Quintette of the Hot Club of France UK Radio Broadcast 1937

Teddy Dupont · November 2020

At 9.35pm on the 29th May, 1937, the BBC broadcast a 45 minute program of the Quintette playing direct from Paris. There is a very poor acetate recording of several of the tunes they played which shows that the Quintette often performed tunes on radio programs that they never ever recorded. I sometimes wonder what tunes they played at gigs that we will never here.

By the way, if you can cope with the truly dreadful quality of the recording, Django appears to be on incredible form.

pmg · November 2020

No link Teddy?

Teddy Dupont · November 2020

10-20 Pennies From Heaven_Exactly Li.mp3

Hopefully this has uploaded properly.

Svanis1337 · November 2020

These two solos are from the same broadcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7uGd06u6cE

There are some transcriptions by other people of these two solos like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTz4vR8yATE

I always wanted to hear Django play "Take the A train" and "Cherokee". I think he played the former in the Salle Playel 1945 concert with the ATC band, but no recording of that particular tune has been found.

I wonder if he ever played Donna Lee (or Indiana) with Dizzy?

wim · November 2020

Whoa, you were not kidding about dreadful audio quality. Sounds like someone ate a bag of croissants over the gramophone, and wiped their mustache clean with the stylus.

Svanis1337 · November 2020

Yes I wonder what happened to the acetate, I'd love to see a picture of it. I'm guessing someone at the BBC took it home (pre-archival days) and played the crap out of it over several decades. With today's technology you can optically/laser scan old discs and extract the sound without playing them. I wish we could do this with all the Django acetates to get these rare recordings in higher fidelity. There's a bunch of unreleased discs from the Rome sessions due to damage, perhaps they could be salvaged this way. But I have no idea where they are, I'm guessing the RCA aisle of the Sony Music archives. I'd like to track them down but have no idea where to start...

Here's an interesting read, according to this document there are over 20,000 damaged discs in the INA archives alone.

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01885324/document

Discs as bad as this one can be digitized this way, quite incredible.

Way off topic, but when am I going to get to talk about this? I just love Django's music and I salivate at the thought of getting just one more recording. The poetry of his playing cuts through even the crispiest of croissants. 😉

Bones · November 2020

Hey Svanis the youtube link says no video available?

Bill Da Costa Williams · November 2020

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/104312#Comment_104312

If you mean the 2 solos links they both work for me - could be a copyright/location thing

Svanis1337 · November 2020

Try this link:

https://papabecker.com/audio/Django%20Reinhardt%20-%20Two%20Improvised%20Guitar%20Choruses%20(1937-05-29).mp3

I remember that BBC TV programme you dug up Teddy, there were several tunes there they never recorded like "Deep Purple". That's a great tune, shame they never recorded it with Beryl Davis.

Teddy Dupont · November 2020

https://djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/104335#Comment_104335

On the 23rd August, 1939 the Quintette were on BBC radio and amongst their usual stuff played "Deep Purple" and "Wishing". The notes say Beryl Davis sang on the latter but not on the former. As far as we know, in the 1948 BBC TV program "Stars In Your Eyes", they performed from their recorded repertoire.

Of course, we only know the Django composition "Pour Que Ma Vie Demure" aka "Stop" from an acetate recording of a radio program. How many more Django compositions were played but disappeared without being recorded or noted down? Taking it even further, Emmanuel Soudieux said he once heard Django create a beautiful composition on a train journey but he never ever played it again.