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98-452: Stéphane Grappelli ( French pronunciation: [stefan ɡʁapɛli] ; 26 January 1908 – 1 December 1997) was a French jazz violinist. He is best known as a founder of the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands. He has been called "the grandfather of jazz violinists" and continued playing concerts around

196-626: A "special relationship to time defined as 'swing ' ". Jazz involves "a spontaneity and vitality of musical production in which improvisation plays a role" and contains a "sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror the individuality of the performing jazz musician". A broader definition that encompasses different eras of jazz has been proposed by Travis Jackson: "it is music that includes qualities such as swing, improvising, group interaction, developing an 'individual voice', and being open to different musical possibilities". Krin Gibbard argued that "jazz

294-450: A Catholic orphanage. Grappelli said of this time: I look back at it as an abominable memory ... The place was supposed to be under the eye of the government, but the government looked elsewhere. We slept on the floor, and often were without food. There were many times when I had to fight for a crust of bread. Grappelli compared his early life to a Dickens novel, and said that he once tried to eat flies to ease his hunger. He stayed at

392-576: A German prisoner of war . He was later released because of his tuberculosis and returned to France late in February 1941. After a visit home he went to Paris and took up his old chair in Legrand's orchestra. He also recorded with the Jazz Dixit and his own Septuor à Cordes (string septet) from time to time. Both of these units were made up of other musicians in the Legrand organization. The septet

490-499: A brief affair with Sylvia Caro that resulted in a daughter named Evelyne. Sylvia remained in Paris with her daughter for the duration of World War II. Father and daughter were reunited in 1946 when Evelyne travelled to London from France to stay with Grappelli for about a year. From 1952 to 1980, he shared much of his life with a female friend, Jean Barclay, for whom he felt a deep brotherly affection. Grappelli never married, however, and it

588-486: A brief period of independent learning, Grappelli was enrolled at the Conservatoire de Paris on 31 December 1920, which his father hoped would give him a chance to learn music theory , ear-training , and solfeggio . In 1923, Grappelli graduated with a second-tier medal. Around this time, his father married a woman named Anna Fuchs and moved to Strasbourg . Grappelli remained in Paris because he disliked Fuchs. At

686-664: A cameo appearance in the 1978 film King of the Gypsies with mandolinist David Grisman . Three years later they performed in concert. He also made a 1975 cameo as a violinist in Little House on the Prairie season 2, episode 8. In the 1980s he gave several concerts with British cellist Julian Lloyd Webber . In 1997, Grappelli received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award . He is an inductee of

784-421: A classically trained violinist. Warlop admired Grappelli's jazz-inspired playing, while Grappelli envied Warlop's income. After experimenting with the piano, Grappelli stopped playing the violin, choosing simplicity, a new sound, and paid performances over familiarity. He began playing piano in a big band led by a musician called Grégor. In 1929, after a night of drinking, Grégor learned that Grappelli used to play

882-473: A drum made by stretching skin over a flour-barrel. Lavish festivals with African-based dances to drums were organized on Sundays at Place Congo, or Congo Square, in New Orleans until 1843. There are historical accounts of other music and dance gatherings elsewhere in the southern United States. Robert Palmer said of percussive slave music: Usually such music was associated with annual festivals, when

980-527: A duet. Although Menuhin had no jazz training and a distinctly classical style of playing, the result went down very well with the British public. The pair went on to record three collaborative albums between 1972 and 1976, with Menuhin playing parts written out by Grappelli while the latter improvised in a classic jazz fashion. During their appearance on Parkinson's show, Menuhin played his prized Stradivari dating from 1714, while Grappelli revealed his instrument

1078-410: A few hundred copies each and both discs are highly sought after by collectors today as they have never been re-issued. Legrand's orchestra was extremely busy during the war years with recordings, broadcasts and touring around France for personal appearances. During 1941, Legrand's orchestra made a movie called Mademoiselle Swing , released in 1942 with singer Irène de Trebert . Warlop was the middle of

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1176-456: A form of folk music which arose in part from the work songs and field hollers of African-American slaves on plantations. These work songs were commonly structured around a repetitive call-and-response pattern, but early blues was also improvisational. Classical music performance is evaluated more by its fidelity to the musical score , with less attention given to interpretation, ornamentation, and accompaniment. The classical performer's goal

1274-604: A good position in any classical orchestra in France, Warlop preferred to tour as a jazz soloist and in small groups in the south of France. His last engagement was with Jimmy Réna's small group at the Grand Hotel Superbagnières above Luchon , France in the Pyrenees near the border with Spain . His tuberculosis finally caught up with him, along with his heavy consumption of alcohol and cocaine . He died at

