A series of great  JAZZ, Ragtime and Swing Records from early Ragtime to Beb-Bop on 78 rpm Victrola Records

Click this link for more great Jazz and Vocal Records in my other listings!

Django was at his zenith in the 1930s and 1940s, no one termed the music he played “Gypsy Jazz.” It was simply jazz, played by a Gypsy with a guitar. He learned the music primarily from recordings and only later by playing with many of the early greats — Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington, Eddie South. And with the music from those foreign 78s still reverberating in his ears, he was trying to sound as American as he possibly could. Combining his influences, his pioneering use of the guitar, and his individual sensibility, Django created a music of his own. There are few others who single handedly gave birth to a whole musical genre. It’s a genre that is today continually recreated. - Paul Brady

The Quintet Of The Hot Club Of France  – Hot Jazz

Label:
Victor – H J-6
Series:
Hot Jazz Series – Vol. VI, Hot Jazz Classic
Format:
4 x Shellac, 10", 78 RPM, Album
Genre:
Jazz
Style:
A  I Can't Give You Anything But Love Baby
Written-By – Fields-McHugh*
B  Sweet Chorus
Written-By – Reinhardt*, Grappelly*
C  When Day Is Done
Written-By – De Sylva*, Katscher*
D  Ain't Misbehavin'
Written-By – Andy Razaf, Waller*, Brooks*
E  Runnin' Wild
Written-By – Gibbs*, Grey*, Wood*
F  Solitude
Written-By – Duke Ellington
G  Miss Annabelle Lee
Written-By – Pollack*, Clare*
H  Mystery Pacific
Written-By – Reinhardt*, Grappelly*

Bass – Louis Vola
Guitar – Django Reinhardt, Joseph Reinhardt (tracks: A, B), Marcel Bianchi (tracks: C to H), Pierre Ferret
Violin – Stephane Grappelly*
Vocals [Vocal Refrain] – Freddy Taylor (tracks: A)
On the album cover, the group appears as "The Quintet Of The Hot Club Of France," on the labels only as "Quintet Of The Hot Club Of France."

A: Recorded in Europe May, 1936.
B: Recorded in Europe October, 1936.
C to H: Recorded in Europe April, 1937.

Complete 4x10" 78 rpm Victor Records w orig album

CONDITION: EXCELLENT MINUS unworn some scuffs, plays E EXCEPTIONALLY QUIET quiet rare ticks
Album has sound binding and sleeves. Orig spine missing, has been nicely rebound. Covers have rubs and some chipping of cover paper at edges
A  SUPERB COPY

I wrote about Django Reinhardt's 1946 U.S. tour with Duke Ellington last year, but that wasn't the guitarist's first encounter with Ellingtonia. The Ellington Orchestra arrived in Paris on April 1, 1939 to begin a 34-day, 28-concert tour of Europe.
A couple of days into their Paris stop, Duke's cornetist Rex Stewart was taken by Hughes Panassie to hear Django play at a Montmartre nightclub where he was in a battle of guitars with Henri Salvador and Oscar Aleman. The jam made a strong impression on Rex. In his autobiography, Boy Meets Horn, he wrote, "The air was electric, the champagne flowed, and the magic of the moment is firmly etched in my memory." 
Panassie and Charles Delauney, who had co-founded the Hot Club of France five years earlier, were keen on producing a record with the visiting Ellingtonians.
With Duke already under contract, they approached Stewart about making a session with Django.
In addition to his numerous recordings with the Quintette of the Hot Club of France, Reinhardt had recorded with jazzmen Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Eddie South, Dicky Wells, and Bill Coleman, and his renown was well-established on the American scene.

Stewart recruited his Ellington colleagues clarinetist Barney Bigard and bassist Billy Taylor for a session that despite its hastily-assembled nature Gunther Schuller hails in The Swing Era as "extraordinary...soulful...amongst the finest achievements of jazz...crammed with an array of astonishing details." The language barrier was of no consequence either. "I was so overawed by [Django's] virtuosity that it never occurred to me there would be any communication problem, despite his not speaking English. And I was never so right. The gypsy picked up on the harmonies just as though he had written the music. A gesture toward the brandy bottle was all that we needed and everybody understood everything.
"When Django played, his savage rhythmical impulses and tender, romantic nuances were underscored by his driving, rock-steady beat," wrote Stewart. "Django, in my opinion, was to the guitar what Louis Armstrong was to the trumpet or Art Tatum to the piano. He inspired the playing and thinking of countless guitar players all over the world. But he confounded the critics, who couldn't exactly label his work and were antagonistic to this gypsy with a song in soul."

The group, which was billed as Rex Stewart and His Feetwarmers, recorded five sides on April 5, 1939. While Bigard deploys brushes on a newspaper to effect the sound of a snare drum on a couple of tracks, the music has an airy, subtly propulsive flow more typical of "chamber jazz" than of the hard-swinging small group recordings that Stewart and other Ellingtonians were making back in the States. Besides the up-tempo treatment of the Vincent Youmans standard, "I Know That You Know," there's little in the way of "savage" rhythm here, though Schuller was quick to point out that "there's nothing lightweight or effete" here either. He adds, "Whenever jazz might be called upon to demonstrate to its skeptics that it need not be and is not necessarily a loud, raucous...music, these tasteful performances provide perfect irrefutable proof."