Pearl Django: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

Track

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

Group

Pearl Django

CD

Avalon (Modern Hot Records MHR005)

Buy Track

Musicians:

Neil Andersson, Dudley Hill, Shelley D. Park (guitars), Michael Gray (violin), Rick Leppanen (bass)

.

Composed by Jerome Kern & Otto Harbach

.

Recorded: Tacoma, WA, July 2000

Albumcoverpearldjagnoavalon

Rating: 88/100 (learn more)

What goes around, comes around. In 1930s Paris, The Quintette of the Hot Club of France, featuring Django Reinhardt & Stéphane Grappelli, revived the 1920s acoustic guitar and violin style of Americans Eddie Lang & Joe Venuti. In 1990s Tacoma, Pearl Django (jointly named after rockers Pearl Jam and the Gypsy swing guitarist) in turn back-translated the prewar French style, here covering a 1935 Reinhardt & Grappelli recording. There was, of course, only one Django, and front-man Andersson judiciously avoids imitation. Instead, this lively track, highlighted by Gray's alternately arco and pizzicato violin, demonstrates the group's fluent and cohesive buoyancy.

Reviewer: Alan Kurtz

Tags: ·

Comments are closed.