Stephane Grappelli

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THE IMPROVISER (Part 2)
- Jazz Violinist Stéphane Grappelli (1908-1997)

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

Part 2 - The Hot Club Years

FIND GRAPPELLI CD'S, BOOKS, AND DVD'S HERE
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"My life started when I met Django," Stéphane Grappelli told his biographer, referring to legendary gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. "Before him, I was a musician playing here, playing there, but I realized when I was with Django, we can produce something not ordinary," Grappelli said. The 'something not ordinary' turned out to be the world's first supergroup (the Hot Club) and an entirely new genre of music (gypsy jazz) still being mined today.

Grappelli and Reinhardt met in Paris and began to work out their musical ideas together backstage and at Reinhardt's wooden gypsy caravan. They picked up other players and their sessions evolved into a loose-knit jam band without a name. The basic lineup consisted of Django Reinhardt on lead guitar, Stéphane Grappelli on violin, two other rhythm guitars, and string bass. Other players and vocalists were added on an ad hoc basis throughout the band's 1934-39 run.

It was unprecedented for jazz to be played on all strings. But Grappelli told an interviewer in 1973, "You know, in my opinion, the guitar and violin are the two best instruments together; they complement each other exactly."

The group was booked at the École Normale for a dance, but people didn't dance - they listened intently instead. The band was signed for a return engagement in 1935 and came back as 'Le Quintette du Hot Club de France' after becoming the 'house band' of a jazz appreciation society, according to one version of events.

'Jazz' was the popular music of the day and different from what we call 'jazz' now. Early jazz was perhaps epitomized by the music of trumpeter and vocalist Louis Armstrong. The term 'hot' was used to denote music for listening as opposed to music for dancing.

The Hot Club was a sensation. "Grappelly's first chorus... is really out of this world," critics raved [he spelled his name differently at the time]. "Stéphane is unbelievably majestic.... Even when he plays straight the most vulgar tune he is hot. He cannot be anything else but hot." Another wrote, "this man just sings.... Grappelly has a real genius for melodic invention." Other reviews called the Hot Club "one of the best groups in Europe" and said "their work ranks with the best of the Americans."

Years before Beatlemania, Hot Club fans went wild. One fan wrote "as the concert went on, the audience got more and more excited.... They were going absolutely crazy, screaming, shouting and stomping their feet.... We were all standing up and shouting and cheering at the end of each tune... The audience would not let them go... They played several encores. It is a night I will never forget."

Despite their touring success, the Hot Club found it hard to get a recording contract. They were too modern for record company tastes. People were accustomed to hearing jazz played on brass instruments, not strings. "We were absolutely new, playing American music with strings," Grappelli told an interviewer, looking back. When the first record deal came, the label was obscure and the money was small. Reinhardt negotiated a royalty but Grappelli did not, a mistake he would never forget. One of the four songs recorded, 'Dinah', became a hit. Critics praised its humor and elegance. 'Dinah' was recorded in one take, as was common in those days. There were no multi-track machines, no overdubs, no edits, and no computer special effects. The master recording was made by a needle cutting into a wax pancake that came straight out of the refrigerator.

Other signature Hot Club tunes included 'Honeysuckle Rose', 'Sweet Georgia Brown', 'Djangology', 'Daphne', 'Limehouse Blues', 'China Boy', 'It Don't Mean A Thing', 'Them There Eyes', 'Three Little Words', Django's haunting 'Nuages', and 'Swing '39'. Reinhardt and Grappelli co-wrote some of the material but the group also used pop songs from George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Duke Ellington as jumping off points for improvisation.

Reinhardt and Grappelli fans spar over who was the greater musical figure. The two giants fed off each other musically but were also undeniably competing at the same time. Grappelli consistently received more praise from music magazines and placed higher in a readers' poll. Django's ambition was to conquer America, the country where jazz began and still the pinnacle of the jazz world. He never made it and eventually became withdrawn while Grappelli continued to work steadily at greater or lesser musical tasks.

Reinhardt astonished other guitarists with his lightning-quick two-finger runs. He played so fast he made his fingers bleed. "He'd go running up those very sharp strings so fast that he hurt himself, but he didn't take any notice," Grappelli once said.

Django's playing was all the more amazing because his left hand was badly injured in a fire. He took a common law wife at age 18. She sold flowers that she made out of celluloid, a highly flammable substance. One night, Django came home to his wooden caravan which was filled with the flowers. According to one version of events, he lit a candle and was horribly burned in the ensuing inferno. He held up a blanket to protect his face from the flames, leaving his left hand twisted and partially paralyzed.

