Django (album)

Django
Studio album by Modern Jazz Quartet
Released	1956 (digitally remastered edition released 1987)
Recorded	June 25, 1953 (4-7), New York, NY; December 23, 1954 (1,2,8) and January 9, 1955 (3), Hackensack, NJ.
Genre	Cool jazz Third Stream Post bop
Length	39:00
Label	Prestige Records
Producer	Ira Gitler (4-7) and Bob Weinstock (1,2,3,8)
Modern Jazz Quartet chronology
Concorde (1955) Django (1956) Fontessa (1956)

Django is an album by The Modern Jazz Quartet, first released on LP in 1956. The actual sessions for the LP took place in June 1953, December 1954, and January 1955, and (as label Prestige Records had yet to enter the LP era) were first released on two different ten-inch discs. The first session (consisting of "The Queen's Fancy", "Delauney's Dilemma" and "Autumn In New York") took place in New York, but the subsequent Hackensack, New Jersey, sessions were engineered by Rudy Van Gelder; and eventually the whole album was reissued in 2006 as part of the Rudy Van Gelder Remasters collection.

The song "Django" (like the other original material on this album) was composed by the group's pianist and musical director, John Lewis. It is one of his best-known compositions, written in memory of the French/Belgian gypsy guitarist, Django Reinhardt. One other apostrophic tune is "Delauney's Dilemma", a jaunty tribute to a French jazz critic. The lengthy "La Ronde Suite", with discrete sections emphasizing each group member's contributions, is in fact a version of the standard "Two Bass Hit", written by Lewis for Dizzy Gillespie and covered by, among others, Miles Davis on Milestones. Confusingly, Gillespie's own tune, "One Bass Hit", is also included as a feature for bassist Percy Heath.

Vibraphonist Milt "Bags" Jackson can famously be heard grunting and humming throughout the quieter numbers, which include covers of the Gershwins' "But Not For Me" and the Vernon Duke standard "Autumn In New York".

Track listing

1. "Django" (John Lewis) – 7:03
2. "One Bass Hit" (Dizzy Gillespie) – 2:59
3. "La Ronde Suite" (Lewis) – 9:38
4. "The Queen's Fancy" (Lewis) – 3:12
5. "Delauney's Dilemma" (Lewis) – 4:01
6. "Autumn In New York" (Vernon Duke) – 3:40
7. "But Not for Me" (George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin) – 3:44
8. "Milano" (Lewis) – 4:23

Personnel

• Milt Jackson — vibraphone
• John Lewis — piano
• Percy Heath — bass
• Kenny Clarke — drums

References and external links

• Payne, Douglas, 1991 Nov 1 Django review at AllAboutJazz.com
• NPR Basic Jazz Record Library recommendation
• Playnor, Lindsey review of Django at Allmusic.com