1372-549: A leader but stayed active in music, continuing on with Raymond Legrand. After the war many French musicians, singers and film stars were accused of supporting the enemy by appearing on German-controlled radio, playing for German troops, or touring in Germany. Many were banned from working for a time. Warlop had to sit out for two months and Legrand for one year. He never played again in Paris or recorded after 1945. Despite his abilities in classical music, which would have gained him

1470-410: A limited melodic range, sounding like a field holler, and the guitar accompaniment was slapped rather than strummed, like a small drum which responded in syncopated accents, functioning as another "voice". Handy and his band members were formally trained African-American musicians who had not grown up with the blues, yet he was able to adapt the blues to a larger band instrument format and arrange them in

1568-460: A multi- strain ragtime march with four parts that feature recurring themes and a bass line with copious seventh chords . Its structure was the basis for many other rags, and the syncopations in the right hand, especially in the transition between the first and second strain, were novel at the time. The last four measures of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899) are shown below. African-based rhythmic patterns such as tresillo and its variants,

1666-518: A pitch which he called a 'jazz ball' "because it wobbles and you simply can't do anything with it". The use of the word in a musical context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune . Its first documented use in a musical context in New Orleans was in a November 14, 1916, Times-Picayune article about "jas bands". In an interview with National Public Radio , musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of

1764-660: A popular music form. Handy wrote about his adopting of the blues: The primitive southern Negro, as he sang, was sure to bear down on the third and seventh tone of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton field of the Delta or on the Levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I had never heard this slur used by a more sophisticated Negro, or by any white man. I tried to convey this effect ... by introducing flat thirds and sevenths (now called blue notes) into my song, although its prevailing key

1862-432: A rapturous reception for the "new" (old) format group at that year's Cambridge Folk Festival , after which he favoured the guitar-based trio (with double bass) for a series of increasingly successful concert tours around the globe. These tours would virtually occupy the remainder of Grappelli's life; away from the touring circuit, however, he also favoured numerous other instrumental combinations on record. Other guitarists in

1960-504: A solo for the title track of Pink Floyd 's 1975 album Wish You Were Here . This was made almost inaudible in the mix, and so the violinist was not credited, according to Roger Waters , as it would be "a bit of an insult". A remastered version with Grappelli's contribution fully audible can be found on the 2011 editions of Wish You Were Here . Grappelli composed the score for two French films: Going Places ( Bertrand Blier , 1974) and May Fools ( Louis Malle , 1990). Grappelli made

2058-406: A standard "lounge jazz" format, accompanied by a pianist and drummer. Grappelli was making a living, but by now had very little impact on the jazz world. In 1971, British chat-show host Michael Parkinson , a longtime jazz fan, came up with the idea of including Grappelli on his show Parkinson , where he would be joined by the classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin , with the two musicians performing

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2156-544: A three-quarter-sized violin, which his father purchased by pawning a suit. Although Stéphane received violin lessons, he preferred to learn the instrument on his own: My first lessons were in the streets, watching how other violinists played ... The first violinist that I saw play was at the Barbès metro station, sheltered under the overhead metro tracks. When I asked how one should play, he exploded in laughter. I left, completely humiliated with my violin under my arm. After

2254-527: A violinist interested in jazz, he invited Grappelli to play with him in his caravan. Although the two played for hours that afternoon, their commitments to their respective bands prevented them from pursuing a career together. In 1934 they met again at Claridge's in London, England, and began a musical partnership. Pierre Nourry, the secretary of the Hot Club de France , invited Reinhardt and Grappelli to form

2352-896: A week at "Jazz Power" in Milan , accompanied by Italian jazz musicians as guitarist Franco Cerri , bassist/arranger Pino Presti and drummer Tullio De Piscopo . Grappelli played on hundreds of recordings, including sessions with Duke Ellington , jazz pianists Oscar Peterson , Michel Petrucciani and Claude Bolling , jazz violinists Svend Asmussen , Jean-Luc Ponty , and Stuff Smith , Indian classical violinist L. Subramaniam , vibraphonist Gary Burton , pop singer Paul Simon , mandolin player David Grisman , classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin , orchestral conductor André Previn , guitar player Bucky Pizzarelli , guitar player Joe Pass , cello player Yo Yo Ma , harmonica and jazz guitar player Toots Thielemans , jazz guitarist Henri Crolla , bassist Jon Burr and fiddler Mark O'Connor . Grappelli recorded

