Right here’s a comment­in a position brief movie of the nice jazz gui­tarist Djan­go Rein­hardt, vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li and their band the Quin­tette du Sizzling Membership de France per­kind­ing on a film set in 1938. The movie was hasti­ly orga­nized by the band’s British agent Lew Grade as a method to intro­duce the band’s distinctive model of gui­tar- and vio­lin-based jazz to the British pub­lic earlier than their first UK tour. As Michael Dreg­ni writes in Gyp­sy Jazz: In Search of Djan­go Rein­hardt and the Soul of Gyp­sy Swing:

The Quin­tette was unknown to the British pub­lic, and there was no telling how their new music would res­onate. So, Grade sought to edu­cate his audi­ence. He employed a film crew to movie a six-minute-plus professional­mo­tion­al brief enti­tled Jazz “Sizzling” to be proven in British the­aters professional­vid­ing a les­son in jazz appre­ci­a­tion to heat up the crowds.

That might clarify the didac­tic tone of the primary two and a half min­utes of the movie, which plods alongside as a reme­di­al les­son on the character of jazz. It opens with an orches­tra giv­ing a note-for-note per­for­mance of Han­del’s “Largo,” from the opera Xerx­es, which the nar­ra­tor then con­trasts to the free­dom of jazz impro­vi­sa­tion.

However the movie actual­ly comes alive when Djan­go arrives on the display and launch­es right into a jazz organize­ment of the pop­u­lar French tune “J’at­tendrai.” (The title means “I’ll wait,” and it’s a rework­ing of a 1933 Ital­ian tune, “Tornerai” or “You Will Return,” by Dino Olivieri and Nino Rastel­li.) Though the sequences of Rein­hardt and the band per­kind­ing had been obvi­ous­ly syn­chro­nized to a pre­vi­ous­ly document­ed monitor, Jazz “Sizzling” is the most effective sur­viv­ing visu­al doc­u­ment of the leg­endary gui­tarist’s two-fin­gered fret­ting tech­nique, which he devel­oped after los­ing the usage of most of his left hand in a hearth. To be taught extra about Rein­hardt, vis­it the hyperlinks within the Relat­eds beneath.

Notice: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this publish appeared on our web site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Djan­go Rein­hardt & Stéphane Grap­pel­li Play Mas­ter­ful­ly Togeth­er in Vivid Col­or (1938)

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

How Djan­go Rein­hardt, After Los­ing Two Fin­gers, Devel­oped An Inno­v­a­tive Style & Inspired Black Sab­bath Gui­tarist Toni Iom­mi to Do the Same

Djan­go Rein­hardt Demon­strates His Gui­tar Genius in Rare Footage From the 1930s, 40s & 50s