PAUL
VERNON CHESTER
Manouche Maestro
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Manouche Maestro |
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Django's Bassists Django was always concerned about the chord accompaniment. He just couldn't understand that anybody could make mistakes. Especially annoying to him was a wrong note in the Bass. 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. Once we got a new one who was a bit pretentious for our liking. Whenever Django asked if he knew such and such a tune, this Bass player always said, 'Of course! What do you think, I've been playing for twenty years?' One day Django got fed up with this sort of thing and suddenly asked, 'Do you know Cherokee?' 'Of course!' came the answer. 'Well come on then', and off Django went at a terrific speed and in B major! That was Django. But sometimes we had some poor chap who was struggling to keep up, and Django would realise it and I would say, 'He's a bit nervous, don't take any notice.' That man could play any old kind of Bass and Django never said a word. You see, he was very temperamental, but inside he was a very kind man, and sometimes he didn't realise that he was upsetting people. - Stephane Stéphane's tells us how he always had to go looking for new bass players as Django kept giving them the sack !
Louis Vola, Emmanuel Soudieux, Francis Luca, Len Harrison and Jean Storne which
leaves from the people we know performed several times with Django around that
period:- Bass Players shuffled through the Quintette like cards dealt in a game of belote — Louis Vola, Sigismund Beck, Roger "Toto" Grasset, Eugene d'Hellemmes.......................The motley parade of bassists finally ended in 1938 when 19-year-old Emmanuel Soudieux tuned up his instrument for a Quintette gig LouisVola
Louis Vola was born in the Riviera town of La-Seyne-sur-Mer on 6th July, 1902 to an Italian shoe maker. He first started to play his father's accordion and became passably competent on several instruments. His visits to the bal musettes fired his enthusiasm for music and after a brief spell as a baker, Vola learnt to play the double bass and became a full time musician. He often acted as the peace maker between Django and Stephane but later expressed the view that their continual squabbling was very tiring. "I felt like leaving them to get on with it" he said. By the outbreak of War, Vola was playing regularly with the Ray Ventura Orchestra and together with many of its members, he fled to South America where he remained for 8 years. Before doing so, he was featured in the 1939 Ventura film "Tourbillon de Paris" playing himself. When he returned to Paris, the music had moved on and left him somewhat marginalised. After a failed attempt to run a restaurant in Nice, Louis Vola joined the Scheherazade, a fashionable Russian restaurant, where he remained for 30 years. "My double bass plays by itself" he joked. Probably Louis Vola's greatest contribution to music was the discovery and early mentoring of Django Reinhardt and then acting as a catalyst between Reinhardt and Grappelli. However, he probably made the most of his rather limited musical ability and was, without doubt, a competent session musician working with many well known performers . Perhaps Vola's attitude is best illustrated by the fact for his many years at the Scheherazade he was primarily the bass player but also doubled on piano and drums and was paid accordingly. In the late fifties he retired to Cachan and died there in August 1990. QHCF Roger 'Toto' Grasset - Bass
The cabaret BRICKTOP 'S welcomes in 1934 in the company of Edmond COHANIER Alain ROMANS and Roger Grasset (bass) Roger "Toto" Grasset on bass. And indeed Grasset was in the line up of the Quintet at that time, because he had to replace Vola for a while. Grasset joined the tour to Great Britain then. Grasset had glasses, a moustache (to tell the truth he was a little bit stocky). Perhaps they changed the bass player because Grasset didn´t look like a character out of "Scarface" like Joseph and Baro did.
Emmanuel Soudieux Emmanuel Soudieux worked in Musette - and tango orchestras. He was known for his membership in the QHCF and since 1938 he played in the bands of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli. Soudieux then played intermittently until 1947, Reinhardt, as well as in the last session for "Swing" with the guitarist in November 1947, the title "Peche à la Mouche," "Belleville" and "Manoir de mes Rêves ". About Soudieux Reinhardt once said, "he was incarnate music". In the band of Jacques Diéval he entered the 1949 Festival International de Jazz in the Salle Pleyel on in 1950 he played in a trio with Doc Cheatham and Diéval and accompanied them with the singer Eartha Kitt . In the late 1950s he worked with Hubert Rostaing and Henri Crolla . The writer Boris Vian Soudieux counted alongside Lucien Simo , who also worked with Django Reinhardt, one of the best bass players in the immediate post-war France.
Alf 'Totol' Masselier
Pierre Michelot
Michelot was born in 1928 and learned to play the piano as a child before
studying classical double bass at 16. He was attracted to jazz by Jimmy Blanton
and Oscar Pettiford, both pioneers of modern jazz bass. During the late forties,
he became a well known figure around the Parisien club circuit playing with
major jazz musicians like Rex Stewart, Coleman Hawkins, Zoot Sims, Lester Young,
Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Dexter Gordon.
