Django Reinhardt - Django 1935: Les Premiers Enregistrements du Quintette du H.C.F. (Japanese Vogue Vinyl LP)

Django Reinhardt - Django 1935: Les Premiers Enregistrements du Quintette du H.C.F. | Vinyl LP, Japanese Vogue Reissue (YX-4039, For Jazz Collectors Only Series)

• The Quintette du Hot Club de France in its first year of recording, twelve tracks from 1935 sessions in Paris with Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, Joseph Reinhardt, Pierre Ferret and Louis Vola
• The group that created European jazz as a serious proposition, playing standards and originals in a style built from Romani guitar traditions, swing, and the partnership between Reinhardt’s guitar and Grappelli’s violin
• Japanese Vogue reissue in the For Jazz Collectors Only series, sourced from the 1973 French Vogue compilation of the Quintette’s earliest recordings

The Quintette du Hot Club de France had been performing in Paris since late 1934, but the 1935 sessions collected here are where the group’s recorded legacy begins in earnest. The format was unusual for jazz at the time and remains so: lead guitar, violin, two rhythm guitars and bass, with no piano, no drums and no horns. Django Reinhardt’s guitar carries the melodic lead on most tracks, with Grappelli’s violin weaving counter-lines and taking its own solos. The rhythm guitars of Joseph Reinhardt (Django’s younger brother) and Pierre “Baro” Ferret provide a percussive, chordal drive that replaces the conventional rhythm section. The repertoire is mostly American standards: “Avalon”, “Some of These Days”, “Saint Louis Blues”, “I’ve Found a New Baby”, “The Sheik of Araby”. Among them sits “Djangology”, a Reinhardt and Grappelli original from September 1935 that became one of their signature pieces.

The programme splits into two configurations. On eight tracks (A1 through A5 and B1 through B3), the full Quintette plays with Grappelli on violin. On the remaining four (A6 “Crazy Rhythms” and B4 through B6), Grappelli moves to piano, Pierre Ferret drops out, and the group is billed as “Stéphane Grappelli and His Hot Four” rather than the Quintette. The piano tracks have a different feel: lighter, more rhythmically driven, with Django’s guitar more exposed. The whole set runs under forty minutes, and nothing overstays its welcome. These are 78 rpm performances, tight and shaped, from a period when Reinhardt and Grappelli were first discovering what their partnership could do. Within a few years the Quintette would be famous across Europe. Django died in 1953, aged 43. Grappelli continued performing until shortly before his own death in 1997, aged 89. This Japanese pressing is a reissue on Vogue (YX-4039), part of the For Jazz Collectors Only series, sourced from the 1973 French Vogue compilation.