Jazz, infused with flavors of Europe

Leila Navidi

Hot Club of Las Vegas members, from left, Chris Davis on bass, Gabriel Falcon on cajon and Mundo Juillerat on guitar play last month at Money Plays, a bar on West Flamingo Road. All three also perform with shows on the Strip — Davis with “Phantom,” Falcon with “Donny & Marie” and Juillerat, the band’s founder, with “Le Reve.”

By Jerry Fink (contact)

Tuesday, March 10, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Jazz is a well-traveled musical road with many byways — stride and Dixieland, big band and swing, bebop and Latin.

When jazz made its way from the United States to Europe in the early 1930s, it took on a distinct continental flavor. It caught the ear of Belgian Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, who adopted the art form and created an entirely new genre by blending jazz with flamenco, French dance hall “musette” and American swing.

He formed Le Quintette du Hot Club de France, and his brand of “Gypsy jazz” flourished in and around Paris.

Aficionados later would hear echoes of it in the music of such American performers as Dan Hicks and David Grisman, who played in several groups featuring Stephane Grappelli, who played in the original Hot Club.

About 20 years ago, Hot Clubs began popping up across the United States — Hot Club of San Francisco, Hot Club of Cowtown (Austin, Texas), Hot Club Sandwich (Seattle), Hot Clubs of Detroit, Boulder (Colorado), Marin (California), Nashville, Philadelphia ...

And Hot Club of Las Vegas.

Hot Club isn’t a place or a social organization, but a group — what members of Gypsy jazz bands call themselves.

On a recent Wednesday night Hot Club of Las Vegas convened at Money Plays, a neighborhood beer and wine bar on West Flamingo Road near Decatur Boulevard. The blue-collar saloon, once a popular hangout for musicians who wanted a beer late at night after performing on the Strip, was crowded with men in sweatshirts and baseball caps and women in jeans. They made space for the band by pushing the pool table by the pinball machine and the video game. A steel beer keg served as a speaker stand.

Half the 40 or so people in the bar were absorbed in their own conversations. The other half listened to the unfamiliar music emanating from the back of the room.

Mundo Juillerat, the Hot Club’s founder and lead guitarist, holds a “day job” with the band at “Le Reve.” He once was with “Mamma Mia!”

Bassist Chris Davis played for “Mamma Mia!” before joining “Phantom” a couple of years ago. He’s also a music professor at the College of Southern Nevada and conductor of the school’s orchestra. Gabriel Falcon, percussionist for “Donny & Marie,” plays the cajon — a boxlike percussion instrument. Rhythm guitarist Marlow Valentin was Davis’ student at CSN when he was recruited for Hot Club, and is now a music major at UNLV.

Carol Linnea Johnson sings with the combo. She’s an anomaly — most Gypsy jazz bands don’t have vocalists, but Juillerat says he liked putting a new twist on the old format.

Fans of the late “Mamma Mia!” will recognize her as Donna Sheridan, the lead character in the musical. This summer she will be performing in Noel Coward’s “Private Lives” at the Utah Shakespearean Festival with her husband, Don Burrows.

Burrows produced the Hot Club of Las Vegas’ self-titled debut recording. It was a CD on a shoestring. Gypsy jazz still is an underground movement in the Vegas music scene.

“We tried to fund the album with our gigs,” Juillerat says. “We’d make some money and go into the studio and record and then make some more money and go into the studio. But after about a year we looked for investors and Don came forward.

“We are respectful to the music. We did some Gypsy jazz gems using Django Reinhardt as the springboard. But we’re not trying to sound vintage. There are some original songs on the CD.”

Johnson was surprised to find herself singing in a Gypsy jazz band. “I only sang in a band once,” she says, “when I was in the eighth grade.”

She became acquainted with Davis when he was with the “Mamma Mia!” band. She was invited to join Hot Club a year or so ago. They started out playing at the Rejavanate coffee house.

“That’s where we started to find our groove as a band. It’s one thing to sit in a garage and play, another to play in public,” Johnson says. “We’ve grown so much. When I started singing with the guys, I got hooked.”

The group has no steady gig, sometimes performing at Vox Wine Lounge in Henderson and sometimes at the community colleges. The musicians are looking for a home.

They perform at Boomers Bar on Wednesday, and at The Square Apple next week as the opening act for a variety show.

Davis remembers the beginning of the group three years ago when he and Juillerat were playing with “Mamma Mia!” “Mundo came back from a Gypsy Jazz Festival in Southern California and said, ‘Let’s start a band.’ He was so into it. I didn’t really know what it was.”

Juillerat has big plans for the little band.

“We’re starting low key, but we want to go national. A lot of people like us when they hear us, but the challenge is to get them to hear us,” says Juillerat, who also is working with Disney developing a musical video game.

He was introduced to Gypsy jazz by rock guitarist Jeff Beck. “One night he was raving about this ‘Django Reinhardt’ so I decided to check him out. I knew a little about him, but not much. I’m a rocker. So I got some of his CDs and loved it.”

He and Davis started the group more as a dare than anything.

“When a lot of people hear the word ‘jazz’ they say ‘Oh, we don’t want jazz.’ But when they hear Gypsy jazz, they like it,” Juillerat says. “It has a pretty exotic sound, a world sound.”

One of the music’s biggest fans is actor Johnny Depp, who can be seen picking up a guitar and launching into Reinhardt’s “Minor Swing” in the movie “Chocolat.”

Rumors persist that Depp and producer Frank Marshall, who’s responsible for bringing Indiana Jones and Jason Bourne to the big screen, will team up to make the “Django” biopic — perhaps as soon as 2009 or 2010.

“Can you imagine what will happen to the music if the film comes out?” Juillerat says.

Music fans won’t have to ask, “Gypsy what?”