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She's still smiling. It's an extraordinary collection, lovingly remastered by Ted Kendall, and presented in chronological order so you can hear the Django jazz experience meld and mature.This was the ONLY thing my wife actually wanted for Christmas and evil spouse that I am, I made her wade through all the other doo-dads and gee-gaws before I let her open this. I guess that says it all. There are legendary duo's in the artistic world whose orbits seem to converge from time to time in an extraordinary and synergistic way: Van Gogh and Gauguin, Simon & Garfunkle, Martin and Lewis. This set captures just such a covergence between Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli at the zenith of the Parisian jazz explosion of the 1930's.
This set of CD's is one of the best bargains available to anyone that is interested in Gypsy Jazz or just the music of the 1930's and 40's.
Sit back, relax, listen and enjoy.Reinhardt was the father of French jazz, a style which evolved from the music brought to France by American jazz greats who resided in Paris in the period between the two world wars.The best set out there for the quality of the recordings and the money. This is just a great collection of DJango's music.
The quality is not perfect, but you can't expect too much from recordings this old. There are a lot of repeated songs, but I guess they did that to be complete. Overall I am pleased.
To be honest though, Django's playing is quite fascinating, and when he isn't being accompanied by Stephane Grappelli's over-insistent violin, he's gosh-darn exciting to listen to, even when he's playing nothing more than a twelve bar blues or some old-time standard like Sweet Georgia Brown or Tea for Two. The liner notes are relatively sparse, but at least there are some and they completely run down the band members and sessions, and what was recorded where and when, so that is helpful.
I guess I'll have to take some time and edit my own mix. Ultimately, as much as I like the good tracks, the bad tracks are equal in number and as irritating as the good tracks are delightful.
This is one of those sets that I have a hard time ranking and reviewing. Still, the recordings "are what they are", and within the limitations of the early technology, the overall production level is high.
In the meantime, I have to leave this one at two and a half stars and say, fans of jazz history, historic recordings collectors, and those filling out a jazz music collection should buy this, but casual jazz fans may not be too excited about this set (and will save money and not miss much by taking a pass). That's because with 5 CD's worth of music covering something like a 5-year period, invariably some of it is going to be outstanding, but some of it is going to be borderline junk.
And, to be expected are the old scratchy tracks with harsh sounding "air" and "static" throughout, which while unnoticeable at first, really become irritating when they cut out and then get turned back on with the beginning of the next song.
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