[2] His father, Italian Ernesto Grappelli, was born in Alatri, Lazio, while his French mother, Anna Emilie Hanoque, was from St-Omer.

[3] Having written about American dancer Isadora Duncan, who was living in Paris, Ernesto appealed to her to care for his son.

Stéphane was enrolled in Duncan's dance school at the age of six, and he learned to love French Impressionist music.

Having been sickened by his experiences with the Italian military, Ernesto took Stéphane to city hall, pulled two witnesses off the street, and had his son naturalized as a French citizen on 28 July 1919.

His playing caught the attention of an elderly violinist, who invited him to accompany silent films in the pit orchestra at the Théâtre Gaumont.

In 1928, Grappelli was a member of the orchestra at the Ambassador Hotel while bandleader Paul Whiteman and jazz violinist Joe Venuti were performing there.

[6] After experimenting with the piano, Grappelli stopped playing the violin, choosing simplicity, a new sound, and paid performances over familiarity.

[7] Grégor's band reunited as a jazz ensemble under the leadership of pianist Alain Romans and saxophonist André Ekyan.

Pierre Nourry, the secretary of the Hot Club de France, invited Reinhardt and Grappelli to form the Quintette du Hot Club de France, with Louis Vola on bass and Joseph Reinhardt and Roger Chaput on guitar.

Grappelli chose to remain in England, while Reinhardt returned to Paris before undertaking an only moderately successful visit to the United States, where he performed in a new style using an amplified archtop guitar with Duke Ellington's orchestra.

On Reinhardt's return, he and Grappelli reunited periodically for concerts on occasions when the latter was visiting Paris; however, the pre-war Quintette was never re-formed.

This was to be the last set of recordings featuring the pair, with Reinhardt moving into a more bebop/modern jazz idiom and playing with younger French musicians prior to his early death in 1953, aged only 43.

Although Menuhin had no jazz training and a distinctly classical style of playing, the result went down very well with the British public.

The pair went on to record three collaborative albums between 1972 and 1976, with Menuhin playing parts written out by Grappelli while the latter improvised in a classic jazz fashion.

During their appearance on Parkinson's show,[12] Menuhin played his prized Stradivari dating from 1714, while Grappelli revealed his instrument was made by Goffredo Cappa in 1695.

In 1973, British guitarist Diz Disley had the idea of prising Grappelli away from his "lounge jazz" format with piano players to play once again with the backing of acoustic guitars and double bass, re-creating a version of the "Hot Club" sound, but now with Grappelli as sole leader.

[13] Grappelli played on hundreds of recordings, including sessions with Duke Ellington, jazz pianists Oscar Peterson, Michel Petrucciani and Claude Bolling, jazz violinists Svend Asmussen, Jean-Luc Ponty, and Stuff Smith, Indian classical violinist L. Subramaniam, vibraphonist Gary Burton, pop singer Paul Simon, mandolin player David Grisman, classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin, orchestral conductor André Previn, guitar player Bucky Pizzarelli, guitar player Joe Pass, cello player Yo Yo Ma, harmonica and jazz guitar player Toots Thielemans, jazz guitarist Henri Crolla, bassist Jon Burr and fiddler Mark O'Connor.

Grappelli composed the score for two French films: Going Places (Bertrand Blier, 1974) and May Fools (Louis Malle, 1990).

[20] Grappelli died in Paris on 1 December 1997, suffering heart failure after a series of minor cerebral attacks.

His funeral, on 5 December, took place at the Église Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Paris, within sight of the entrance to the Lariboisière Hospital where he had been born 89 years earlier.