2450-454: Is a construct" which designates "a number of musics with enough in common to be understood as part of a coherent tradition". Duke Ellington , one of jazz's most famous figures, said, "It's all music." Although jazz is considered difficult to define, in part because it contains many subgenres, improvisation is one of its defining elements. The centrality of improvisation is attributed to the influence of earlier forms of music such as blues ,

2548-693: Is a fundamental rhythmic figure heard in many different slave musics of the Caribbean, as well as the Afro-Caribbean folk dances performed in New Orleans Congo Square and Gottschalk's compositions (for example "Souvenirs From Havana" (1859)). Tresillo (shown below) is the most basic and most prevalent duple-pulse rhythmic cell in sub-Saharan African music traditions and the music of the African Diaspora . Tresillo

2646-558: Is a reminder of "an oppressive and racist society and restrictions on their artistic visions". Amiri Baraka argues that there is a "white jazz" genre that expresses whiteness . White jazz musicians appeared in the Midwest and in other areas throughout the U.S. Papa Jack Laine , who ran the Reliance band in New Orleans in the 1910s, was called "the father of white jazz". The Original Dixieland Jazz Band , whose members were white, were

2744-493: Is heard prominently in New Orleans second line music and in other forms of popular music from that city from the turn of the 20th century to present. "By and large the simpler African rhythmic patterns survived in jazz ... because they could be adapted more readily to European rhythmic conceptions," jazz historian Gunther Schuller observed. "Some survived, others were discarded as the Europeanization progressed." In

2842-437: Is to play the composition as it was written. In contrast, jazz is often characterized by the product of interaction and collaboration, placing less value on the contribution of the composer, if there is one, and more on the performer. The jazz performer interprets a tune in individual ways, never playing the same composition twice. Depending on the performer's mood, experience, and interaction with band members or audience members,

2940-491: Is widely accepted that he was gay; in 1981 he met Joseph Oldenhove, who would be his companion until his death. Grappelli died in Paris on 1 December 1997, suffering heart failure after a series of minor cerebral attacks. His funeral, on 5 December, took place at the Église Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Paris , within sight of the entrance to the Lariboisière Hospital where he had been born 89 years earlier. His body

3038-961: The Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame. Grappelli continued touring up to the last year of his life; in 1997, although his health was by poor, he toured the United Kingdom in March and then played concerts in Australia and New Zealand, giving his last public performance in Christchurch , New Zealand, before returning to Paris via Hong Kong. He made his final recording, four tracks with the classical violinist Iwao Furusawa, plus guitarist Marc Fosset and bassist Philippe Viret, in Paris in August 1996 (released as As Time Goes By: Stéphane Grappelli and Iwao Furusawa ). In May 1935, Grappelli had

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3136-625: The Atlantic slave trade had brought nearly 400,000 Africans to North America. The slaves came largely from West Africa and the greater Congo River basin and brought strong musical traditions with them. The African traditions primarily use a single-line melody and call-and-response pattern, and the rhythms have a counter-metric structure and reflect African speech patterns. An 1885 account says that they were making strange music (Creole) on an equally strange variety of 'instruments'—washboards, washtubs, jugs, boxes beaten with sticks or bones and

3234-636: The Conservatory of Lille around the age of 10 and started his studies at the Conservatoire de Paris (university level) aged 13. In mid-1939, Warlop started working as a permanent member of the Raymond Legrand Orchestra, the most popular big band in France during the early to mid-1940s. Warlop was called up for military service in September 1939 and left Paris. Soon after hostilities started between Germany and France he became

3332-617: The Dixieland jazz revival of the 1940s, Black musicians rejected it as being shallow nostalgia entertainment for white audiences. On the other hand, traditional jazz enthusiasts have dismissed bebop, free jazz, and jazz fusion as forms of debasement and betrayal. An alternative view is that jazz can absorb and transform diverse musical styles. By avoiding the creation of norms, jazz allows avant-garde styles to emerge. For some African Americans, jazz has drawn attention to African-American contributions to culture and history. For others, jazz

3430-473: The Quintette du Hot Club de France , with Louis Vola on bass and Joseph Reinhardt and Roger Chaput on guitar. Also located in the Montmartre district was the artistic salon of R-26 , at which Grappelli and Reinhardt performed regularly. The Quintette du Hot Club de France disbanded in 1939 upon the outbreak of World War II ; Grappelli was in London at the time, and stayed there for the duration of

3528-411: The 1920s Jazz Age , it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music . Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes , complex chords , call and response vocals , polyrhythms and improvisation . As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in

