Legend has it that occasionally Django Reinhardt did not make it to his gigs. Perhaps a billiards game caught Django’s fancy and time flew by before Django realized that downbeat had come and gone. The story goes that Django’s brother Joseph AKA “Nin-Nin would cover for Django by playing lead guitar with the band (Joseph was one of two rhythm guitarists in the band). We can only imagine what the Hot Club of France sounded like with Nin-Nin covering for Django. Until now.

Label Ouest, a French record company (www.label-ouest.net) has released some long out of print Joseph Reinhardt recordings from 1958-1959 in a new CD entitled Joseph Reinhardt joue…Django. These tracks are a gem. We hear Nin-Nin playing lead acoustic guitar with two rhythm guitarists, a bass and a violin. The arrangements are by Nin-Nin, and as a bonus track we have a 1947 recording of Stephane Grapelli’s Hot 4 playing a Joseph Reinhardt original (“Oui, Pour Vous Revoir”) with Nin-Nin on lead guitar.

The 10 tracks from the late 50′s (Another legend is that after Django’s death, Nin-Nin gave up the guitar for several years, so these tracks represent a triumphant return to the world of jazz guitar for Nin-Nin) contain three Joseph Reinhardt originals (“Bric-a-brac”, “Triste Melodie” and “Manouche”, four Django compositions (“Djangology”, “Nuages”, “Django’s Castle” and “Bric Top”) and three standards of the day (“Sweet Sue, “I know that You Know” and “Mon Pote Le Gitan”).

On several of the tunes we have the melody played going in and a Joseph Reinhardt shout chorus going out. “Sweet Sue” is reharmonized with a chromatic half step movement.

While Nin-Nin was not the great virtuoso that Django was, Nin-Nin was an excellent jazz guitarist, and these tracks are ample proof of that. The improvisations are lyrical, the changes are made, and there are octaves, block chords, tremolo rolls and superb use of a large vocabulary of jazz chords when comping for the violinist. Nin-Nin leaves lots of space, like the best jazz musicians of all eras. This is not an album of shredding or a display of prodigious chops, this is an album of great music. Nin-Nin’s older brother would have been proud. Any fan of Gypsy jazz should own this CD. We now know that on those occasions when Django was unable to make it to the gig (billiards can be intoxicating at times!), the audience was treated to the superb jazz guitar sounds of Joseph Reinhardt.

Highly recommended.