This classic lineup, with occasional changes in membership on double bass and rhythm guitar, entered the recording studio later that year. The addition of Reinhardt's brother Joseph on rhythm guitar made it the Quintette du Hot Club de France.

Sometimes they were accompanied on double bass by Louis Vola, the band's leader, and on rhythm guitar by Roger Chaput. According to an account in a book by Michael Dregni, Grappelli played a chorus, then Reinhardt began to improvise. After Reinhardt met violinist Stéphane Grappelli, they played together informally when they were not playing dance music with a small orchestra at the Hôtel Claridge in Paris during the summer of 1934. After initially hearing ragtime and Dixieland music, Reinhardt listened to Duke Ellington, Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang, and especially Louis Armstrong via the record collection of painter Émile Savitry in Toulon, France, in 1931. The origins of gypsy jazz can be traced to the Manouche gypsy Django Reinhardt, who after serving his musical 'apprenticeship' playing in musette bands with accordionists, and also accompanying popular singers of the day, became acquainted with jazz music and began incorporating this into his repertoire and playing style.

Original 78 release by the Quintette du Hot Club de France. The style was popular in France and, via recordings and appearances by the original Quintette, in other European countries before and immediately after the Second World War, but fell out of favour as the 'swing era' came to an end, being replaced in its homeland by bebop, mainstream jazz, and eventually, rock and roll, however had a resurgence from the 1970s onwards among performers and audiences at festivals, etc., in particular the Festival Django Reinhardt which commenced in 1968 at Samois-sur-Seine, France (the location of Reinhardt's last residence) and continues to the present time. While his fellow guitarists also sometimes featured as soloists with their own groups⁠ or on other recordings (although never with Reinhardt's Hot Club Quintette⁠), Reinhardt is universally recognised as the most outstanding improviser among them, as well as the originator (from around 1934 onwards) of the style of 'hot' guitar playing now generally considered the archetype of 'gypsy jazz' guitar. The group included the brothers Baro, Sarane, and Matelo Ferret and Reinhardt's brother Joseph 'Nin-Nin' Reinhardt. Reinhardt was foremost among a group of Romani guitarists working in Paris from the 1930s to the 1950s. Some scholars have noted that the style was not named manouche until the late 1960s the name 'gypsy jazz' began to be used around the late 1990s. Because its origins are in France, Reinhardt was from the Manouche (French Sinti) clan, and the style has remained popular amongst the Manouche, gypsy jazz is often called by the French name 'jazz manouche', or alternatively, 'manouche jazz' in English language sources.

Gypsy jazz (also known as gypsy swing, jazz manouche or hot club-style jazz) is a style of small-group jazz originating from the Romani guitarist Jean 'Django' Reinhardt (1910–53), in conjunction with the French swing violinist Stéphane Grappelli (1908–97), as expressed in their group the Quintette du Hot Club de France. Tchavolo Schmitt (left) with Steeve Laffont, playing their brand of gypsy jazz at la Chope des Puces, Paris, in 2016

Gypsy jazz band in a box files