Django Rheinhart Recommendations?

[Quasimodem]

I heard his music in the soundtrack of Chocolat and was wondering if any of you might recommend a particular CD of his?

Thanks

Quasi

[dropzone]

Probably anything he recorded with Stephan Grapelli. The most insipid standard at least becomes listenable in their hands.

[Hello Again]

I gave the Verve Best of collection to my dad and he really liked it. It has quite a few tracks (15, I think?) which is nice. Some of the other Best Of compilations have about 5 tracks on them

You should dash out and rent the movie "Sweet & Lowdown." Without giving too much away, the main character has a pathological fear of Django Reinheart (the man, not his music per se).

[Bill H.]

It's all good, but a couple of comments:

rmariamp wrote

You should dash out and rent the movie "Sweet & Lowdown." Without giving too much away, the main character has a pathological fear of Django Reinheart (the man, not his music per se).

What a great movie! Only slim overlap with Django, but what a great movie.

By the way, it's spelled "Django Reinhardt"

[ndorward]

What I'd probably recommend you get is...Brian Morton & Richard Cook's Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, now in its 5th edition. By far the best guide to any jazz artist's recordings.

There are about a million Django Reinhardt compilations out there, usually with some combination of the words "swing", "gypsy" and/or "guitar" in the title, which makes them hard to tell apart. The main thing is to get the earlier work (up to about 1940), which is generally his best. My recollection was that one inexpensive & very acceptable collection could be found in the Essential Masters of Jazz series (which is I think French--nice black card jackets, & decent documentation). Compilations of Reinhardt are plentiful as the earlier material is now out of copyright.

[Wumpus]

As ndorward points out, there are a million Django compilations out there, some of which have shoddy sound.

What you want are the remasters by JRT Davies, one of the foremost experts in the restoration of 78s. JSP recently released a 5 CD box of Django remastered by Davies. For more information, see:

http://www.cdnow.com/cgi-bin/mserver...itemid=1178083

Before you freak out about buying a 5 disc set, take a look at the price--only $22 bucks, very reasonable.

[micco]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I have a follow-on question and thought it appropriate to add it in context. I too discovered Django from the <b>Chocolat</b> soundtrack and I'm looking for more. I picked up one CD, "Djangology 49", which is excellent, but it's a collaboration with other musicians rather than solo work. The track on the <b>Chocolat</b> soundtrack is nearly solo with just a bit of percussion; the same track on "Djangology 49" has Grappelli et al., which is great, but not what I'm looking for.

Any recommendations for CDs which contain predominantly solo recordings?