Django Reinhardt by Charles Delaunay

Author:Charles Delaunay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1960-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

10

The War

In August 1939 the quintet left for England once more. A long tour had been arranged and it was hoped that it would be followed by appearances in India and Australia.

‘We piled into my 201 and off we went!’ Stéphane says. ‘When we got to Folkestone we ran into a black-out rehearsal. None of the street lights was on, we weren’t allowed to switch on the headlamps, and it was as black as pitch. It took us four hours to get to London. We were completely worn out. We opened the next day. But it was a sad atmosphere. Already they were painting the dressing-room windows dark blue.’

‘Django and Stéphane,’ recalls Emmanuel Soudieux, ‘were often at loggerheads. This made it very difficult for us. If we rode in Stéphane’s Peugeot, we were sure to be in Django’s bad books. On the other hand, if we stayed with Django we were frightened Grappelly might take offence.’

‘All the same,’ Stéphane Grappelly continues, ‘we’d finished our first two weeks on the first Saturday in September. We weren’t due to appear again until the following Monday, at the Kilburn State. On Sunday, when the first siren went, Django called up to me from the street. I opened the window.

‘‘Coming then?’ he shouted. ‘I’m off!’

‘‘Where are you going?’

‘‘The war’s on!’

‘I didn’t know war had been declared.

‘‘What do you expect me to do about it? Do you think I can go off and stop it like Chamberlain?’

‘‘If you don’t come down straightaway, I’m off without you!’

‘‘Go on then!’

‘I thought he was pulling my leg. But when I heard the taxi move off I began to catch on. I dressed hurriedly, got my things together and took a cab to Victoria Station. The train had just gone. I wasn’t to set eyes on him again till the end of the war.

‘In his haste Django had left everything behind in his room. All his cases, his belongings…even his guitar!’

‘We hoped,’ Soudieux goes on, ‘that Django would come back once he’d calmed down, or at least that he’d let us know how he was getting on. Lew Grade, who was handling the band, asked me to go and find him and bring him back from Paris. Finally, broke as I was, I left by the last boat-train, leaving Grappelly alone in London.’

♦

In Paris, once the first wave of surprise was over and the fluster of mobilization had died down, night life picked up again, soon becoming more brilliant than ever. The soldiers who were on leave were out for amusement no less than those who had found themselves a cosy billet away from the front and were doing fine.

During the first winter of the war, the proprietor of Jimmy’s, deserted by the coloured musicians he had previously employed at his club in Montparnasse, approached Django Reinhardt. Django had a great affection for Charlie Lewis, one of the few Negroes who had stayed in Paris. ‘Lewis certainly drank more than was good for him at the time,’ says Alix Combelle, ‘but all the same he was an excellent pianist, especially when it came to accompanying.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.