If I didn’t know the story, if I didn’t know that Django Reinhardt was in a fire when he was eighteen years old and that he severely and permanently injured his left (fretting) hand and that he essentially played his single lines with two fingers, if i didn’t know that and I heard one of his records, I would immediately be struck by how musical his playing was. Effortlessly musical is how it sounds.
I often wonder if the fact that he had to employ this technique, one that is basically a physical limitation, didn’t increase the musicality. Faced with the fact, that he did not have four fingers to fret with, maybe he concentrated on purely musical ideas rather than all of the mathematical possibilities of note combinations available.
But, really the whole thing is just baffling from a technical standpoint because he played stuff that is incredibly difficult with unlimited use of all fingers and, he sounded so effortless. When I would read the stories or, people would tell me about him, I would listen to the records and try to figure out how he did it. One time, I actually taped my third and fourth fingers together and tried to work out a transcription of one of his intros.
It dawned on me this morning that I never saw any footage of Django playing. Hey, if there is any that exists it might be on YouTube. Lo and behold, there was a promotional clip of the Hot Club of France, “J’attendrai”, and that’s the first clip here. Hey YouTube, sorry about all the wisecracks. If you never again have anything that is of any worth, you are OK in my book. This clip shows some of the actual technique and it’s mesmerizing to watch.
The second clip is also a gem. It’s an audio only of a live cut of Django with the Duke Ellington band and Django is playing an electric! Beautiful stuff here. Django’s electric tone here is superb and he has a more wicked vibrato going on than most jazz players employed at the time (mid to late 40s or so) and check out the wild octave stuff.
As always, don’t buy sugar just click pause on the music player located in the side bar before playing the YouTubes.
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