PAUL
VERNON CHESTER
Manouche Maestro
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Manouche Maestro
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Stephane Grappelli - Interview 1973:
Django and Stephane People often ask me if Django practised. Oh no, not Django; he was born with that technique. In my opinion we can compare him with that other phenomenon Paganini. By the music he left behind one can tell that Paganini must have been a fantastic player. I think Django was about the same degree a phenomenon. I remember one day he really let me down, I didn't know where he was and when he came back four months later, he assured me he hadn't touched the guitar - he'd lost it. That same night he played like a God. I had never heard anybody play the guitar like that; and after four months inactivity. I said, 'How can you do it? If I stop playing the violin for one week I can't play'. 'Oh, I don't know', he said. He never knew, it was always 'I don't know'. Anyway, he was so pleased to get back to his guitar and he was so amazed at his re-awakening that he didn't stop playing all that night. But of course his fingers were injured and they were bleeding. He'd go running up those very sharp strings so fast that he hurt himself, but he didn't take any notice. He used to play the guitar with the fingers sometimes, instead of the plectrum, and he liked the Spanish guitar. I remember us being invited to a party by a titled lady who used to delight in giving parties and inviting among her guests two people who were absolutely the opposite both in conception and tastes. This particular evening it was the turn of Andres Segovia and Django Reinhardt. So of course Django arrived three hours late, and without a guitar. Segovia was there, naturally at the right time and he'd played his repertoire. Everybody was upset because of Django and finally he arrived with a lovely smile, thinking it was okay. We said, 'Where have you been ? You're three hours late'. 'Oh, I didn't know'. Because Django never knows the time. He goes by the sun. 'Django, now it's your turn to play something'. But of course he had forgotten his guitar and Segovia doesn't want to lend him his, so someone has to rush off in a taxi to find some old box somewhere. And there you are; Django played solo guitar with a plectrum and then his fingers and he produced such a fantastic sound and improvisations that Segovia was amazed and asked, 'Where can I get that music?' Django laughed and replied 'Nowhere, I've just composed it!'
On Django - "He did more for the guitar than any other man in jazz. His way of playing was unlike anyone else’s, and jazz is different because of him. There can be many other fine guitarists, but never can there be another Reinhardt. I am sure of that."
Grappelli represented for Django an anchor which held him firmly moored to the jazz spirit, as well as to the alien world of the Gadjés. Nothing would have been easier, after all, than for Django to squander his talent in “gypsified” performances that were neither folklore nor jazz. Yet the great Manouche, throughout his career, was rigorously exacting in his approach to music - which continues to surprise those who see in Django only a musical box of tricks. And it was this musical seriousness which held him faithful to the jazz spirit - Manouche jazz, certainly, but impeccable in its taste. If teamed with another Gypsy sharing identical social, cultural and musical values, he might well have yielded to the temptations of showy virtuosity, there would have been no brake on his unstable social behaviour, and the-result would have been his eventual disappearance into the anonymous world of the nomads, just one more Gypsy musician. Grappelli with Joseph Reinhardt and Andre Ekyan January 26, 1908- December 1, 1997 Stephane had a cottage in Devon at one time and Django went to stay there. On a walk in the country Django spotted a chicken in a nearby farm entrance and proceeded to grab it, break it's neck and then stuff it under his arm to take home for supper. He lived then in Lustleigh, Newton Abbot. His cottage was called "Underwood". He first went to Devon in 1941 to recuperate from his kidney problems. Biography - Stéphane Grappelli was born on September 26, 1908 in Paris, France. When he was three years old his mother, Anna Emilie Hanocque Grappelli, passed away, and he had no choice but to stay in a Catholic orphanage while his father Ernesto was serving in the military. Upon his discharge, Ernesto began to take care of the boy. Ernesto was an Italian-born expatriate nobleman from the town of Lazio (Alatri), who worked as a philosophy teacher, translator and sometime journalist and shared his love for the arts with his son. When Stéphane was six years old, his father enrolled him in a dance school run by noted American dancer Isadora Duncan, at the Hotel Bellvue in Paris. Stephane had little interest in his lessons, but on one of these excursions he heard a live performance of composer Claude Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” which became one of his first musical inspirations. It was also during this time that he discovered the music of composer Maurice Ravel. The two composers made quite an impression on the young boy, and began to draw his interests towards music. When World War I broke out, Duncan closed her school, and Ernesto was called to serve in the Italian military. With nowhere to go, the boy was sent to yet another orphanage in Paris, where he stayed until age ten. The conditions of the orphanage were deplorable, and Stéphane was often left without food, constantly fighting with other children and frequently sleeping on the floor. Ernesto was eventually reunited with his son, and the two lived together in a room near the Montmartre district of Paris. He took Stéphane to free concerts which featured works by Debussy and Ravel, and helped the boy cultivate his musical interests by bringing home music books from the library, from which he learned to read music with the solfeggio method. He purchased a used violin for his son from an Italian shoemaker in the