftop of Paris' was actually quite a come-down for a man who had already invented an entire genre of music ('gypsy jazz') and made musical history. But the wheel turned once again and his fortunes improved after 1972. Grappelli went on to perform or record with such luminaries as Yehudi Menuhin, Michel Legrand, and Yo-Yo Ma. He won real affection, long applause and spontaneous cheering from audiences all over the world for the next two decades. He was inducted into the Downbeat Hall of Fame, played for the Queen of England, and received the highest civil distinction in France - Commander in the Legion of Honor.

Grappelli's career spanned almost 75 years. He performed on the streets and in restaurants by the age of 15 and kept right on working until the end. His last performance was only three months before his death in 1997 at the age of 89.

Whenever anyone describes Stéphane Grappelli's music, the word 'elegant' is invariably used. However, Grappelli's early years were anything but elegant. He was born in Paris on January 26, 1908 to an Italian father and French mother. His mother died of cancer when he was three. His father, a freelance writer and something of a dreamer, put him in orphanages while away on assignment, but the strong-willed child repeatedly ran away.

Then came World War I - 'the war to end all wars', the war of mustard gas and trench warfare that claimed 10 million lives from 1914 to 1918. A thousand French soldiers were dying every day. Grappelli's father joined the army and entrusted his six year-old son to the care of Isadora Duncan, the eccentric American dancer whom his father had met on a writing assignment. Duncan, whose visionary and improvisational approach to dance still has adherents today, ran a school for children on the outskirts of Paris where she set about to liberate her young charges (known as the 'Isadorables') and their self-expression. Her dancing has been called sensuous, wild and instinctual. Her improvisations call to mind campy, bacchanalian scenes of woodland nymphs and togas.

She was a free spirit and gave Grappelli an early taste of improvisation, but he didn't care for the costumes ' "We were asked to personify angels which I was not," he remembered as an adult. "She dressed us in Greek costumes, with a wreath of flowers on our heads and a white peplum [short, ruffled overskirt]."

Isadora Duncan closed her school and returned to America after her third child died at birth (her first two drowned). His father still at war, Stéphane was once again packed off to an orphanage. "Here my misery started. It was practically a jail," Grappelli recalled later in life. He slept on the floor and often went without food. "There were many times when I had to fight for a crust of bread. It was abominable," he said. Discipline was strict and the young boy's bed-wetting was announced to all at morning assembly. He ran away again to take his chances on the streets begging and scrounging for food.

Try to imagine this existence - you're seven or eight years old, roaming the streets of a big city without shelter, improvising for food, the war is getting closer, and you don't know whether you'll ever see your father alive again. Grappelli later described himself as "a malnourished waif, dressed in rags." There were many children on the streets of Paris at that time.

The experience stamped his character in important ways. He always preferred working to not working and did not turn up his nose at lesser opportunities when his fortunes dipped. Why work constantly? To achieve financial security and make sure that he did not end up back on the street.

After the war, father and son moved into a Paris apartment. His father continued to freelance and travel frequently. Grappelli was once again effectively left to his own devices. He spent a lot of time in the Montmartre district of Paris best known for its wild nightlife. It was also home to or frequented by Renoir, Satie, Picasso, Van Gogh, Debussy, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Here Grappelli was surrounded by artists, musicians, accordion players, risqué cabaret songs, dancing girls, gypsy guitarists, and harlots. A creative crucible yes, but like the streets, another circumstance that could easily lead a person astray - especially a young person who lacked adult supervision and support. But Stéphane Grappelli thrived once more and that speaks volumes about the man and the choices he made for himself.

Life on the street had taught Grappelli that a musician could always earn a little money for food. "When I saw a pianist constantly solicited for his services, I made up my mind: 'I must learn that,'" he later recalled.

Before he owned a violin, Grappelli prevailed upon café and cabaret owners in Montmartre to let him practice on their out-of-tune pianos. With no formal instruction, he set about to find the melody, another early experience that would help him unlock his improvisatory genius. Grappelli learned the French 'Can-Can' and enough other tunes to earn a few francs playing in cafés.