3626-451: The 1950s, many women jazz instrumentalists were prominent, some sustaining long careers. Some of the most distinctive improvisers, composers, and bandleaders in jazz have been women. Trombonist Melba Liston is acknowledged as the first female horn player to work in major bands and to make a real impact on jazz, not only as a musician but also as a respected composer and arranger, particularly through her collaborations with Randy Weston from

3724-540: The 1960s, Grappelli made regular appearances on the BBC Light Programme , French Public Radio, and the pirate station Radio Luxembourg . In 1967, he returned to Paris to take up a regular engagement providing music for diners at the "Le Toit de Paris" restaurant in the Paris Hilton Hotel, a position he kept up until 1972, for it provided regular work plus accommodation at the hotel. He played in

3822-476: The 21st century, such as Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz . The origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm , a slang term dating back to 1860 meaning ' pep, energy ' . The earliest written record of the word is in a 1912 article in the Los Angeles Times in which a minor league baseball pitcher described

3920-638: The Black middle-class. Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre, which originated in African-American communities of primarily the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from their spirituals , work songs , field hollers , shouts and chants and rhymed simple narrative ballads . The African use of pentatonic scales contributed to

4018-548: The British "Diz Disley Trio" providing his instrumental backing over the years included Denny Wright , Ike Isaacs , the Irish guitarist Louis Stewart , John Etheridge and Martin Taylor , while double bass was often provided by Dutchman Jack Sewing; in his later years, Grappelli also used a Parisian trio which included guitarist Marc Fosset and bassist Patrice Caratini. In April 1973, Grappelli performed with great success during

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4116-464: The Caribbean. African-based rhythmic patterns were retained in the United States in large part through "body rhythms" such as stomping, clapping, and patting juba dancing . In the opinion of jazz historian Ernest Borneman , what preceded New Orleans jazz before 1890 was "Afro-Latin music", similar to what was played in the Caribbean at the time. A three-stroke pattern known in Cuban music as tresillo

4214-541: The Italian Army in 1914. Having written about American dancer Isadora Duncan , who was living in Paris, Ernesto appealed to her to care for his son. Stéphane was enrolled in Duncan's dance school at the age of six, and he learned to love French Impressionist music . With the war approaching, Duncan fled the country; she turned over her château to be used as a military hospital. Ernesto subsequently entrusted his son to

4312-665: The Starlight Roof at the famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel . He entertained audiences with a light elegant musical style which remained popular with audiences for nearly three decades from the 1930s until the late 1950s. Jazz originated in the late-19th to early-20th century. It developed out of many forms of music, including blues , ragtime , European harmony , African rhythmic rituals, spirituals , hymns , marches , vaudeville song, and dance music . It also incorporated interpretations of American and European classical music, entwined with African and slave folk songs and

4410-589: The U.S. Female jazz performers and composers have contributed to jazz throughout its history. Although Betty Carter , Ella Fitzgerald , Adelaide Hall , Billie Holiday , Peggy Lee , Abbey Lincoln , Anita O'Day , Dinah Washington , and Ethel Waters were recognized for their vocal talent, less familiar were bandleaders, composers, and instrumentalists such as pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong , trumpeter Valaida Snow , and songwriters Irene Higginbotham and Dorothy Fields . Women began playing instruments in jazz in

4508-414: The United States, where he performed in a new style using an amplified archtop guitar with Duke Ellington 's orchestra. On Reinhardt's return, he and Grappelli reunited periodically for concerts on occasions when the latter was visiting Paris; however, the pre-war Quintette was never re-formed. The pair also briefly toured Italy, where they were supported by an Italian rhythm section of piano, bass and drums;

4606-471: The age of 15, Grappelli began busking full-time to support himself. His playing caught the attention of an elderly violinist, who invited him to accompany silent films in the pit orchestra at the Théâtre Gaumont. He played there for six hours daily over a two-year period. During orchestra breaks, he visited Le Boudon, a brasserie , where he would listen to songs from an American proto-jukebox. Here he

4704-552: The blues are undocumented, though they can be seen as the secular counterpart of the spirituals. However, as Gerhard Kubik points out, whereas the spirituals are homophonic , rural blues and early jazz "was largely based on concepts of heterophony ". During the early 19th century an increasing number of black musicians learned to play European instruments, particularly the violin, which they used to parody European dance music in their own cakewalk dances. In turn, European American minstrel show performers in blackface popularized

4802-555: The development of blue notes in blues and jazz. As Kubik explains: Many of the rural blues of the Deep South are stylistically an extension and merger of basically two broad accompanied song-style traditions in the west central Sudanic belt: W. C. Handy became interested in folk blues of the Deep South while traveling through the Mississippi Delta. In this folk blues form, the singer would improvise freely within