Michelot (the bassist on all of
those last recordings 1951 - 1953 is quoted in the notes to the Jazz in Paris -
Nuages cd (which covers the March and April 1953 sessions) In 1951, Django Reinhardt plays regularly with a band made up of the best be-boppers French: Roger Guerin, Hubert and Raymond Fol, Pierre Michelot, Bernard Peiffer, Jean-Louis Viale. Always at the forefront of jazz, Django recorded his last record April 8, 1953, with Martial Solal on piano, Pierre Michelot on bass, Fats Sadi on vibes and Pierre Lallement Lemarchand on drums. He died one month later, May 16, 1953, of a cerebral haemorrhage.
Django, Pierre Michelot, Pierre Lemarchand at Club St Germain, 1951 Eugene D'Hellemmes
Bill Coleman and his Orchestra
Freddy Taylor and his Swing Men
from Harlem Alix Combelle (cl, ts) Andre Ekyan (as) Benny Carter (as, tp) Coleman Hawkins (ts) Stephane Grappelli (p) Django Reinhardt (g) Eugene D'Hellemmes (b) Tommy Benford (d) Francis Luca The British Bassists - Teddy Wadmore
- who played with
the first touring English Quartet
Ted Taylor on right, Bob Rogers on left and Teddy Wadmore, seated, with the very first Supersound Electric Bass (built in summer 1958) which he used on the Jack Jackson TV show in that year.
The Story of Supersound UK Amplifier
Coleridge George Emerson
Goode One of the finest jazz bassists who has worked in Europe, he is an important link to a proud heritage of Caribbean contributions to jazz music. His achievements through a long career have been an important inspiration for some leading contemporary black British jazz musicians. In 2002, his Autobiography co-authored with his friend, the academic and jazz writer Roger Cotterilll, not only told his own story but provided poignant and vivid memories of the brilliant and tragic Saxophonist Joe Harriott and of the birth of free form jazz in Britain.
The Abbey Road Recorded English/Caribbean/French Quartet of The personal highlight of his career was playing and recording with Django Reinhardt. When Django Reinhardt came to England after the Second World War to record with Stepane Grappelli, the remaining members of his quintet could not obtain authorisation to cross the channel (Passports). So he had no choice but to use the guitarists and bassist who usually accompanied Stephane Grappelli, who were Allan Hodgkiss, the Jamaican bassist Coleridge Goode and Jack Llewellyn. On 31st January 1946 they recorded four songs at Abbey Road studios,
January 31, 1946 Swing, London 'The Marseilles' version was banned in France as disrespectful to the national anthem and hence renamed 'Echoes of France' “I was born in 1914, in Kingston Jamaica,” he recalls with some pride. “My father was a choirmaster and organist who promoted classical choral music in Jamaica and my mother sang in the choir.” I mention that Coleridge is an interesting Christian name and Goode is only too keen to fill me in. My name comes from my father putting on a performance of Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’ as a tribute to him,” starts Goode. “I was born a year after – so that’s how I got my name.” So when and with what, did Goode start his musical journey? “It all started from a concert of my father’s that I went to,” he says in measured tones. “The cellist was playing a beautiful solo and it impressed me enough to go home and put some orange boxes and wood together and try and make an instrument. My father saw me doing this and bought me a violin for my imminent 11th birthday.” Jack Fallon
A British jazz bass player before 1946 didn't have a chance. By definition he swung like a lead balloon. Jack Fallon came to England with the Canadian Air Force Band in that year and settled there when his service was done. He transformed bass playing in Britain for ever. His playing swung and lifted and he had a big, fat tone that inspired everyone with whom he played. It was some years before his fellow bassists began to fulfil their aspirations. Fallon had a remarkable career during which he played with every imaginable kind of artist from Spike Milligan and Django Reinhardt to the Beatles and Duke Ellington. A quiet and modest man, he reflected on his career when it was all over and said, "I just banged it out as best I could. I had a lot of luck." "I was born in a log cabin on a 100-acre farm in Ontario," wrote Fallon. His sister Irene Fallon, who entered a convent as Sister Rosary, had another view. "A log cabin called St Joseph's Hospital," she said. After playing violin in a family band Fallon took up the bass in 1935. He played trumpet in the air force's band as well as bass in its dance band the RCAF Streamliners. He sent his bass back to Canada when his duties were over, but then decided against joining it. "Somebody offered me money," he explained. He joined the Ted Heath Band in April 1946 and stayed until September. He played in night-clubs and at the haunts of the early British bebop players like the Feldman Club in 100 Oxford Street where the music was difficult for both musicians and audiences alike. "If I was having trouble I could always have a coughing spell," Fallon said modestly. |
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The first engagement
Vola obtained for Django was with his band at the
Palm Beach Casino in Cannes and
Reinhardt started as he meant to carry on by often failing to turn up for the
gig and flooding the area with the caravans of his many "cousins". Despite this
behaviour, Vola knew Django was something special and worth nurturing even with
the inevitable aggravation and consternation that would be involved. 
Pierre
Michelot was arguably the most talented bass player to work regularly with
Django. He played with him during the Club St. Germain engagement in 1951 and
was on the only formal Reinhardt recording session of 1952. 
T
Patrick Fallon (Jack Fallon), bassist, violinist and
agent: born London, Ontario 13 October 1915; died London, 22 May 2006.
