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PAUL VERNON CHESTER

Manouche Maestro

Django Reinhardt and Harry Volpe

Collector's Item for Sale

My father (1902 -1975) had a desire to learn guitar, and sent away for Harry Volpe's instruction booklets containing 12 lessons ranging from "How to Hold the Guitar", and "How to Tune the Guitar" and "How to Read Music" to playing simple melodies.  The book was published in 1945 and shows some wear, but all the pages are there.  Kay Waterman
 Contact - kwaterman(at)tampabay(dot)rr(dot)com

Django with Harry Volpe
 - circa '46 note the added DeArmond Neck  Mounted Pickup with control  Pots mounted on the tailpiece. See further pictures below

Voted for three years "Most outstanding swing guitarist" by the American Guild of BM & G. Concerts with the Volpe Quintet.

Gretsch announces the new Synchromatic 400 Harry Volpe jazz guitar. 1941-44 Concerts with his "Strings in Rhythm", works with Paramount, RCA.

Writes for musical magazines : Metronome, Orchestra World, Fretted Harmony, B.M.G. 1945 Voted "World's Greatest Jazz Guitarist" by W.E.V.D. N.Y (Well in their eyes)

1946 Meeting with Django Reinhardt , in New York for the Duke Ellington tour, guest at Volpe's. All night long they are involved in a memorable jam session

Harry Volpe (1906 - 1995) was a pioneer of the guitar before that phrase was ever coined. He was an established teacher, studio and recording musician in New York already in the 1920's and 1930's. He was the first guitarist selected to the Radio City Music Hall staff where he was a featured soloist. A prolific composer, Harry Volpe wrote several pieces for the guitar including his interpretation of Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# Minor. Among his other compositions are Volpette, June Memories, Two Guitars and Marreqita. The early guitar duets he penned and recorded with Frank Victor in 1936 remain classics of the guitar duet form. For many years Harry Volpe ran a music store in New York where he offered lessons to the young guitarists seeking their fortunes as jazz guitarists.
Among his students were Johnny Smith, Sal Salvador and Joe Pass.
Clearly he was influenced by Django as this recording of his confirms.  I Found a New Baby 
Also check these out as a mix of Les Paul and Django styles. www.myspace.com/harryvolpe 

Compare carefully these two guitars from the Gretsch stable -
Volpe has the Patented 'French' Triangular Soundhole without added Pick-ups -
Django the Cats Eye Soundholes which were standard and the very Guitar that Volpe poses with in the above Poster.

If Volpe was given these by Gretsch he did not readily lend them for recording or allow Django to practice with them for the Ellington Band. - was the intended Gibson ES-300 a problem or the free Epiphone Saga?
Artie Shaw's Guitarist - Artie Narvaez above it is claimed had the temerity and leeway to do that.

The Super Jam Session - Django playing Gretsch Synchromatic 400 Guitar and Volpe with a Gretsch Special.
Gretsch Top-of-the-line arch-tops had "cat's-eye"-shaped soundholes, while high-end flat-top soundholes were triangular. The Synchromatic line had a peculiar-looking "synchronized" bridge with a stair-step extension and a harp-shaped "chromatic" tailpiece. Some headstocks had indents on the sides or a round protrusion at the top and an inlay figure that resembled a Chilli Pepper  crossed with a "Synchromatic" banner. Several '40s models sported a white finish that today looks like a forerunner of Fender's famous "Tele blonde" color with wood grain showing through. To set off the finish, Gretsch used tortoise-grain binding everywhere. One white model was pictured in ads featuring such well-known jazz players as Harry Volpe and Django Reinhardt.  Gretsch attempted to go head to head with Gibson and Epiphone in the acoustic archtop market in the '30s and '40s. Gretsch failed even with endorsements from famous jazz artists such as Harry Volpe and perhaps Django Rheinhardt.

Harry Volpe 
Harry Volpe (1906 - 1995) was a pioneer of the guitar before that phrase was coined. He was an established teacher, studio and recording musician in New York already in the 1920's and 1930's. He was the first guitarist selected to the Radio City Music Hall staff where he was a featured soloist. 

A prolific composer, Harry Volpe wrote several pieces for the guitar including his interpretation of Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# Minor. Among his other compositions are Volpette, June Memories, Two Guitars and Marreqita. The early guitar duets he penned and recorded with Frank Victor in 1936 remain classics of the guitar duet form.

