Hot Club of San Francisco, the OGs of Gypsy Jazz, Release Their 15th Album, Original Gadjo
The Hot Club of San Francisco has never shied away from putting their own stamp on the Gypsy jazz sound created by Manouche guitar legend Django Reinhardt and French violin maestro Stephane Grappelli in 1930s Paris. Guitarist Paul “Pazzo” Mehling, a leading force in North America’s Hot Club movement since its inception in the early 1990s, has long made a point of featuring original tunes along with Reinhardt standards and imaginative Djangofied interpretations of songs by the likes of Lennon and McCartney. But the HCSF’s 15th album, Original Gadjo, captures the creative ferment of the whole group, not just its fearless leader. Slated for release Sept. 13, 2024, it’s a project that finds the venerable combo revivified after a pandemic-induced hiatus, hitting on all creative cylinders....
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Hot Club of San Francisco, the OGs of Gypsy Jazz, Release Their 15th Album, Original Gadjo
The Hot Club of San Francisco has never shied away from putting their own stamp on the Gypsy jazz sound created by Manouche guitar legend Django Reinhardt and French violin maestro Stephane Grappelli in 1930s Paris. Guitarist Paul “Pazzo” Mehling, a leading force in North America’s Hot Club movement since its inception in the early 1990s, has long made a point of featuring original tunes along with Reinhardt standards and imaginative Djangofied interpretations of songs by the likes of Lennon and McCartney. But the HCSF’s 15th album, Original Gadjo, captures the creative ferment of the whole group, not just its fearless leader. Slated for release Sept. 13, 2024, it’s a project that finds the venerable combo revivified after a pandemic-induced hiatus, hitting on all creative cylinders.
“I’ve made two HCSF albums of all originals, but this is the first time we’ve got the whole band contributing tunes,” Mehling says. “From the beginning our mission statement was not to just to preserve this music, but to pursue the intriguing question: What would Django do if he were still alive? And after 35 years of chasing that sound, this album embraces our identities as gadjos, aka outsiders and Americans who were drawn to Django’s sound but were not born to it.”
Virtuosic, playful, and propulsively grooving, the HCSF’s music offers a state-of-the-art take on the Hot Club tradition from an unabashedly San Francisco perspective with “compositions that reflect both our love for Django’s legacy and our embrace of all that makes us American gypsy jazz musicians,” Mehling says. Joining him in the front line since 1998 is violinist Evan “Zeppo” Price, a highly versatile player who earned top honors as a contest fiddler before performing with a hot-fiddle who’s who including Grappelli, Johnny Frigo, and Claude “Fiddler” Williams. He spent 10 years in the creative crucible of the seminal Turtle Island Quartet, earning two Grammy Awards for the albums Four + 4 and A Love Supreme: The Legacy of John Coltrane, touring internationally and collaborating with jazz luminaries like Cuban clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, and pianists Dr. Billy Taylor and Kenny Barron.
The HCSF’s relentlessly propulsive engine, rhythm guitar expert Jordan Samuels joined the band in 2015 and earned acclaim for his potent grasp of le pompe on the group’s 2017 album John, Paul, George & Django. Recent additions to the band include the prodigious rhythm section tandem of guitarist Nelson Hutchison and bassist Dexter Williams.
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