Early years Grappelli was born at Hôpital Lariboisière in Paris,
France. His father, Italian Ernesto Grappelli, was born in
Alatri,
Lazio, while his French mother, Anna Emilie Hanoque, was from
St-Omer. Ernesto was a scholar who taught Italian, sold translations, and wrote articles for local journals. Grappelli's mother died when he was five, leaving his father to care for him. Although he was residing in France when
World War I began, Ernesto was still an Italian citizen, and was consequently drafted into the Italian Army in 1914. Having written about American dancer
Isadora Duncan, who was living in Paris, Ernesto appealed to her to care for his son. Stéphane was enrolled in Duncan's dance school at the age of six, and he learned to love French
Impressionist music. With the war approaching, Duncan fled the country; she turned over her château to be used as a military hospital. Ernesto subsequently entrusted his son to a Catholic orphanage. Grappelli said of this time: Grappelli compared his early life to a
Dickens novel, Also located in the Montmartre district was the artistic salon of
R-26, at which Grappelli and Reinhardt performed regularly. The Quintette du Hot Club de France disbanded in 1939 upon the outbreak of
World War II; Grappelli was in London at the time, and stayed there for the duration of the war. In 1940, jazz pianist
George Shearing made his debut as a sideman in Grappelli's band.
Post-war When the war was over, Reinhardt came to England for a reunion with Grappelli. They recorded some titles in London with the "English Quintette" during January and February 1946 for EMI and Decca, using a rhythm section consisting of English guitarists Jack Llewelyn and Alan Hodgkiss together with the Jamaican jazz bassist
Coleridge Goode. Grappelli chose to remain in England, while Reinhardt returned to Paris before undertaking an only moderately successful visit to the United States, where he performed in a new style using an amplified archtop guitar with
Duke Ellington's orchestra. On Reinhardt's return, he and Grappelli reunited periodically for concerts on occasions when the latter was visiting Paris; however, the pre-war Quintette was never re-formed. The pair also briefly toured Italy, where they were supported by an Italian rhythm section of piano, bass and drums; the tour was documented, with around 50 tracks recorded for an Italian radio station, about half of which can be heard on the album
Djangology (released in 2005). This was to be the last set of recordings featuring the pair, with Reinhardt moving into a more bebop/modern jazz idiom and playing with younger French musicians prior to his early death in 1953, aged only 43. Throughout the 1950s, Grappelli made occasional visits to the recording studio, but the opportunities for a swing violinist of his generation were becoming limited; despite attempts to modernise his style, Grappelli was never particularly interested in the
bebop style which was then fashionable in the jazz world. He made a brief filmed appearance in Paul Paviot's 1957 film
Django Reinhardt, in which he plays "Minor Swing" alongside
Joseph Reinhardt,
Henri Crolla and others. In the 1960s, Grappelli made regular appearances on the
BBC Light Programme, French Public Radio, and the pirate station
Radio Luxembourg. In 1967, he returned to Paris to take up a regular engagement providing music for diners at the "Le Toit de Paris" restaurant in the Paris Hilton Hotel, a position he kept up until 1972, for it provided regular work plus accommodation at the hotel. He played in a standard "lounge jazz" format, accompanied by a pianist and drummer. Grappelli was making a living, but by now had very little impact on the jazz world. In 1971, British chat-show host
Michael Parkinson, a longtime jazz fan, came up with the idea of including Grappelli on his show
Parkinson, where he would be joined by the classical violinist
Yehudi Menuhin, with the two musicians performing a duet. Although Menuhin had no jazz training and a distinctly classical style of playing, the result went down very well with the British public. The pair went on to record three collaborative albums between 1972 and 1976, with Menuhin playing parts written out by Grappelli while the latter improvised in a classic jazz fashion. During their appearance on Parkinson's show, Menuhin played his prized
Stradivari dating from 1714, while Grappelli revealed his instrument was made by
Goffredo Cappa in 1695. In 1973, British guitarist
Diz Disley had the idea of prising Grappelli away from his "lounge jazz" format with piano players to play once again with the backing of acoustic guitars and double bass, re-creating a version of the "Hot Club" sound, but now with Grappelli as sole leader. Grappelli's reservations about returning to this format were dissipated following a rapturous reception for the "new" (old) format group at that year's
Cambridge Folk Festival, after which he favoured the guitar-based trio (with double bass) for a series of increasingly successful concert tours around the globe. These tours would virtually occupy the remainder of Grappelli's life; away from the touring circuit, however, he also favoured numerous other instrumental combinations on record. Other guitarists in the British "Diz Disley Trio" providing his instrumental backing over the years included
Denny Wright,
Ike Isaacs, the Irish guitarist
Louis Stewart,
John Etheridge and
Martin Taylor, while double bass was often provided by Dutchman Jack Sewing; in his later years, Grappelli also used a Parisian trio which included guitarist
Marc Fosset and bassist Patrice Caratini. In April 1973, Grappelli performed with great success during a week at
"Jazz Power" in
Milan, accompanied by Italian jazz musicians as guitarist
Franco Cerri, bassist/arranger
Pino Presti and drummer
Tullio De Piscopo. Grappelli played on hundreds of recordings, including sessions with
Duke Ellington, jazz pianists
Oscar Peterson,
Michel Petrucciani and
Claude Bolling, jazz violinists
Svend Asmussen,
Jean-Luc Ponty, and
Stuff Smith, Indian classical violinist
L. Subramaniam, vibraphonist
Gary Burton, pop singer
Paul Simon, mandolin player
David Grisman, classical violinist
Yehudi Menuhin, orchestral conductor
André Previn, guitar player
Bucky Pizzarelli, guitar player
Joe Pass, cello player
Yo Yo Ma, harmonica and jazz guitar player
Toots Thielemans, jazz guitarist
Henri Crolla, bassist
Jon Burr and fiddler
Mark O'Connor. Grappelli recorded a solo for the title track of
Pink Floyd's 1975 album
Wish You Were Here. This was made almost inaudible in the mix, and so the violinist was not credited, according to
Roger Waters, as it would be "a bit of an insult". A remastered version with Grappelli's contribution fully audible can be found on the 2011 editions of
Wish You Were Here. Grappelli composed the score for two French films:
Going Places (
Bertrand Blier, 1974) and
May Fools (
Louis Malle, 1990). Grappelli made a cameo appearance in the 1978 film
King of the Gypsies with mandolinist
David Grisman. Three years later they performed in concert. He also made a 1975 cameo as a violinist in
Little House on the Prairie season 2, episode 8. In the 1980s he gave several concerts with British cellist
Julian Lloyd Webber. In 1997, Grappelli received the
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He is an inductee of the
Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame. Grappelli continued touring up to the last year of his life; in 1997, although his health was by then poor, he toured the United Kingdom in March and then played concerts in Australia and New Zealand, giving his last public performance in
Christchurch, New Zealand, before returning to Paris via Hong Kong. He made his final recording, four tracks with the classical violinist Iwao Furusawa, plus guitarist Marc Fosset and bassist Philippe Viret, in Paris in August 1996 (released as
As Time Goes By: Stéphane Grappelli and Iwao Furusawa). == Personal life and legacy ==