DESCRIPTION:
Quintette de Hot Club de France - Charleston (Mack /Johnson) Swing 1937 (France)

NOTE: The Quintette de Hot Club de France was made of: Django Reinhardt – guitar; Stéphane Grappelli – violine; Louis Vola – bass; Marcel Bianchi, Pierre Barault - rhythm guitarists. It was - beyond any doubt, one of best and most original bands in the whole history of jazz. Formed in Paris in 1934 by Django Reinhardt - who was a Belgium-born guitarist of the Gypsy origin (his mother was a Gypsy dancer and father produced a cane furniture) - it became a sensation in the Parisian fashionable venue Hot Club de France, where Django appeared in a duet with violinist Stéphane Grappelli, performing international jazz- and dance hits: e.g. Sheik of Araby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oXOIT62ico Georgia On My Mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E_u21g_cNY as well as his own compositions: Nuages https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu7dygwwnr4 Daphne http://youtu.be/pnq35q1d1T4 , Minor Swing, Belleville, Djangology and many others (which later became jazz standards). Using on his solos only the index and middle fingers of his left hand (his third and fourth fingers were paralyzed when in age of 18 he suffered burns in a fire, so he used two injured digits only for chord work) - Django created an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique, sometimes called 'hot' jazz guitar or the 'Gypsy jazz'. Accompanied by two hot rhythm guitarists, the bass and - beyond all – by Stéphane Grappelli , who used simirarily unusual technique in his violin play – Reinhard’s band became a unique phenomenon in the history of instrumental music.


First recordings were made for Decca in 1935 and became immediate sensation in France and throughout Europe. Shortly, the Quintette became one of the most demanded Parisian jazz ensembles to ballyhoo high-life parties and other social gatherings of the cream of Parisian artistic and upper class society. Famous international musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzie Gillespie or Adelaide Hall eagerly participated in musical sessions with Django’s ensemble and quickly, his music became musical trademark of Parisian life in the 1930s. In the years of second WW, during mass-deportations of the Gypsy people to the German death-camps, Django was saved by protection of several jazz-loving Germans, including the Luftwaffe officer Dietrich Schulz-Köhn, nicknamed "Doktor Jazz". After the war, Reinhardt continued his public performing and recording in Europe and USA, yet without Grappelli, who during the war emigrated to the United Kingdom and stayed there. In 1953 in age of 43, Django Reinhardt suddenly died presumably from a stroke, on platform of a small sub-Parisian station of Avon, when he was waiting for his train to Paris after the all-night jazz session.

This ultra-elegant and sophisticated music is accompanied by ultra-sophisticated photoshow of the Parisian elegance of the 1930s.