4900-434: The early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles , biguine , ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation . However, jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands , Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), and gypsy jazz (a style that emphasized musette waltzes) were

4998-509: The early 1920s, drawing particular recognition on piano. When male jazz musicians were drafted during World War II, many all-female bands replaced them. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm , which was founded in 1937, was a popular band that became the first all-female integrated band in the U.S. and the first to travel with the USO , touring Europe in 1945. Women were members of the big bands of Woody Herman and Gerald Wilson . Beginning in

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5096-480: The education of freed African Americans. Although strict segregation limited employment opportunities for most blacks, many were able to find work in entertainment. Black musicians were able to provide entertainment in dances, minstrel shows , and in vaudeville , during which time many marching bands were formed. Black pianists played in bars, clubs, and brothels, as ragtime developed. Ragtime appeared as sheet music, popularized by African-American musicians such as

5194-556: The entertainer Ernest Hogan , whose hit songs appeared in 1895. Two years later, Vess Ossman recorded a medley of these songs as a banjo solo known as "Rag Time Medley". Also in 1897, the white composer William Krell published his " Mississippi Rag " as the first written piano instrumental ragtime piece, and Tom Turpin published his "Harlem Rag", the first rag published by an African-American. Classically trained pianist Scott Joplin produced his " Original Rags " in 1898 and, in 1899, had an international hit with " Maple Leaf Rag ",

5292-459: The first jazz group to record, and Bix Beiderbecke was one of the most prominent jazz soloists of the 1920s. The Chicago Style was developed by white musicians such as Eddie Condon , Bud Freeman , Jimmy McPartland , and Dave Tough . Others from Chicago such as Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa became leading members of swing during the 1930s. Many bands included both Black and white musicians. These musicians helped change attitudes toward race in

5390-415: The first written music which was rhythmically based on an African motif (1803). From the perspective of African-American music, the "habanera rhythm" (also known as "congo"), "tango-congo", or tango . can be thought of as a combination of tresillo and the backbeat . The habanera was the first of many Cuban music genres which enjoyed periods of popularity in the United States and reinforced and inspired

5488-532: The habanera rhythm and cinquillo , are heard in the ragtime compositions of Joplin and Turpin. Joplin's " Solace " (1909) is generally considered to be in the habanera genre: both of the pianist's hands play in a syncopated fashion, completely abandoning any sense of a march rhythm. Ned Sublette postulates that the tresillo/habanera rhythm "found its way into ragtime and the cakewalk," whilst Roberts suggests that "the habanera influence may have been part of what freed black music from ragtime's European bass". In

5586-424: The influences of West African culture. Its composition and style have changed many times throughout the years with each performer's personal interpretation and improvisation, which is also one of the greatest appeals of the genre. By the 18th century, slaves in the New Orleans area gathered socially at a special market, in an area which later became known as Congo Square , famous for its African dances. By 1866,

5684-460: The instruments of jazz: brass, drums, and reeds tuned in the European 12-tone scale. Small bands contained a combination of self-taught and formally educated musicians, many from the funeral procession tradition. These bands traveled in black communities in the deep south. Beginning in 1914, Louisiana Creole and African-American musicians played in vaudeville shows which carried jazz to cities in

5782-578: The late 1950s into the 1990s. Jewish Americans played a significant role in jazz. As jazz spread, it developed to encompass many different cultures, and the work of Jewish composers in Tin Pan Alley helped shape the many different sounds that jazz came to incorporate. Jewish Americans were able to thrive in Jazz because of the probationary whiteness that they were allotted at the time. George Bornstein wrote that African Americans were sympathetic to

5880-539: The late 1950s, using the mode , or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation, as did free jazz , which explored playing without regular meter, beat and formal structures. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock music 's rhythms, electric instruments, and highly amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay. Other styles and genres abound in

5978-955: The many top players he employed, such as George Brunies , Sharkey Bonano , and future members of the Original Dixieland Jass Band . During the early 1900s, jazz was mostly performed in African-American and mulatto communities due to segregation laws. Storyville brought jazz to a wider audience through tourists who visited the port city of New Orleans. Many jazz musicians from African-American communities were hired to perform in bars and brothels. These included Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton in addition to those from other communities, such as Lorenzo Tio and Alcide Nunez . Louis Armstrong started his career in Storyville and found success in Chicago. Storyville

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6076-413: The melody was stated briefly at the beginning and most of the piece was improvised. Modal jazz abandoned chord progressions to allow musicians to improvise even more. In many forms of jazz, a soloist is supported by a rhythm section of one or more chordal instruments (piano, guitar), double bass, and drums. The rhythm section plays chords and rhythms that outline the composition structure and complement

