Stephane Grappelli: With and Without Django

First edition, first printing. 440pp. In black cloth-covered boards with silver titles on spine. Jet black endpapers. 8vo. A couple of faint shadows on text block edges, else neat, clean, bright and tight throughout. In its original dust jacket, very slightly bumped at edges. Born in Paris in 1908, Stephane Grappelli experience every decade of the jazz century. Preciously talented as a child, he studied dance with the tempestuous Isadora Duncan before the First World War forced him onto the streets of Montmartre. His astonishing story, told here with authority by Paul Balmer, spans some 77 years during which he performed with the great names of jazz from Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie and George Shearing to Joe Venuti and Martin Taylor.