Some of his teaching materials are still available through Mel Bay Publications.

For many years Harry Volpe ran a music store in New York where he offered lessons to the young guitarists seeking their fortunes as jazz guitarists. Among his students were Johnny Smith, Sal Salvador and Joe Pass.

Although his playing was not purely in the jazz idiom, Harry Volpe remains a significant figure in the history of jazz guitar if for no other reason than that he played with and taught some of the best guitarists of the last century.

1904 Born in Sicily, Grotte near Agrigento, at midnight on April 7.  
1919 In New York, playing the Banjo in "Barber shop" trio.
1921 In his first group : "The Aurora Troubadours", at the guitar.  
1922 RKO Circuit Tour 
1924-1932 With the Ted Navarre Band  
1932-1935 Discovered by the violinist Al Dufy , the NBC invites him for an audition and joins the Radio City Music Hall orchestra as lead guitar , Erno Rapee and Charles Previn directors.
Takes part in NBC and CBS's broadcasts, also in duet with violinist Al Dufy. 
Composes and teaches for Paramount
Tour with Vincent Lopez Orchestra.
Publishes with Al Rocky acquiring international acknowledgments.
Recordings in duet with Karl Kress .
1936-1941 Opens the Volpe's Guitar Centre , a meeting point for musicians in New York, frequented, among others, by Tony Mottola, Sal Salvador, Al Caiola.
Founded a musical publishing house (Volpe Music Company).  
DECCA Recordings with the guitarist Frank Victor , and with the Volpe Quartet .
Voted for three years "Most outstanding swing guitarist" by the American Guild of BM & G. 
Concerts with the Volpe Quintet . 

Gretcsh announces the new Synchromatic 400 Harry Volpe jazz guitar.
1941-44 Concerts with his "Strings in Rhythm", works with Paramount, RCA.
Writes for musical magazines : Metronome, Orchestra World, Fretted Harmony, B.M.G.
1945 Voted "World's Greatest Jazz Guitarist" by Radio W.E.V.D. New York.  
1946 Meeting with Django Reinhardt , in New York for the Duke Ellington tour, guest at Volpe's. All night long they are involved in a memorable jam session .
Django at Harry Volpe's Jackson Heights Studio, Harry Volpe front right, Django's interpreter back left, Harry's son Joe (Back right), 1946
 
1948-1953 Makes the music and plays at the prize winner "The time of the Cuckoo" at the Empire Theatre, Broadway , with his quartet; actress Shirley Booth and Geraldine Brooks .  
Conducts the Pan-American Orchestra in SESAC-Columbia recordings.
From the department of the state of Washington he becomes the candidate for the "American Specialist" in the musical field for a cultural exchange program. 
Town Hall concert .
Because of law questions , concerning the separation from his wife, he loses the SESAC royalties (registered by his wife so as the Volpe Music Company), is forced to reduce the scale of his production centre and (perhaps a "daring" solution of his lawyer!) goes to jail. There the editor Charles Colin helped him acquiring and selling books and all the press machines of the Volpe's centre.  
Goes out from jail, and recuperates in Florida where he forms a trio and solves his questions by resorting to the law. He settles in Miami.  
1954 Concert at Fort Lauderdale with the Symphony Orchestra directed by Vasilios Priakos .
Some TV shows and jazz clubs concerts while devotes himself to teaching at the Frost Conservatory. Among his most famous pupils, here and at New York: Sal Salvador, Al Caiola, Tony Mottola, Joe Pass, John Colens, Johnny Smith. Publications with Charles Hansen. 
Epiphone produces the "Harry Volpe" model .
1955-1960 With Rasha Rodell signs a contract for top shows at the Eden Rock Hotel, Miami Beach, where he plays with Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Perry Como, Jimmy Durante.
In trio, a week, with Arthur Godfrey in a TV show aired coast to coast.  
1960-1995 Goes on publishing with Charles Hansen and taking part to the David Williams Hotel' exhibitions at Coral Gables .
Teaches at the Miami-Dade Junior College . 
Dies in 1995, January
 

The Harry Volpe Master Class?? c.1940
Harry Volpe and his entourage of Synchromatic 400 enthusiasts.
Note that all the Gretsch guitars in the front row are slightly different - either Cats Eye, Clef, or 'French' sound Holes or Headstock logo.