6174-697: The music internationally, combining syncopation with European harmonic accompaniment. In the mid-1800s the white New Orleans composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk adapted slave rhythms and melodies from Cuba and other Caribbean islands into piano salon music. New Orleans was the main nexus between the Afro-Caribbean and African American cultures. The Black Codes outlawed drumming by slaves, which meant that African drumming traditions were not preserved in North America, unlike in Cuba, Haiti, and elsewhere in

6272-583: The music of New Orleans with the music of Cuba, Wynton Marsalis observes that tresillo is the New Orleans "clavé", a Spanish word meaning "code" or "key", as in the key to a puzzle, or mystery. Although the pattern is only half a clave , Marsalis makes the point that the single-celled figure is the guide-pattern of New Orleans music. Jelly Roll Morton called the rhythmic figure the Spanish tinge and considered it an essential ingredient of jazz. The abolition of slavery in 1865 led to new opportunities for

6370-467: The northeastern United States, a "hot" style of playing ragtime had developed, notably James Reese Europe 's symphonic Clef Club orchestra in New York City, which played a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall in 1912. The Baltimore rag style of Eubie Blake influenced James P. Johnson 's development of stride piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides

6468-618: The northern and western parts of the U.S. Jazz became international in 1914, when the Creole Band with cornettist Freddie Keppard performed the first ever jazz concert outside the United States, at the Pantages Playhouse Theatre in Winnipeg , Canada. In New Orleans, a white bandleader named Papa Jack Laine integrated blacks and whites in his marching band. He was known as "the father of white jazz" because of

6566-468: The orphanage until his father returned from the war in 1918, settling them in an apartment in Barbès. Having been sickened by his experiences with the Italian military, Ernesto took Stéphane to city hall, pulled two witnesses off the street, and had his son naturalized as a French citizen on 28 July 1919. His first name Stefano was Gallicized to Stéphane. Grappelli began playing the violin at the age of 12 on

6664-470: The performer may change melodies, harmonies, and time signatures. In early Dixieland , a.k.a. New Orleans jazz, performers took turns playing melodies and improvising countermelodies . In the swing era of the 1920s–40s, big bands relied more on arrangements which were written or learned by ear and memorized. Soloists improvised within these arrangements. In the bebop era of the 1940s, big bands gave way to small groups and minimal arrangements in which

6762-500: The period 1820–1850. Some of the earliest [Mississippi] Delta settlers came from the vicinity of New Orleans, where drumming was never actively discouraged for very long and homemade drums were used to accompany public dancing until the outbreak of the Civil War. Another influence came from the harmonic style of hymns of the church, which black slaves had learned and incorporated into their own music as spirituals . The origins of

6860-458: The perspective of other musical traditions, such as European music history or African music. But critic Joachim-Ernst Berendt argues that its terms of reference and its definition should be broader, defining jazz as a "form of art music which originated in the United States through the confrontation of the Negro with European music" and arguing that it differs from European music in that jazz has

6958-494: The plight of the Jewish American and vice versa. As disenfranchised minorities themselves, Jewish composers of popular music saw themselves as natural allies with African Americans. The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson is one example of how Jewish Americans were able to bring jazz, music that African Americans developed, into popular culture. Benny Goodman was a vital Jewish American to the progression of Jazz. Goodman

7056-459: The post-Civil War period (after 1865), African Americans were able to obtain surplus military bass drums, snare drums and fifes, and an original African-American drum and fife music emerged, featuring tresillo and related syncopated rhythmic figures. This was a drumming tradition that was distinct from its Caribbean counterparts, expressing a uniquely African-American sensibility. "The snare and bass drummers played syncopated cross-rhythms ," observed

7154-676: The pre-jazz era and contributed to the codification of jazz through the publication of some of the first jazz sheet music. The music of New Orleans , Louisiana had a profound effect on the creation of early jazz. In New Orleans, slaves could practice elements of their culture such as voodoo and playing drums. Many early jazz musicians played in the bars and brothels of the red-light district around Basin Street called Storyville . In addition to dance bands, there were marching bands which played at lavish funerals (later called jazz funerals ). The instruments used by marching bands and dance bands became

7252-537: The prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines. The mid-1950s saw the emergence of hard bop , which introduced influences from rhythm and blues , gospel , and blues to small groups and particularly to saxophone and piano. Modal jazz developed in

