Stephane Grappelli

To most of the public, Stephane Grappelli defines jazz violin. This French maverick met the perfect foil when he teamed up with Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt in the 1930s and '40s. After Django's death, Grappelli spent the '50s and '60s as a respected European musician before re-emerging as a global superstar in the 1970s. Grappelli has made stellar recordings with such European bopsters as Michel Legrand and George Shearing and such Americans as Oscar Peterson and McCoy Tyner. He made beautiful music that lived completely out of time, ignoring fads and trends without succumbing to gilded nostalgia. When he died in 1997, nobody thought of him as a great French jazz musician -- he was remembered as a gifted jazz musician, period, who was a tireless musical ambassador for the music that he never stopped loving.