DJANGO REINHARDT – 1940-1941 | The Classics Chronological Series – 852 (1995) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

All of these sides but one (a pop vocal by Charles Trenet) were made in December 1940, just half a year into the Nazi occupation of Paris. People are still marveling over the fact that Django Reinhardt, a Gypsy who played music closely aligned with Jews and Afro-Americans, was not arrested and put to death by the invasive regime, for these collective jams were and are the antithesis of fascist ideology. It just so happens that this little slice of the chronology contains some of Reinhardt's most interesting material, wonderfully evolved from the earlier Hot Club de France, yet filled with premonitions of how jazz would come to sound ten or even 20 years later. Hubert Rostaing was an inventive clarinetist, sounding something like Marshall Royal, and is featured on most of these sides. Alix Combelle blew a boisterous, Coleman Hawkins-inspired tenor saxophone (as does Rostaing on the sessions of December 18 and 19). Present throughout all of these sessions is a wonderful percussionist by the name of Pierre Fouad, who recorded as a leader for the Swing label a few years later. Tony Rovira deserves to be remembered as a gifted bassist, particularly for the sensitivity he demonstrates on these recordings. The most precious and musically inventive track is "Oiseaux des iles," a brilliantly constructed gypsy-jazz fantasy of such ethnic potency that it would have given Dr. Goebbels a case of non-Aryan indigestion. Trumpeter Pierre Allier, sort of a French person's Frankie Newton, leads a couple of bands, both small and not-so-small, providing one or two examples of how Reinhardt sounded as part of the rhythm section in a large jazz orchestra. The crowning glory of this wonderful album is "Festival Swing," a four-minute all-star big band blowout, with Charles Delaunay introducing each and every member of the band in French, providing English-speaking people with a valuable pronouncing lexicon for all of those wonderful French names. arwulf arwulf     Tracklist :

DJANGO REINHARDT – 1944-1946 | The Classics Chronological Series – 945 (1997) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Thanks to a certain high ranking Nazi official whose penchant for jazz music caused him to violate the aggressively racist policies of his own government, Django Reinhardt was able to perform his music throughout most of the Occupation without being deported, involuntarily sterilized, or exterminated along with many of his fellow Gypsies. Nevertheless, weary of an imposed police state and shaken by Allied "precision" bombardment of Paris, Reinhardt and his second wife Naguine attempted to flee to Switzerland by way of Thonon-les-Bains at Lac Leman in 1943. Apprehended and jailed at Thonon, they were set free by the same fortuitous fluke in the Nazi establishment. Given the disruptive nature of these harrowing circumstances, it is not surprising that the only recordings known to have been made with Reinhardt in attendance during the year 1944 are three sides cut on November 3, almost exactly six months after the birth of Babik Reinhardt. Performed by a big band led by tenor saxophonist Noel Chiboust, they constitute the first three selections on the thirteenth volume in Django Reinhardt's portion of the Classics Chronological Series. Recorded in January 1945, tracks four through seven are attributed to the Jazz Club Mystery Hot Band, a mostly American group consisting of Reinhardt, trumpeter Bernie Privin, tenor saxophonist Peanuts Hucko, pianist Mel Powell, bassist Joe Schulman, and drummer Ray McKinley. The Classics chronology skips over a number of recordings that Reinhardt made during 1945, including an unaccompanied guitar solo and performances by several groups of varying size. A handful of titles, played by the U.S. Air Transport Command Band under the direction of Sgt. Jack Platt, do appear as tracks 8-11. The producers of this collection chose to "cut to the chase" by delving into the first months of 1946 when Reinhardt recorded with two distinctively different Hot Club Quintettes. On January 31 and February 1 he was reunited with violinist Stéphane Grappelli in London (tracks 12-19), and on May 15 he cut four sides with a reconfigured Quintette without a violinist and greatly modernized by the innovative technique of clarinetist/alto saxophonist Hubert Rostaing (tracks 20-23). Reinhardt's postwar career (1945-1953) was characterized by what seems in retrospect to have been a puzzling gradual wane in popularity. This appears to have set in at once, for his response to a paucity of regular work during the spring of 1946 led Reinhardt to invest in a set of brushes, paints, and other materials necessary for quiet reflection as he began expanding his improvisational energies to include light as well as sound as his personal system of poetics evolved from the audible to the visual. This is a useful if incomplete sampling of Reinhardt's late wartime and immediate postwar recordings. For a more complete chronology of Reinhardt's entire surviving musical legacy, consult the exhaustively thorough Integrale series, available in 20 double-disc volumes from Fremeaux & Associes. arwulf arwulf     Tracklist :