This tragic accident led him to invent new guitar techniques that would launch him into musical history. He used his mostly undamaged first and second fingers to play the melody. "He could do impossible things with those two fingers," Grappelli recalled. "He found his own way of playing chords, sometimes using his two crippled fingers as well...." He played chords for dramatic effect, not accompaniment. Curiously, he could play more complicated jazz 9th chords more easily than simple three-note triads. He moved his entire hand up and down the fretboard as a unit and used open strings in the flamenco style. The result was 'parallel harmony', a ground-breaking technique also explored by Claude Debussy.

Grappelli and Reinhardt went to a party given by a woman who liked to invite guests with contrary tastes. She had also invited classical Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia and asked Reinhardt and Segovia both to play. Django, Grappelli recalled in 1973, "produced such a fantastic sound and improvisations that Segovia was amazed and asked, 'Where can I get that music?' Django laughed and replied, 'Nowhere, I've just composed it.'"

Grappelli and Reinhardt were both primarily self-taught, but Stéphane could read whereas Django could not. There were no music books for Django who had only spent one day in school his entire life. But his playing was free and characterized by frequent tempo changes. He could play across the barline because he had never seen one. This fit nicely with Grappelli's inclinations to be free with rubato himself. Reinhardt liked loud, large-bodied guitars which were perfect for gypsy jazz. He eventually used electric guitars which he would overamplify to distortion.

Grappelli and Reinhardt had an amazing rapport, observers said. Each anticipated the other's moves seamlessly and made it look easy. It was the perfect musical partnership. "You know when you have the jitters, sometimes your fingers refuse to work," Grappelli said in a 1973 interview. "It's inexplicable. It may only last a fraction of a second. I can't understand it myself, why now sometimes I'm nervous and sometimes I'm not. But with Django, I was never nervous. His first note was so fantastic, he put me in such a mood that I forgot the audience."

It may have been a musical match made in heaven but the earthly relationship was fraught with difficulties. Django is described as moody, petulant, and temperamental, especially when he didn't get top billing. One time in England, the band was announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, Stéphane Grappelli, Django Reinhardt, and The Hot Club of France." Django didn't begin to play because he was not announced first. So Grappelli started without him, telling him afterwards, "Don't do that again, because I don't need you to work." Grappelli was philosophical about it years later. "[T]hat was Django Reinhardt," he reminisced to his biographer, "what can you do? Sometimes I enjoyed so much to play with him when he was on good form. C'est la vie. It was difficult."

Reinhardt was difficult in other ways. In London, he failed to show up for a performance at the Palladium, a great music hall. He also got upset when accompanists played a wrong note. "Especially annoying to him was a wrong note in the bass," Grappelli told an interviewer. "To him, a wrong bass note was an insult and he was often so rude to the bass player that they would leave, and so I was obliged many times to look for new bass players," Grappelli said.

Despite all of this, the two remained great friends. "If I had a friend in my life, it was him," Grappelli told his biographer. Reinhardt died young in 1953. Grappelli said in an interview 20 years later, "it's not just that I feel his presence, but I feel that he protects me and inspires me to go on."

The Hot Club stayed together until 1939, despite frequent personnel changes. The group recorded over 100 tracks, made a film, and was broadcast on radio in the U.S. and Britain.

The group toured abroad, traveling to Holland, Belgium, and Scandinavia. In England in 1939, the quintet enjoyed success in music halls and variety shows amongst the jugglers and magicians. The band added a 12-year old vocalist, Beryl Davis. They played the cavernous Kilburn State Theatre, recorded for Decca, and were favorably reviewed in Melody Maker - "[Grappelli's] romantic tone and thoughtful interpretation put him in a class by himself in European music."

The Hot Club's English idylls were brief, however, as Germany declared war in September 1939. Django returned to France, but Grappelli decided to stay in Britain. There wasn't much drawing him back to Paris. His father had recently died. The family home was no more. A female friend had disappeared with a child Grappelli had fathered. All that was left for Stéphane in Paris was an empty flat. The Germans were poised to invade. England before the Blitz, on the other hand, seemed a fortress by comparison and no one expected the war to last very long. At 31, Grappelli stayed on in London where there were more opportunities to work than there were in France. There were several Hot Club reunions and recordings after the war - notably 'Djangology '49' - but the band never worked together on a regular basis again.

Grappelli may have gone on to develop further as a musician as many critics have suggested, but I prefer the historic Hot Club recordings. There's something about them, an ebullience and a magic that Grappelli's later recordings, while wonderful in their own right, do not have. Made in the 1930's, the Hot Club recordings are a little primitive when it comes to sound quality. But the spirit of the thing is what matters most and the Hot Club had it in spades. They still sound fresh 70 years later. They were true originals and their music stands the test of time.

Part 1 - "Malnourished Waif, Dressed in Rags"
Part 3 - Winds of Change

Unfortunately, the wonderful Hot Club CD's I found in my library are not available on Amazon. However, Amazon does have several Hot Club recordings, including a four-CD set. Amazon also has Grappelli biographies and DVD's.

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