Sandwiched chronologically between
Vol. 1
and
Vol. 2
,
Vol. 3
of
Naxos
' ongoing
Django Reinhardt
reissue series settles into a period where
the Quintette du Hot Club de France
was recording for
HMV
(the previous two volumes dealt with
Decca
Ultraphone
issues). The collection catches guitarist
Django
, violinist
Stephane Grappelli
, and their sidekicks
Joseph Reinhardt
Pierre Faret
, or
Marcel Bianchi
on rhythm guitars and
Louis Vola
or
Lucien Simoens
on bass in absolutely prime form; there's not a bum track in the satchel. Every selection is bursting with solo and harmonic creativity, and whether at slow, middle, or fast tempos, everything swings, madly at times. Particularly worth shouting about is
's two-chorus burst on
"You're Driving Me Crazy"
-- just a thing of swinging wonder, with a wild upward strummed glissando to close -- and he comes back during
Grappelli
's solo with even harder, driving rhythm. American singer
Freddy Taylor
appears on five tracks; his vocals on
"I Can't Give You Anything But Love"
"Georgia on My Mind"
are drenched in
Satchmo
's scat style, while the latter offers some unexpected key modulations at the close. As before,
David Lemmick
's excellent transfers preserve much of the warmth and bass of the original pressings, along with some of the surface noise -- which other reissues have filtered out -- and here, for the first time in this series,
does listeners a big favor by presenting the sessions in proper chronological order. If you're starting a
Hot Club Quintette
library, you could easily begin with this low-price sample from the heart of their heyday. ~ Richard S. Ginell