Quintette du Hot Club de France
Encyclopedia
Quintette du Hot Club de France (“Hot Club of France Quintet”) was a jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 group founded in France in 1934 by guitarist Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...

 and violinist Stéphane Grappelli
Stéphane Grappelli
Stéphane Grappelli was a French jazz violinist who founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands....

, and active in one form or another until 1948.

One of the earliest and most significant continental jazz
Continental Jazz
Continental jazz is a term used to describe early jazz dance bands of Europe in the swing medium, to the exclusion of Great Britain. The genre was generally practiced until the conclusion of World War II. By the time bebop came to popularity, the style became more or less obsolete.-Revival...

 groups in Europe, the Quintette was described by critic Thom Jurek as "one of the most original bands in the history of recorded jazz." Their most famous lineup featured Reinhardt, Grappelli, bassist Louis Vola
Louis Vola
Louis Vola , was a French double-bassist famous for his work with the Quintette du Hot Club de France....

, and rhythm guitarists Roger Chaput and Joseph Reinhardt (Django's brother) who filled out the ensemble's sound and added occasional percussive effects.

History

There are several versions of how the band was formed. The most generally accepted version amongst modern jazz historians is that the group evolved from a series of backstage jams led by Django Reinhardt, with Stephane Grappelli. However, bassist Louis Vola
Louis Vola
Louis Vola , was a French double-bassist famous for his work with the Quintette du Hot Club de France....

 said in an interview that he found the Reinhardt brothers playing on a beach at Toulon. He invited them to jam with his own band, which included Grappelli and guitarist Roger Chaput.

After a series of informal jam sessions at the Hotel Claridge, concert promoters Pierre Nourry and Charles Delaunay
Charles Delaunay
Charles Delaunay was a French author, jazz expert, co-founder and long-term leader of the Hot Club de France....

 (leaders of the "Hot Club de France", a society chaired by Hugues Panassié
Hugues Panassié
Hugues Panassié was a French jazz critic and producer. His most famous works were Hot Jazz: The Guide to Swing Music and The Real Jazz, published in 1936 and 1942, respectively....

 devoted to the appreciation of jazz) urged the formation of a full time group. With the addition of Reinhardt's brother Joseph on second rhythm guitar, the quintet popularized the gypsy jazz
Gypsy jazz
Gypsy jazz is an idiom often said to have been started by guitarist Jean "Django" Reinhardt in the 1930s. Because its origins are largely in France it is often called by the French name, "Jazz manouche," or alternatively, "manouche jazz," even in English language sources...

 style. A series of European tours were very successful, with the group enjoying particular popularity in the UK. Several bassists and rhythm guitarists rotated in and out of the group, with Django and Grappelli remaining the sole constants.

As World War II broke out in September 1939, the Quintette was on a concert tour of England. Reinhardt, who spoke virtually no English, immediately returned to France, where he thought he would feel safer than in the UK. Grappelli, meanwhile, stayed in England.

Django continued using the Quintette name with a different group, featuring Hubert Rostaing
Hubert Rostaing
Hubert Rostaing was a jazz clarinetist and tenor saxophonist. He also did film composition and classical music....

 as the first of several clarinetists backed by a more conventional rhythm section
Rhythm section
A rhythm section is a collection of musicians who make up a section of instruments which provides the accompaniment section of the music, giving the music its rhythmic texture and pulse, also serving as a rhythmic reference for the rest of the band...

 with drums, bass and a rhythm guitar played by Django's son Lousson Reinhardt, or his brother Joseph. This version of the Quintette often featured six, not five, players, and was usually billed as "Django et le Quintette du Hot Club de France", or sometimes as Django's "Nouveau Quintette". Due to wartime shortages of material, this version of the Quintette did not issue many recordings, although they did issue the first recording of the Django Reinhardt composition Nuages
Nuages
Nuages Jazz are an Ecuadorian-based jazz group performing mostly in Gypsy and Semitic motifs. They were voted the best jazz group in Ecuador and have released four albums so far....

, later to become a jazz standard.

In 1946, after the war, Grappelli and Django re-teamed under the Quintette banner in an all-string format. As before, they cycled through a number of rhythm guitarists and bassists. This last iteration of the Quintette performed and recorded intermittently until about 1948.

External links

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