Gypsy Jazz Guitar

There is a rare clip of the great Django Reinhardt playing before WW2 available on Youtube - there is almost no surviving footage of Django playing, but plenty of anecdotes passed down from Stephane Grappelli, his long-time violinist.

The DVD Life in the Jazz Century features many interviews and historical background provided by Stephane. The Amazon capsule lists this for a mere $56,000, which seems expensive. Fortunately, many recordings were made of Django over a long career, despite his conviction that recording would never catch on!

• Jazz literally saved his life when captured by Nazis while trying to cross the border from France - the officer in charge was a jazz fan and recognised him. Django loved the music of Louis Armstrong, and elements of his style were incorporated into the Gypsy music that surrounded Django in Belgium and France.
• Django was badly burned in a caravan fire, and was left with about 2 or 3 working fingers on his left hand - he then had to relearn how to play the guitar
• Django could not read or write, and used to sign with a cross, although Stephane tried to teach him
• Django missed a Carnegie hall concert and went fishing instead. He used to drive people nuts with his unreliable and capricious nature!
• Guitar was only No.2 in his priorities - billiards was No.1
• When travelling he insisted on first class, while his brothers went second class and had to carry his guitar...he could be a bit mean!
• He missed his first recording session, saying that recording would never catch on!
• His record Nuages, a great composition, became a big hit in Paris during the 1940s, despite the Nazi occupation.
• Other great Django tunes include Manoir De Mes Reves and Tears - both great compositions and well worth learning.

The second video is of Bireli Lagrene, a contemporary player who may be one of Django's distant relatives, not sure about that 100% though. He is a great gypsy jazz style player, but also plays standard guitar jazz on electric guitar. An amazing musician, in a stunning band.

Bireli Lagrene is one of the masters of this style, there are many others, but he is also funny and cheeky with it! Robin Nolan is a great teacher, and can be found on Youtube demonstrating a lot of the key concepts in this style, I'm a big fan. You may notice that the Selmer Maccaferri style guitar as used by Django is an important part of playing this music - although I like the sound, I can't get on with the chunky neck profile myself. Bireli can be seen playing many other guitars, even solid body electrics, and still has the stylistic flair.