The elder Grappelli recognized his son's musical talent and took him to classical performances where Stéphane heard the music of Debussy and Ravel. His father also bought him a three-quarter size violin and later a book on how to read music. Stéphane got a musician in a café to tune the instrument for him, then learned to play by fooling around and taking cues from a street performer. "I watched where he put his hands," Grappelli once told an interviewer. "That was my first teacher." Grappelli was largely self-taught but did sit in on some classes at the Paris Conservatoire where he received a second medaille de solfege in 1923.

Grappelli supported himself as a street musician throughout this period, showing his street smarts by putting coins in his own cap to give him some credibility and spark donations. An Italian singer and guitarist asked him to join forces and the duo made some good money playing in restaurants. They played romantic lyrical tunes and popular classics by ear, displaying a lyricism that remained at the heart of Grappelli's mature style.

He also accompanied silent movies. Remember, this was an age when most people heard music only from live musicians. Radio was in its infancy and the music devices of the day - gramophones - were expensive. The primacy of recorded music as we take it for granted now had not yet arrived on the scene. So it was that silent movies were accompanied by live orchestras. He learned every idiom of music on that job, from cowboy songs to romantic ballads like Tea for Two. The other players took a break in the early evening, but he accompanied the newsreels by himself on piano. He got in trouble for making the music up as he went along instead of following what was prescribed for him.

Meanwhile, the French were going crazy over jazz, an American import that came with U.S. soldiers who fought in World War I. Unlike Americans at the time, the French people accepted the black musicians who played this new music. The 369th U.S. infantry - the segregated 'Harlem regiment' - had transited through Paris with its band known for playing military marches in ragtime. The jazz scene thrived in Paris after the war.

The story is told how Grappelli discovered jazz when he was 15 and pushed the wrong button on an early jukebox called a 'Multiphone'. The device served up Louis Mitchell's Stumblin' and Grappelli was captivated by the syncopated rhythms and improvisatory polyphony of the New Orleans jazz style. Grappelli would also have heard live jazz in the cabarets of Montmartre. He started improvising on French tunes, syncopating the rhythms and interlacing the melodies with counterpoint at the piano along with a friend. (At the time, Grappelli believed there was no place in jazz for the violin) Through this experience, he learned something very important about his musicality - that he drew inspiration from the musicians around him. "The way [my friend] was playing, it would make me change the way I play," Grappelli later recalled. This was to remain true throughout his entire career, which can be summed up as a series of fruitful collaborations.

In 1928, Grappelli heard jazz violinist Joe Venuti perform and a whole new world opened. That there could be jazz on strings was quite a revelation to Grappelli. Venuti's playing showed Grappelli how to bend notes and play bluesy flat thirds and fifths.

Grappelli's own career continued to develop. He took various gigs around the Paris club scene and made some recordings at the age of 21. At this point, Grappelli was primarily a pianist. He hadn't played the violin seriously for three years when, one night, he filled in for a pianist who was sick. Grégor, the bandleader, kept him on. The band, Grégor et ses Grégoriens, was more about showmanship than music, with musicians in tutus and dog tricks part of the act. Grégor learned that Grappelli had formerly been a violinist and asked him to play something on a borrowed fiddle. A couple of tunes later, Grégor decided he wanted the Grappelli sound in his band and bought him a violin.

Stéphane Grappelli played off and on with the Grégoriens until they disbanded in 1933. By then, Grappelli was 25 years old and a professional working musician with some recordings under his belt. He had already found his musical voice. The inimitable and immediately recognizable Grappelli style was already evident on an early recording from the period. Also, he had already met legendary gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt with whom he was exploring musical ideas. The two would go on to achieve greatness and make musical history with their Hot Club recordings.

Part 2 - The Hot Club Years
Part 3 - Winds of Change

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