Artist: Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt (1910–1953) was a jazz guitarist.
At age 18, Reinhardt was injured in a fire, and suffered extensive burns over half his body. During his 18-month hospitalization, doctors recommended amputation of his badly damaged right leg. Reinhardt refused the surgery and was eventually able to walk with the aid of a cane.
More crucial to his music, the fourth (ring) finger and fifth (little) finger of Reinhardt's left hand were badly burned. Doctors believed that he would never play guitar again. However, he applied himself intensely to relearning his craft. While he never regained the use of those two fingers, Reinhardt regained his musical mastery by focusing on his left index and middle fingers, using the two injured fingers only for chord work.
Reinhardt was introduced to American jazz by an acquaintance, Émile Savitry, whose record collection included such musical luminaries as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang.
While developing his interest in jazz, Reinhardt met Stéphane Grappelli, a young violinist with similar musical interests. From 1934 until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Reinhardt and Grappelli worked together as the principal soloists of their newly formed quintet, the Quintette du Hot Club de France, in Paris. It became the most accomplished and innovative European jazz group of the period.
In Paris on 14 March 1933, Reinhardt recorded two takes each of "Parce que je vous aime" and "Si, j'aime Suzy", vocal numbers with lots of guitar fills and guitar support. He used three guitarists along with an accordion lead, violin, and bass. In August 1934, he made other recordings with more than one guitar (Joseph Reinhardt, Roger Chaput, and Reinhardt), including the first recording by the Quintette.
Decca Records in the United States released three records of Quintette tunes with Reinhardt on guitar, and one other, credited to "Stephane Grappelli & His Hot 4 with Django Reinhardt", in 1935.
Reinhardt also played and recorded with many American jazz musicians, such as Roger Chaput, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, and Rex Stewart (who later stayed in Paris). He played with in Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie in France.
In 1951, Reinhardt retired to Samois-sur-Seine, near Fontainebleau, where he lived until his death. He continued to play in Paris jazz clubs and began playing electric guitar. In his final recordings, made with his Nouvelle Quintette in the last few months of his life, he had begun moving in a new musical direction, in which he assimilated the vocabulary of bebop and fused it with his own melodic style.
Reinhardt is regarded as one of the greatest guitar players of all time, and the first important European jazz musician to make a major contribution with jazz guitar. Many guitar players have expressed admiration for Reinhardt or have cited him as a major influence. Jeff Beck described Reinhardt as "by far the most astonishing guitar player ever" and "quite superhuman". The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia and Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi, both of whom lost fingers in accidents, were inspired by Reinhardt's example of becoming an accomplished guitar player despite his injuries. "
Further details about Django Reinhardt are found at npr.org.
Photography credit: William P. Gottlieb, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This content was excerpted from the Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_Reinhardt,which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).
Django Reinhardt & Stéphane Grappelli - Jattendrai Swing 1939 - LIVE!
Django Reinhardt: Videos
Django Reinhardt CLIP performing live 1945
Django Reinhart The Quintet of the hot club of France Jattendrai Swing 1939