 

1955 Epiphone Harry Volpe Model

Status: Serial #: 69041, blue label

Body size at lower bout: 15 1/4" Scale length: 25 1/2" Nut width: 1 3/4"

Finish: Natural blonde finish, nitrocellulose lacquer type

Materials: Slab figure Primavera (white mahogany) top, back and sides; solid one piece mahogany neck; Brazilian rosewood fingerboard with pearl inlay; bound body and fingerboard; enamelled metal head plate; solid bone nut.

Hardware: 100% original hardware includes original De Armond single-coil pickup; volume and tone controls with clear Lucite barrel knobs; compensated "lightning-bolt" rosewood bridge; three-on-a-plate Grover tuners; nickel trapeze tailpiece; dark tortoise pick guard; hex-key adjustable truss rod.

Notes: The Epiphone company's only artist model guitar, the Harry Volpe model, is also one of the rarest of all Epi electrics. Performer, teacher, and prolific endorser, Volpe was associated at one time or another with almost every major US guitar manufacturer. Volpe specified a 1 3/4" fingerboard for his namesake model, just a bit wider than typical instruments of the era. The Primavera wood body is strikingly attractive and light in weight. Also unique is the factory DeArmond pickup, a rare variant seen only on this model Epiphone.

Making it's debut in 1955, the Harry Volpe also has the bittersweet distinction of being the last new model introduced by Epiphone as an independent company. Though catalogued until 1957, it's unlikely any were made after 1956, making it one of the scarcest of all Epi electrics, and perhaps the rarest ever. This example is the only one we've seen, and happily is in virtual museum condition, complete with its original Epiphone black faux alligator hard shell case. The guitar is without cracks, pick, or buckle wear, and shows only moderate thumb wear on the neck, and some checking near the waist on the back. The fingerboard is straight and true, and the neck has a very contemporary neck profile. The voice has fine balance and clarity, in a body size that sits very comfortably in the lap. A handsome and highly distinctive instrument from Epi's final era..

Setup: The frets have been precision levelled, re-crowned and polished as needed; truss rod tension and neck relief adjusted; bridge height adjusted; bridge compensation set; string slots at nut and bridge inspected and recut; bridge foot contour inspected and fit to top; bridge radius inspected and re-curved; wheels and tuners lubricated; fingerboard and bridge oiled; body and neck cleaned and hand polished.

This instrument is strung with medium gauge bronze strings (.013-.057). The guitar will accommodate lighter or heavier gauge strings, according to preference. String action is set at 5/64" to 6/64" at the 12th fret, with moderate relief for acoustic playing with medium strings.

Epi' Stathopoulos vision of the future of music and guitar, as well as the importance of his work could be seen by, and in, those who chose to play an Epiphone. Musicians who themselves were visionaries. George Van Epps, Harry Volpe, Howard Roberts, Joe Pass and other Jazz players would make music history with an Epiphone guitar, as would Blues legend, John Lee Hooker.

Joe Pass -
By the time Pass turned 14 years old (b.13/01/29), he had joined a band called the Gentlemen of Rhythm that patterned itself after the music of the legendary Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. The group performed at parties and dances, and Pass earned three to five dollars per night. His talent grabbed the attention of saxophone player and bandleader Tony Pastor, who let him play with his band at a local concert. Pastor wanted to take him on the road with him, but Pass couldn't quit school to do so.

A year later in 1944 Pass's parents sent him to New York to study with the highly respected studio guitar player Harry Volpe. When Volpe realized that Pass improvised better than he did, he focused on teaching Pass to sight read music. Pass became frustrated with his lessons and returned to Johnstown — though not for long. When his father became ill, he dropped out of the tenth grade and moved to New York.

Django & Harry Volpe (8 mm), 1946

  • An home movie filmed by Harry Volpe (American guitar player).

  • Filmed in New-York while Django was there (as part of the Duke Ellington tour)

  • Rumours spread around that the movie was not available (destroyed ?, lost ?), but I doubt it...

  • The movies shows Harry Volpe walking down a street with Django nearby the Henry Hudson hotel.

  • There is a scene where you see Django and Harry having spaghetti with friends...

  • There is a scene with Django and Harry playing...no sound though

  • There is no soundtrack with it (a real home movie of the days...)

 

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Last modified: 13/09/2011