L.A. Guitar Festival Artist Spotlight: Gypsy Jazz Guitarist John Jorgenson

I am so excited to have John Jorgenson join the lineup of artists for this year's L.A. Guitar Festival. John's not only a master gypsy jazz musician (guitar, clarinet), he was a founding member of the Desert Rose Band, the Hellecasters, and Elton John's go-to guy for many years. John will be sharing the stage with Robben Ford, Michael Landau, Peppino D'Agostino and Doug MacLeod August 25, 7pm at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center. 

Below is taken from a phone interview between John and writer Al Rudis, L.A. Guitar Festival.

Any fan of Django Reinhardt would have been awed. John Jorgenson was sitting in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris playing his jazz guitar, and he was only 13 years old.

But Jorgenson, one of the world’s foremost performers in the gypsy jazz style that is synonymous with Reinhardt, wasn’t even aware of the existence of the legendary Frenchman until he attended the Disneyland Conservatory of Music many years later.

“My father was a conductor at the University of Redlands,” he said, “and I started playing in his ensemble at 10 or 11. And he would take his ensemble on tours. I was 13 when he took it to tour in France, Germany and England. It was a concert band and also a jazz band. In the concert band, I played the clarinet, and in the jazz ensemble, I played the guitar.”

Jorgenson, now 57, was talking on his cell phone from the Denver airport. He was on his way to a date at the Iridium in New York City to play with an acoustic version of the Desert Rose Band that he co-founded with Chris Hillman in the 1980s. That group achieved massive success on country radio and produced a series of hit singles. It now reunites occasionally – around 10 dates last year, according to Jorgenson – to play both acoustic and electric shows.

But it’s a side project for Jorgenson, whose main focus is the John Jorgenson Quintet that will be peforming in the 2012 Los Angeles Guitar Festival. That band plays Jorgenson’s version of the gypsy jazz that he first heard and fell in love while he was playing at Disneyland.

It was the 1970s, and Jorgenson was in his early 20s. Every day, he and three other musicians played in three different styles, in three different costumes at three different locations inside the Magic Kingdom. They were the Thunder Mountain Boys playing bluegrass, with Jorgenson on mandolin. They were the Main Street Maniacs playing Dixieland, with Jorgenson on clarinet. And they were the Rhythm Brothers, playing swing, with Jorgenson on guitar.

“I didn’t know anything about Dixieland and traditional jazz,” he said. “I just knew the Shakey’s Pizza Parlor version. I didn’t know of early Louis Armstrong and Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang and all of that. So it was a heavy learning curve for me.

“As I was learning about ’20s and ’30s music, Django’s name kept coming up with such reverence, that being I was primarily a guitar player, I said, ‘I’ve got to check this guy out.’ He was referred to by really diverse people, like Chet Atkins and Clarence White as a flat picker and by (jazz legend) Charlie Christian -- all these different styles. They would all cite Django.

“I went out and bought records in 1979, and I was just completely entranced by the sounds and the style. It’s just so beautiful, so emotional, so exciting, so passionate. And it was unlike a lot of jazz that I think is too intellectual. This is still improvisational, still jazz, but more easy for me to connect to.

“I did perform it somewhat at Disneyland, and I would play with some groups around Hollywood and LA in the early ’80s that were playing swing and early ’30s music. There’s always a sort of scene of that music, and there were a lot of people from Costa Mesa and Newport Beach and Huntington Beach doing it, like Howard Alden and Dan Barrett and Judy Carmichael, who’ve really done well in traditional jazz.”

No sooner had he fallen in love with gypsy jazz, than he had to desert her as the commercial success of the Desert Rose Band pulled him away. But before he left, he recorded a farewell.

“Just before the Desert Rose Band hit, I did an album in this style called ‘After You’ve Gone,’ because I thought that I would never get to play it again. It was vinyl, and half the album was a quintet in the French style with Darol Anger as the guest violinist and David Grisman as guest on mandolin. And the other side was more of a Benny Goodman-Charlie Christian style. That was in 1986 or 87.

“I didn’t think I would ever make a living at it, and at that time the Desert Rose Band was starting to get hits on the radio, so that was my focus. And then after that, it became the Hellecasters and session work, and after that, Elton John.”

In 1994, he was called by Elton John to join his band for an 18-month world tour, and he continued working for John through the decade. “I was always kind of working on a follow-up album to ‘After You’ve Gone,’ and by the time I left Elton John in 2000, I’d been to France a number of times,” said Jorgenson. “I’d been to the Django Reinhardt Festival over there, and I’d learned a lot more about the style, and I felt I played it better. And then in 2003, I got the chance to re-record, literally re-create a couple of Django’s tracks for the film ‘Head in the Clouds,’ and I had the chance to play Django on the screen. That encouraged me to finish the album – it’s called ‘Franco-American Swing’ – and once I finished it, I started touring to promote it and found there was enough interest and venues for me to play the music full time.”

At the guitar festival, Jorgenson’s quintet will be configured differently than on that album and his recent “One Stolen Night.” Pianist John Jarvis is replacing the rhythm guitarist. The other players will be Jason Anick on violin, Simon Planting on bass and Rick Reed on percussion.

Reinhardt also played with that kind of configuration. “He played with all kinds of instruments,” said Jorgenson. “In fact, his last famous recordings, which are called the Rome recordings, are with Stephane Grappelli (on violin) and a rhythm section of piano, bass and drums.

“But to be honest, while I don’t want to say I don’t care about that, I’m not trying to faithfully re-create anything. I just wanted to shake things up a little bit.

“I’ve been touring with rhythm guitar for eight years or so, and as a soloist, it’s nice to have something different to go on, and also have another solo voice. And whenever you kind of change things up in a band that’s been working together for a long time, everybody gets a little bit renewed.

“I’ll say, too, that the rhythm guitar position in a quintet like this is very difficult. It’s a really physical thing, and so we’ve worn out three or four already.

“They’re drivng with the rhythms, and they never get a break. They have to back up every solo, and they can never drop out, and they have to stay perfectly in time. They’re more like the drummer in a quintet like this, and they don’t get a lot of glory either.

“The pianist will be providing harmonics support and chordal backing of the solos and melodies, but then he’ll also be doing solos, too. He’s a fully integrated member of the quintet.”