The Hot Club of San Francisco • John, Paul, George and Django

I’ve heard sports fans discussing football “Dream Teams,” a hypothetical assembling of great historical players and coaches, putting together theoretical plays, and games, styles, and skills, to make an ideal super-team. Jazz fans have similarly speculated about historical jazz musicians from different times playing together and influencing each other’s music. At some point, Paul Mehling, leader of the Hot Club of San Francisco, asked, “What would Django do? What if he hadn't died and had lived long enough to interpret Beatles songs? Because you know he totally would have.” But since Django is gone, Mehling and his gypsy-swing ensemble stepped up to act for him, crafting and road-testing arrangements and tune selections of Beatles tunes for years, resulting in their new CD, John, Paul, George and Django. Mehling makes it clear that the CD title isn’t intended to diminish Ringo Starr’s essential contributions, however, the album is about his bandmates as composers. It’s rather gutsy for Mehling to take on this exciting challenge, as purist fans with strong feelings may question any changes to the original music or musicians that are the apples of their eyes, as: “That’'s not exactly the way the Beatles played it!” or “The instrumentation isn’t the way they originally arranged it!” and so on. Hopefully, they will come to realize that the intent here i