IN April 1980 the great jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli entertained his Scottish fans at a concert in Glasgow’s Theatre Royal. It was a night, said the Glasgow Herald’s Raymond Gardner, when a slice of jazz history arrived back in the city.
“In the early days of European jazz – when the American music first had its influence this side of the Atlantic – the clarinet and saxophone soon ousted the sound of the gipsy fiddle on the Continent”, Raymond wrote. “But Grappelli persisted and, at the tender age of 72, he may be said to have won a place for that instrument.
“His improvisation last night knew no end on pieces like ‘Someone’ and an astounding ‘I Got Rhythm’, where the melody, in its flight, seemed to reappear from nowhere.
“In ‘Chicago’ he rang the harmonic changes with a casual brilliance and a cheeky inflection which makes the style of a maestro – and then he sat down on a stool and left guitarists John Etheridge and Martin Taylor to fight out their own conclusion”.
Completing the quartet was Lennie Bush, on double bass, a one-time founder member of Ronnie Scott’s band.
Taylor and Etheridge, who was part of the legendary jazz-fusion group, The Soft Machine, took the Django Reinhardt/Grappelli minor swing into a new dimension, Gardner added.
“’Fascinating Rhythm’ came and went until the nearest thing to a jam session you can have took place in a wedding-cake theatre.
“Last night’s concert was a sell-out; standing ovations took place of a kind rarely seen since the days of the St Andrew’s Halls. After it all, Glasgow will remember a group of eloquently integrated musicians with half a century between the youngest and the oldest”.
Grappelli died, aged 89, in 1997. His New York Times obituary noted: “When his improvisations picked up velocity, there seemed no break between him and his instrument, and melody after melody poured forth in an unstoppable flow”.
Read more: Herald Diary
