Django Reinhardt & The Quintet of the Hot Club of France: Django Reinhardt (guitar); Stephane Grappelli (violin); Gianni Safred (piano); Carlo Pecori (bass); Aurelio De Carolis (drums).
Recorded in Rome, Italy in January & February 1949. Originally released on RCA (2319). Includes liner notes by Frank Vignola and Don Gold. All tracks have been digitally remastered.
A few years after their postwar reunion, Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt and his most illustrious foil and confrere, violinist Stephane Grappelli, recorded perhaps as many as fifty tunes in the space of a couple of months in 1949 in Rome. The Italian rhythm section of piano, bass and drums was probably intended to "modernize" the frontmen's sound, replacing as it did their more Gallic all-string band of the 1930s, the Quintet of the Hot Club of France. But like the two-guitars-and-bass backing Reinhardt and Grappelli pioneered fifteen years earlier, this American-style rhythm section stays out of the way, and violin and guitar are the stars of the show. As with the Quintet, the repertoire is a mix of popular Tin Pan Alley tunes and Reinhardt or Reinhardt-Grappelli concoctions, including versions of "Minor Swing," "Swing 42" and "Djangology."
1 Minor Swing
2 Beyond the Sea (La Mer)
3 Bricktop
4 Honeysuckle Rose
5 Heavy Artillery (Artillerie Lourde)
6 Djangology
7 After You've Gone
8 Où Es-Tu, Mon Amour? (Where Are You, Mylove?)
9 I Saw Stars
10 Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be)
11 Menilmontant
12 Swing 42