7350-491: The recording studio, but the opportunities for a swing violinist of his generation were becoming limited; despite attempts to modernise his style, Grappelli was never particularly interested in the bebop style which was then fashionable in the jazz world. He made a brief filmed appearance in Paul Paviot's 1957 film Django Reinhardt , in which he plays "Minor Swing" alongside Joseph Reinhardt , Henri Crolla and others. In

7448-410: The rhythm and bassline. In Ohio and elsewhere in the mid-west the major influence was ragtime, until about 1919. Around 1912, when the four-string banjo and saxophone came in, musicians began to improvise the melody line, but the harmony and rhythm remained unchanged. A contemporary account states that blues could only be heard in jazz in the gut-bucket cabarets, which were generally looked down upon by

7546-540: The same work with the same orchestra on the Columbia label about a year later. It was released to the public but did not sell in the hoped for numbers. The same session that produced Warlop's performance of Swing Concerto also produced Le Noël du Prisonnier (A Prisoner's Christmas), another longer work that was released on both sides of a Columbia 12 inch/ 30 cm record rather than on Disques Swing. Both Noël du Prisonnier and Darrieux's rendition of Swing Concerto only sold

7644-556: The slang connotations of the term, saying: "When Broadway picked it up, they called it 'J-A-Z-Z'. It wasn't called that. It was spelled 'J-A-S-S'. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, you wouldn't say it in front of ladies." The American Dialect Society named it the Word of the 20th Century . Jazz is difficult to define because it encompasses a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years, from ragtime to rock -infused fusion . Attempts have been made to define jazz from

7742-444: The soloist. In avant-garde and free jazz , the separation of soloist and band is reduced, and there is license, or even a requirement, for the abandoning of chords, scales, and meters. Since the emergence of bebop, forms of jazz that are commercially oriented or influenced by popular music have been criticized. According to Bruce Johnson, there has always been a "tension between jazz as a commercial music and an art form". Regarding

7840-541: The three violin players in the band for the film and can be heard on short solos in several instances. The film is available on DVD in France and only in French. In July and August 1942, Legrand's orchestra visited Germany and played for French war prisoners and laborers that were working there. They did not play for the German public or military during this tour or on German radio. Late in 1943, Warlop made his last recordings as

7938-436: The tour was documented, with around 50 tracks recorded for an Italian radio station, about half of which can be heard on the album Djangology (released in 2005). This was to be the last set of recordings featuring the pair, with Reinhardt moving into a more bebop/modern jazz idiom and playing with younger French musicians prior to his early death in 1953, aged only 43. Throughout the 1950s, Grappelli made occasional visits to

8036-500: The twice-daily ferry between both cities to perform, and the habanera quickly took root in the musically fertile Crescent City. John Storm Roberts states that the musical genre habanera "reached the U.S. twenty years before the first rag was published." For the more than quarter-century in which the cakewalk , ragtime , and proto-jazz were forming and developing, the habanera was a consistent part of African-American popular music. Habaneras were widely available as sheet music and were

8134-575: The use of tresillo-based rhythms in African-American music. New Orleans native Louis Moreau Gottschalk 's piano piece "Ojos Criollos (Danse Cubaine)" (1860) was influenced by the composer's studies in Cuba: the habanera rhythm is clearly heard in the left hand. In Gottschalk's symphonic work "A Night in the Tropics" (1859), the tresillo variant cinquillo appears extensively. The figure was later used by Scott Joplin and other ragtime composers. Comparing

8232-611: The violin. Grégor borrowed a violin and asked Grappelli to improvise over "Dinah". Delighted by what he heard, Grégor urged Grappelli to return to playing the violin. In 1930, Grégor ran into financial trouble. He was involved in an automobile accident that resulted in several deaths, and fled to South America to avoid arrest. Grégor's band reunited as a jazz ensemble under the leadership of pianist Alain Romans and saxophonist André Ekyan . While playing with this band, Grappelli met gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1931. Looking for

8330-740: The war. In 1940, jazz pianist George Shearing made his debut as a sideman in Grappelli's band. When the war was over, Reinhardt came to England for a reunion with Grappelli. They recorded some titles in London with the "English Quintette" during January and February 1946 for EMI and Decca, using a rhythm section consisting of English guitarists Jack Llewelyn and Alan Hodgkiss together with the Jamaican jazz bassist Coleridge Goode . Grappelli chose to remain in England, while Reinhardt returned to Paris before undertaking an only moderately successful visit to

8428-400: The world well into his eighties. For the first three decades of his career, he was billed using a gallicised spelling of his last name, Grappelly , reverting to the Italian spelling Grappelli in 1969. The latter is used when referring to the violinist, including reissues of his early work. Grappelli was born at Hôpital Lariboisière in Paris, France . His father, Italian Ernesto Grappelli,