neighbourhood, and the boy quickly became confident in his abiliites. Stéphane's first experiences in performing were as a busker on the streets of Paris. In late 1920, he became a student at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris, where he received three years of formal musical education. In 1923, Ernesto moved with his new wife to Strasbourg, France, but the budding violinist decided to remain in Paris. At the age of fifteen, Stephane was living on his own in Paris and busking around the clock in order to survive. Like other Paris street musicians, Grappelli would troll through the city's courtyards, in the hopes of coaxing coins out of the apartments above. On one evening, he was offered a job to replace a second violinist in a movie-house orchestra. Stéphane was soon performing with the orchestra full-time accompanying silent movies. It was during this time that he discovered jazz. He heard a recording of “Stumbling” by Mitchell’s Jazz Kings and was intrigued with what he heard. He spent the next few years performing a variety of gigs at dancing schools, hotels and resorts in the south of France. Throughout the late 1920s, Grappelli found more work performing on the piano than on the violin. He began to listen to the early trendsetters of jazz, including trumpeter Louis Armstrong cornetist Bix Biederbecke, guitarist Eddie and violinist Joe Venuti. Armstrong's vocals and Beiderbecke's composition 'In a Mist' in particular, had a profound influence on him in his early development of the jazz language. During the Great Depression, Grappelli was performing on the piano on a regular basis with a band called “Gregor and his Gregorians,” whose style was often compared to that of bandleader Paul Whiteman’s. The leader of the band convinced him to start performing on the violin again and he soon focused his attention on the violin. Grappelli first met guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1931, however he said that he saw him perform as early as 1929. When Grappelli was performing at the “Le Croix du Sud” club in Montparnasse, Django was in the audience and asked Stephane to join his group. Stéphane was apprehensive, due to Django’s menacing appearance, and his reluctance to give up his steady gig. But the two began to perform together casually over the next few years, where they discovered how much they shared, especially in their love for the early jazz innovators.
Stephane with Steeleye Span
Violinist Peter Knight
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You
know, in my opinion, the guitar and violin are the two best instruments
together; they complement each other exactly. One of the greatest examples of
this is the music of Joe Venuti and that marvellous guitarist Eddie Lang. Django
Reinhardt certainly had heard these players on record, and when he learned that
I was playing some jazz on the violin, he came to listen.
Our great chance came when a friend of mine Pierre Nourry encouraged us to do a
concert. He arranged the concert and invited two famous critics Charles Delaunay
and Hughes Panassie. Django and I decided to add a bass and another rhythm
guitar to the group, so we were now Django Reinhardt, Joseph Reinhardt, Roger
Chaput, guitars, myself on violin, and Louis Vola, bass.
Django
never looked after his guitar. He didn't care about it when he'd finished
playing it; he'd just put it in a corner and it was his brother who would carry
it around. Sometimes if there was nobody to carry it he would take it himself,
but he never bothered to cover it. Oh, he used to play it when it was in a
dreadful state sometimes; even broken and yet. Django was helped a lot by the
nature of his physique. His wrist was double the size of mine, his fingers much
longer; and he was terribly strong. I remember Django changed his guitars
several times because after about six months the fingerboards used to have holes
in them. That shows you the strength he had! Yet in spite of being a
strong man, Django was always suffering from something. Maybe it was his teeth,
or his feet. And he must have suffered a lot with headaches, but he would never
follow any advice about his health. Especially he wouldn't go near a doctor. Of
course when he was ill, it would effect all of us. One day we might be recording
and Django has toothache and if at that moment he feels the accompaniment is a
bit out, or a bass note played accidentally wrong, he would be furious and he
would correct the tempo in such a marked manner that I used to be afraid that a
listener to the record would notice it. This in turn would make me nervous and
then affect my playing also. Fortunately this didn't happen often.
Django
first heard an electric guitar in '46 or '47; I think it was at the Hackney
Empire. Somebody brought in the guitar and it made a terrible noise - in those
days electric guitars didn't sound as good as they do now. But Django was so
impressed because at last he could play loudly. He played with such volume that
I had to ask him to turn it down as it was drowning all of us. He was like a
child with a new toy. Of course, to be fair, he didn't know how to handle it.
We'd heard Charlie Christian, and although he would never play like Django, if
you know what I mean - the electric guitar being easier than acoustic - Charlie
Christian was a master of the electric guitar, Django was born to play acoustic
guitar and the richness of Django was in his chords and he could never achieve
the same dynamic effect that he could from his acoustic guitar. He never
succeeded to play electric and in my opinion he never was a good electric
guitarist.
Playing
with the Diz Disley Trio is wonderful. Diz is the foremost player here who
understands Reinhardt, and sometimes he produces that melodic line of Django's;
not the same of course, because Diz has his own temperament too. Denny Wright
also is a marvellous player, he's got such a good technique. Of course he can't
produce Django's melodic line because Django invented it, but he has his own
style, and on top of that he's got the strength of Django Reinhardt.
Stéphane
Grappelli & Joseph Reinhardt
