The Hot Club of France was a kind of jazz appreciation society based in Paris in the 1930s and Django Reinhardt¦perhaps the greatest jazz guitarist of all time¦and his quintet (featuring Stephane Grappelli on violin) swiftly became its main attraction. In an era when it was commonly believed that in order to play jazz you had to be African American and from somewhere like New Orleans, Reinhardt managed to singlehandedly debunk this myth, and in the process become the first international European jazz star. Although Reinhardt played in the jazz idiom, he did not try to mimic his American counterparts, but developed his own distinct style of playing (on an instrument that was not even an accepted jazz solo instrument at the time and with two crippled fingers on his left hand)! His pre-war recordings for HMV and Swing became wildly popular, selling to audiences eager to hear what this new 'European jazz' was all about.
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