8526-498: The writer Robert Palmer, speculating that "this tradition must have dated back to the latter half of the nineteenth century, and it could have not have developed in the first place if there hadn't been a reservoir of polyrhythmic sophistication in the culture it nurtured." African-American music began incorporating Afro-Cuban rhythmic motifs in the 19th century when the habanera (Cuban contradanza ) gained international popularity. Musicians from Havana and New Orleans would take

8624-500: The year's crop was harvested and several days were set aside for celebration. As late as 1861, a traveler in North Carolina saw dancers dressed in costumes that included horned headdresses and cow tails and heard music provided by a sheepskin-covered "gumbo box", apparently a frame drum; triangles and jawbones furnished the auxiliary percussion. There are quite a few [accounts] from the southeastern states and Louisiana dating from

8722-683: Was a child prodigy who began musical studies with his mother, a music professor, and entered the Conservatory of Douai , the second oldest in France, aged six. There he was a student of Victor Gallois who had won the Prix de Rome for composition in 1905. Aged seven, he performed his first public concert accompanied by his mother on piano in Douai. Aged eight in 1919 he played his first concert in Paris , to benefit victims of World War I . He transferred to

8820-459: Was born in Alatri , Lazio , while his French mother, Anna Emilie Hanoque, was from St-Omer . Ernesto was a scholar who taught Italian, sold translations, and wrote articles for local journals. Grappelli's mother died when he was five, leaving his father to care for him. Although he was residing in France when World War I began, Ernesto was still an Italian citizen, and was consequently drafted into

8918-559: Was cremated and his ashes entombed in the city's Père Lachaise Cemetery . He is the subject of the documentary Stéphane Grappelli – A Life in the Jazz Century . Jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans , Louisiana , in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues , ragtime , European harmony , African rhythmic rituals, spirituals , hymns , marches , vaudeville song, and dance music . Since

9016-538: Was introduced to jazz. In 1928, Grappelli was a member of the orchestra at the Ambassador Hotel while bandleader Paul Whiteman and jazz violinist Joe Venuti were performing there. Jazz violinists were rare, and though Venuti played mainly commercial jazz themes and seldom improvised, Grappelli was struck by his bowing when he played " Dinah ". As a result, Grappelli began developing a jazz-influenced style of violin music. Grappelli lived with Michel Warlop ,

9114-408: Was made by Goffredo Cappa in 1695. In 1973, British guitarist Diz Disley had the idea of prising Grappelli away from his "lounge jazz" format with piano players to play once again with the backing of acoustic guitars and double bass, re-creating a version of the "Hot Club" sound, but now with Grappelli as sole leader. Grappelli's reservations about returning to this format were dissipated following

9212-449: Was made with a large concert orchestra. It took up both sides of a 30 cm/ 12 inch 78 RPM disc that ran for seven and a half minutes. Disques Swing did not issue it and it sat in the vaults until it was finally released on a CD in 1989. The work showed off Warlop's skills in both the classical and jazz realms but Swing feared that the mix of classical and jazz styles would not be well received. Another violinist, Pierre Darrieux, recorded

9310-433: Was major ... , and I carried this device into my melody as well. The publication of his " Memphis Blues " sheet music in 1912 introduced the 12-bar blues to the world (although Gunther Schuller argues that it is not really a blues, but "more like a cakewalk"). This composition, as well as his later " St. Louis Blues " and others, included the habanera rhythm, and would become jazz standards . Handy's music career began in

9408-432: Was shut down by the U.S. government in 1917. Cornetist Buddy Bolden played in New Orleans from 1895 to 1906. No recordings by him exist. His band is credited with creating the big four: the first syncopated bass drum pattern to deviate from the standard on-the-beat march. As the example below shows, the second half of the big four pattern is the habanera rhythm. Michel Warlop Michel Warlop (Michou to his friends)

9506-536: Was the leader of a racially integrated band named King of Swing. His jazz concert in the Carnegie Hall in 1938 was the first ever to be played there. The concert was described by Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history". Shep Fields also helped to popularize "Sweet" Jazz music through his appearances and Big band remote broadcasts from such landmark venues as Chicago's Palmer House , Broadway's Paramount Theater and

9604-473: Was very unusual in having four violins (including Warlop), two guitars and a string bass as its basic makeup. From time to time there was also a piano, drums and even a harp but not all appeared on each recording. Warlop wrote and arranged almost all of the Septuor's music which was in a style that blended a classical string setting with Warlop's jazz abilities. In 1942, he recorded his own Swing Concerto, which

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