My effort with Choti

ChrisMartin · September 2021

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/108093#Comment_108093

Apart from Michael's subsequent post re the Integrale recording, I suspect they were not considered worth recording.

Having read all of the Django books - Delaunay, Dregni, Cruickshank & more - and also the excellent Stephane Grappelli book by Balmer, I suspect their recording sessions were always dictated by record companies as to what they thought might sell, and thankfully even then some were not too conservative.

It was a gamble to even risk recording the first sessions as nobody had ever heard anything like the Quintet and did not know if there was a market for such things. Then they became quite successful but the demand seemed to be for either swing versions of the pop standards of the day, self-composed tunes that were a mix somewhere between dance, pop and jazz of the time and a few ballads.

Post WW2 Django's style moved toward all out jazz and bebop and again although this was a gamble for the record companies they were still at least aware of the new trends. While Django and Joseph may well have enjoyed indulging in the more traditional gypsy music including the flashy waltzes it may simply have been for their own enjoyment with no commercial appeal at that time.

It is also possible that waltzes were seen as the preserve of the Musette accordionists whose dance hall appeal was aimed at a different public and Django's audience considered them selves a touch more sophisticated than that; Dregni in particular spelled out the different music scenes in Paris in the 1930s.

Whatever, we now have a rich heritage to thank them for, and the gypsy waltzes have been handed down and embellished such that they are now a genre on their own and an essential ingredient of the stage set of many top GJ players today.

wim · September 2021

@MichaelHorowitz very interesting - which aspects of the recording makes you say it sounds like Django and less like Étienne ?

MichaelHorowitz · September 2021

@Wim Glenn it’s just the phrasing, precision, and the fingerings which are all very Djangoesque. I have no other proof but Stochelo felt much the same about it. Before the Integrale series came out I had a bootleg of an old radio broadcast of this same recording and the announcer attributed it to Django.

I also had heard that Django’s sister Sarah was playing the piano, but I don’t know the original source of that detail.

The original recording is tuned extremely sharp and the tonal character of the instruments seems a bit strange. The original tempo may have been considerably slower which would make those double time runs easier.

scot · September 2021

I asked every old player I ever met in France about the origins of this tune and it's companion Gagoug, M-S-G and Chez Jacquet. At one time I was quite obsessed with these tunes. Francis Moerman told me he'd asked Matelot about the origins of these tunes many times but never got a straight answer, always something vague. Maurice Ferre was also vague when I asked him. Elios Ferre was certain that they originated with Django. The consensus was that Django had created the themes and Matelot had turned them into finished tunes. This makes perfect sense when you think about it, because Matelot played Choti and Gagoug the same in '61 as he did in '78, except that in '78 he had a better guitar and played better, too. Same with Chez Jacquet - it didn't change over the decades. I can't come up with an explanation that makes any more sense than this one.

I always figured that Daniel Nevers attributed the original acetate of Choti to Sarrane on the Integrale CD because that's a guitarist that everyone could agree on - because there's absolutely no way that it's Sarrane Ferret on that recording. I always assumed that it was Baro and not Django because the chromatic runs sound articulated rather than glissed to me, and he was there and he certainly had the chops to do it. But that's a mystery that will never be solved.

Django did make a single recording with Gus Viseur, I think it's a radio broadcast or something. But once he started playing jazz he rarely played the other styles of Parisian music. After 1940, I don't think there are any recordings that are not jazz. Even though you'd think he played with singers in Paris during the war (and he probably did), there doesn't seem to be much in the way of evidence. The Ferrets seem to have had that market, like the musette, sewn up. And after the war, people wanted new music. It was decades until a sophisticated modern form of bal-musette emerged as music for listening rather than dancing. The business of playing accordion waltzes as guitar pieces seems to have started sometime in the 60s at Le Chope and/or with Baro. I have many private recordings of Matelot, and I don't recall an accordion waltz in the lot.

Passacaglia · September 2021

Inspired to listen (meaning, many more of the waltzes) again - Buco, really beautiful. And in going through what I have, Francis Moerman is one. Thanks, Scot.