Years before amplification, Django Reinhardt needed only his fingers to electrify the guitar.
With high-dollar Shellac recordings for sale online, Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt has become a popular obscurity in the past few years. From the time of his upbringing as a child in Paris, Django lived a nomadic lifestyle from which both his genre is named and his legend originated. Before his twentieth birthday, he suffered a devastating hand injury from a caravan fire depriving him use of two fingers – an injury that would’ve caused many musicians to give up playing.
But Django wasn’t like them.
Reinventing his technique, he became the first widely–praised guitarist worldwide, Europe’s premiere recording artist, and one of music’s most versatile and dynamic instrumentalists.
(And people think Guitar Hero is hard?)
Django’s style was more derivative than original – power combo Eddie Lang (guitar) and Joe Venuti (violin) pioneered the recording of stringed instruments in Jazz settings years earlier in America. Sadly however, this progress proved unsustainable.
Lang’s death at 31 from tonsillectomy surgery gone awry stunned the music industry – sending Venuti’s career into a swirl and halting string jazz’s artistic progress in the public eye. If the guitar was to continue the prominence introduced by Lang, it needed another innovator to fill his role. Fortunately, Django wasn’t far behind.
Inspired by the foundations set by their transatlantic counterparts, in late 1934, Reinhardt and ace violinist Stephanie Grappelli formed The Quintette of the Hot Club of France after a few brief impromptu jam sessions at a Paris hotel.
After adding several other musicians and signing with the French Swing label,
The Quintette began recording. The debut record “I Saw Stars” lit an incendiary fire, the competitive edge of Reinhardt and Grappelli’s playing shooting sparks all across Europe: String jazz was alive and well.
Django’s virtuosity on guitar remained unrivaled in his lifetime: A penultimate challenge for imitators and admirers alike. Much like Krupa’s effect on drummers worldwide, Django, in sequel to Lang, brought the guitar forward, increasing its importance in nearly every musical setting as former stereotypes of the guitar as only a rhythm instrument evaporated. His playing technique – among the toughest to master on any instrument – elevated the status of the guitar as an artistic vehicle, unleashing countless possibilities and ultimately prefacing the coming Rock era.
Years before amplification, Django Reinhardt needed only his fingers to electrify the guitar.
In the next couple of years, the Quintette would reach its artistic and influential height – Decca albums were issued in the United States and original compositions such as Minor Swing and Nuages churned out of presses. In America, Reinhardt appeared on some Victor sides with such Swing jazz tour de forces such as Coleman Hawkins and Benny Goodman. Written in 1937, Reinhardt’s most well-known tune, Minor Swing, became a Gypsy jazz standard, a jumping off point for individuals looking to get into foreign jazz of a certain age. Grappelli’s light-hearted but virtuosically intense dynamic with Django befitted both musicians and defined his role as the perfect foil for the guitar genius.
After the war, the popularity of the Quintette’s music began to falter as be-bop movements took over in America, returning Jazz to it’s initial clique: a much different – and smaller – fanbase than the Swing era. Nevertheless, glowing singles such as “Django’s Tiger” and “Coquette” still made their way onto shellac.
After the Quintette dissolved in 1948, Django accentuated the ‘Gypsy’ in ‘Gypsy jazz’, preferring barren landscapes and quiet to the clamor of sold-out concerts. He returned to make occasional recordings, even some styled as bebop on electric guitar – an instrument he overlooked and even panned as too harsh in the preceding decade.
In 1953, after a French concert, Django was walking from a rail station when he collapsed and shortly thereafter died. His death immediately before the Rock era was well before its time.
As the first generation of rock musicians grew up hearing Django’s music, his technique and his recordings grew in stature and are now revered by musicians and scholars alike. His gypsy legend, bathed in mystique from years of castaway, lives on as a part of his image and is promoted in yearly festivals. The list of Reinhardt admirers ranges all the way from Jeff Beck to Les Paul to Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Band of Gypsies’.
His recordings amaze guitar players of all varieties, seven decades after their creation – and a reminder that the initial sparks that shot across Europe firmly established the guitar as the primary musical instrument for the next half-century.