Original Gadjo by the Hot Club of San Francisco

The Hot Club of San Francisco, the OGs of Gypsy Jazz, Release Their 15th Album, "Original Gadjo."
 
The Hot Club of San Francisco has never shied away from putting their own stamp on the Gypsy jazz sound created by Manouche guitar legend Django Reinhardt and French violin maestro Stephane Grappelli in 1930s Paris. Guitarist Paul “Pazzo” Mehling, a leading force in North America’s Hot Club movement since its inception in the late 1980s, has long made a point of featuring original tunes along with Reinhardt standards and imaginative Djangofied interpretations of songs by the likes of Lennon and McCartney. But the HCSF’s 15th album, Original Gadjo, captures the creative ferment of the whole group, not just that of its fearless leader. Slated for release Sept. 13, 2024, it’s a project that finds the venerable combo revivified after a pandemic-induced hiatus, hitting on all creative cylinders. 
 
“From the beginning our mission statement was not just to preserve this music, but to pursue the intriguing question, ‘What would Django do if he were still alive?’” Mehling says. “And after 35 years of chasing that sound, this album embraces our identities as gadjos, aka outsiders and Americans who were drawn to Django’s sound but were not born to it.” Virtuosic, playful, and propulsively grooving, the HCSF’s music offers a state-of-the-art take on the Hot Club tradition from an unabashedly San Francisco perspective with “compositions that reflect both our love for Django’s legacy and our embrace of all that makes us American gypsy jazz musicians,” Mehling says. Joining him in the front line since 1998 is violinist Evan “Zeppo” Price, a highly versatile player who spent 10 years in the creative crucible of the seminal Turtle Island Quartet, earning two Grammy Awards for the albums "Four + 4" and "A Love Supreme: The Legacy of John Coltrane," and touring internationally and collaborating with jazz luminaries like Cuban clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, and pianists Dr. Billy Taylor and Kenny Barron. Rhythm guitar expert Jordan Samuels, the HCSF’s relentlessly swinging engine, joined the band in 2015 and earned acclaim for his potent grasp of the essential Hot Club pulse known as le pompe on the group’s 2017 album "John, Paul, George & Django." Recent additions to the band include the prodigious rhythm section tandem of guitarist Nelsen Hutchison and bassist Dexter Williams. 
 
While the album features original tunes contributed by an impressive cast of current and former members of the HCSF, Mehling is still the quintet’s defining compositional voice, with ebullient pieces like “Dainty” and “Praise D. Lloyd,” a churchy piece that will inspire many an “amen!” Some 35 years into the group’s reign as the nation’s longest-running Hot Club ensemble, the HCSF continues to expand the possibilities of Djangology.

Paul Mehling is the founder of The Hot Club of San Francisco. He began playing the guitar at the age of six. Early on in school, Paul studied the bass and by age 16, he began violin lessons and was self-taught on the mandolin, tenor, and plectrum banjos. Influenced by The Beatles and his mother’s jazz records of Django Reinhardt, Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet