Flamingo - Stephane Grappelli/Michel Petrucciani

Advantages: Brilliant, brilliant mix by a brilliant, brilliant DJ
Disadvantages: not easy to get your hands on AND it's expensive

...In the heart of Paris stands Hotel Costes - a super, fashionable designer hotel in eclectic French Empire brothel style. Only France's who's who hang out at this ultra-cool joint. And when you have ultra-cool people hanging out in an ultra-cool joint, you'll need an ultra-cool music guru, and he is Stéphane Pompougnac. Music lovers all over the world have identified Hotel Costes to its famous series of compilations "mixed by Stéphane Pompougnac". Forget about Ministry of Music or Budabar. His music is an eclectic mix of lounge music from different cultures around the globe. A dash of new jazz, a pinch of house, a dab of the classics, and a whole of groove, and you get Hotel Costes Etage 3. Pompougnac's Hotel Costes consists of seven volumes but Etage 3 seems to be the brilliant one. Each track in the CD has the ability to mark... Read review

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Advantages: Great Trad Jazz
Disadvantages: None

...Jean Baptiste "Django" Reinhardt was one of the first important jazz musicians to be born in Europe. He spent most of his youth in the gypsy encampments close to Paris, France, playing banjo, guitar and violin. At an early age he started playing professionally at dance halls in Paris. When he was 18, he was injured in a fire in his caravan loosing the use of his 3rd and 4th fingers on his left hand. After this he focused on the guitar and developed an original style of playing that emphasized his undamaged fingers. The man is nothing short of the original guitar god influencing everyone from the Beatles, Tony Immoni, B. B. King, Willie Nelson, and myself. I lost the use of my left forefinger due to an accident. I decided that if Django could do it with 2 fingers then I could do it with 3 fingers!!!!!! Stéphane Grappelli is quite... Read review

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Advantages: Some of the best Jazz violin playing ever heard
Disadvantages: Very few

...Stephane Grappelli does jazz like no other. Although he started off as a pianist, studying at the Paris conservatoire, Grappelli soon became one of the pioneers of jazz violin, indeed violin improvisation. Crazy rhythm is a compilation of some of Grappelli's most well known versions of jazz classics, recorded in the early 70s. What shocked me on the first listen is the real character he gets out of the violin, from youthful exhuberance in tracks like Crazy Rhythm and Sweet Georgia Brown to more conversational, lyrical tones in Ain't Misbehaving. Grappellis bow and strings certainly convey more emotion than many of the world's better singers. Crazy Rhythm really shows off Grappelli's technical expertise, which is not lacking in the slightest. This is aided by the fact he is unconstrained by a score, as all classical musicians... Read review

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