Stephane Grappelli, the jazz violinist whose effervescent and infectious swing captivated audiences from Paris to New York for three-quarters of a century, died yesterday in Paris aged 89.
The last surviving member of the legendary Hot Club de France quintet of the 1930s, Mr Grappelli - who started his professional life playing for silent films - was a seminal figure in European jazz, playing or recording with stars including Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson, Glenn Miller, Joe Pass, McCoy Tyner, Quincy Jones, Earl Hines and Bill Coleman.
He died after undergoing a hernia operation last week, his agent said, although the cause of death was not disclosed.
Born in Montmartre, Paris, on January 25th, 1908, his first violin was a 12th birthday present from his father, an impoverished philosophy professor and translator from Italy. "It was an old cigar box bought for thruppence at a flea market," he once said, "but it came with the instruction, `Learn music! It's the key to everything.' "
Taken on as second violin at the Gaumont Palace cinema in 1923, he played six hours a day, seven days a week. "That's where I learned to play the fiddle," he said. "From time to time we got to do a little ragtime, but other than that it was wall-to-wall Mozart."
While he also played the piano, sax, accordion and drums, he chose the violin "because there is not too much competition".
He did receive some formal training, winning a scholarship to the Isadora Duncan school, and going on to study at the Paris Conservatory.
Jazz became his passion at the age of 19, when he discovered the recordings of Louis Armstrong and the jazz violinist Joe Venuti, but his own early attempts to impress cafe clients with jazz played on a traditionally classical instrument were disappointing.
"In France they didn't like jazz much," he said. "They wanted to hear the Charleston."
Mr Grappelli first met the Belgian gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt in the early 1930s, and teamed up with him in the orchestra at Claridges hotel in London. Together with the bassist Louis Vola and Mr Reinhardt's brother Joseph, they formed the resident combo at the Hot Club.
The Quintet of the Hot Club de France was paid 500 francs for their first recording - "One franc a head in today's money," Mr Grappelli said recently - but went on to become the most influential and popular European jazz band from 1935-39.
Mr Grappelli constructed simple, elegant melodies and brilliant, soaring improvisations around Mr Reinhardt's guitar accompaniment. The illiterate Belgian was at times a frustration, but Mr Grappelli recognised him as his greatest inspiration.
"Django was a philharmonic orchestra all on his own," he said. For years after Mr Reinhardt's death in 1953, Mr Grappelli insisted on an empty chair being placed at his side during concerts, "to recall the irreplaceable".
The violinist spent the second World War in London, playing with other musicians who had not been mobilised: "George Shearing, the pianist, was blind, the bassist had one leg and the drummer had been trepanned," he said.
Largely forgotten during the bebop era of the 1950s, Mr Grappelli returned to touring in the late 1960s, and continued trotting the globe - sometimes in a wheelchair -just before his death. His partnership with the classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin injected new life into a career that he was determined not to relinquish.
Mr Grappelli's albums include: Live at Carnegie Hall, Jazz Round Midnight, Plays Jerome Kern, Tivoli Gardens, Satin Doll, Stardust, For Django, Plays Gershwin.
He was also a mentor for a new generation of violinists, notably Didier Lockwood and Jean Luc Ponty.
"Without jazz, I couldn't live," he said last year, after releasing a new album with the pianist Michel Petrucciani. "Every day I thank God for putting on earth this music which I love so much."