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If you’re a guitarist, or just an avid fan of music history, you may be aware of two mythical icons who are the equivalent to the Holy Grail of guitar.  In the world of Blues, Robert Johnson imediately comes to mind– legend has it, Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his Blues guitar chops.  And in the world of Jazz guitar, there is no one more revered and influential as the one and only Hot Jazz hero, Django Reinhardt.

Django had only two operable fingers on his fretting hand (he was badly burned in a fire at age 18), which is unbelievable when you listen to the recordings of him noodling up and down the neck.  But it wasn’t the novelty of his playing with two fingers that made him a sensation– Django’s techniques and tone are legendary, and still cited as a major influence by the world’s best guitarists, past and present.  His early and unfortunate passing at the age of 43 yrs old (1910-1953), forever cemented his icon status.

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Gypsy Jazz Guitar virtuoso, Django Reinhardt.  Here you get a good look at his crippled left hand.

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“Django Reinhardt was arguably the greatest guitarist who ever lived, an important influence on Les Paul, Charlie Christian, B.B. King, Jerry Garcia, Chet Atkins, and many others. Handsome, charismatic, childlike, and unpredictable, Reinhardt was a character out of a picaresque novel. Born in a gypsy caravan at a crossroads in Belgium, he was almost killed in a freak fire that burned half of his body and left his left hand twisted into a claw. But with this maimed left hand flying over the frets and his right hand plucking at dizzying speed, Django became Europe’s most famous jazz musician, commanding exorbitant fees—and spending the money as fast as he made it.”

—Michael Dregni

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1934, France — Django Reinhardt (1910-1953) and Stephane Grappelli, of the Quintet de Hot Club de France. — Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

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“Amazingly, several of the Gypsy guitarists who came along after Django played with just two fingers in an effort to get the tone he had—guitarists like Jacques Montagne. Even today, players like John Jorgenson or Sam Miltich will every now and then play a song with two fingers for fun, and they are able to do it, but four fingers is certainly better.”

—Michael Dregni

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Django Reinhardt, 1942.

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Django Reinhardt’s family were musical gypsies that camped in the outskirts near Paris. Young Django first played the violin and then moved on to the Gypsy banjo-guitar, learning to play from his father– who had seven brothers who were all musicians. Early on, Django had trouble getting gigs because cabaret owners were afraid he’d steal the silverware. As a Gypsy in French society, he was considered beneath the French and African Americans playing Jazz in clubs. It’s unknown how much education Django received while growing up. He didn’t learn to write until Stéphane Grappelli (violinist and long-time musical partner) taught him, most likely in the late 1930s, and it’s thought that he never learned to read books or music.

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Late 1940s, Paris, France — Django Reinhardt (the greatest guitarist) and Edith Piaf (regarded as the greatest French singer, and cultural icon) — Image by © Michael Ochs Archives/Corbis

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Sometime around 1929, things began falling into place for Django– he put down the gypsy banjo-guitar, and picked up the six-string guitar.  He began playing with Stéphane Grappelli (before they officially formed the Quintette du Hot Club de France) and Jazz soon replaced the traditional Musette music Django had grown up on.   Then a fellow guitarist, Emile Savitry, invited him up to his apartment to hear American jazz recordings by Duke Ellington, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, and notably Louis Armstrong’s “Indian Cradle Song.” When Django heard it he broke down, held his head in his hands and exclaimed in the Romani language, “Ach moune,” which means, “My brother.”

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“Right away, he understood Armstrong. Right away, he preferred Armstrong’s formidable playing over the erudite technique of the orchestra of Duke Ellington. Guided by an instinct of astounding precision, he was able to judge these musicians, almost instantly.”

–Emile Savitry

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Django Reinhardt & Duke Ellington

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“The Quintette du Hot Club de France happened by accident. Django was playing with Stéphane Grappelli in a fourteen-piece orchestra for tea dances at the Hotel Claridge on the Champs-Élysées. It was a kind of stilted affair that included waltzing, and Django’s dance band alternated with a tango band. Grappelli actually played in both of these bands. At one point he broke a string on his violin and stepped backstage to restring and tune up. As he was tuning up, he played a little jazz ditty that Django echoed, and they began jamming together. The next thing they knew they had a rhythm guitarist joining in, and a bass player, and the band built up by accident from this experience.”

—Michael Dregni

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1934, France — Django Reinhardt (1910-1953) and Stephane Grappelli, of the Quintet de Hot Club de France, 1934 was the year the Quintet was formed.

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“During that time, jazz was having a hard time gaining acceptance, so they had some difficulties getting recorded for a couple of years. And once jazz did gain appeal, it was considered to be horn music, drum music, or piano music. So when Django and Grappelli came along, recreating the music people were used to hearing come out of Louis Armstrong’s trumpet—only on strings—it was an odd thing to accept at the time.”

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“While he (Django) was certainly appreciated, he was also considered to be a bit of a novelty because he was a guitarist, which was not a solo instrument in those days. Some said that he didn’t know much about jazz in those early days, but they did hear something special in his playing. The members of the Hot Club wanted to find Frenchmen they could support so they could prove to others that the French could play jazz as well as the Americans, and in Grappelli and Django, they believe they found that.”

—Michael Dregni

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Django Reinhardt.

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“While it’s certainly true that Django’s technique was astonishing, the observation is too rarely made that technique was not the point.”

“Django composed – on the spot, new music nobody (including Django himself) had ever heard before. Like most string players, I’ve met and heard plenty of people who astonished me with their facility, but I’ve never encountered anybody who did that to his extent.”

“He seemed to regard the guitar as a somewhat-necessary annoyance in the process of exposing what was happening in his head. Stories abound of his continuing to play pretty much the same stuff as more and more strings broke; since in those days “metal” strings, as he referred to them, were somewhat rare and hard to find if you weren’t in a major city, he is reputed at one point to have played a week’s gig at a rural hotel wherein he closed the week with only two strings remaining.”

“He was, I think, an incomparable genius, and light-years beyond “Guitar Hero” status. Don’t try to think about how he did it, just listen and forget that he was producing those sounds from a guitar.”

–Rob De Witt

Many thanks for your comments, Rob ~ JP

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Read more on Django here and here and here

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