Django Reinhardt died on this date in 1953. He was forty-three years old. Reinhardt melded jazz and the wild élan of the gypsy music he grew up with in Belgium and France. He began to be noticed in 1930 when he was twenty. By the mid-1930s he, violinist Stephane Grappellii and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France were sensations of Europe. By the end of the decade Reinhardt was also working and recording with Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Dickie Wells, Rex Stewart and other leading American jazzmen.
A few of his compositions—“Nuages,†“Djangology,†“Manoir de Mes Revesâ€â€” are in the basic repertoire. He was memorialized by John Lewis with one of the greatest jazz compositions, “Django.†The spirit and style of Reinhardt’s playing influenced innumerable guitarists, and several groups have patterned themselves on the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, but there has never been anyone like Django. If you need a reminder of or an introduction to his artistry, go to redhotjazz.com, scroll down to “Oh, Lady Be Good†and hear the joy Reinhardt and Grappelli generated shortly after they found each other in 1934. The site offers thirty-eight other QHCF tracks as RealPlayer downloads (complete recordings, not mere samples). This four-CD set at a bargain price is a fine survey of Reinhardt with and apart from the QHCF.
Archives for May 15, 2006
Books
The May issue of Allegro, the monthly publication of the New York local of the American Federation of Musicians, has reviews by Bill Crow of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, the reissue of Gene Lees’ superb biography The Worlds of Lerner and Loewe, and the first volume of Don Rayno’s Paul Whiteman, Pioneer in American Music.
From the review of the Whiteman book, a dart in the side of conventional wisdom:
This account refutes the accusations that accumulated in the jazz press in later years that Whiteman was an exploitative entrepreneur who squelched jazz luminaries in his band like Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Trumbauer. Joe Venuti is quoted as saying, “Don’t ever make fun of Paul Whiteman. He did great things for American music. He took pride in having the finest musicians in the world as sidemen, and he paid the highest salaries ever paid.”
To read the reviews, go here, then scroll down and click on Book Notes.