Django Reinhardt

[Chris Blackburn]

Hey doug I was wondering your thoughts about this guy I know he's not metal or hard rock, but I still like to listen to different types of music. By the way thanks for the course!!!!!

[Sarah Spisak]

I'll make sure Doug sees this post.

[Doug Marks]

You're welcome Chris. I'm familiar with the name "Django Reinhardt" but I haven't evaluated his music. It is good to listen to different genres and to play different types of music. For example, I'm currently playing some acoustic finger picking style.

[daveotr]

Doug!

Welcome back. I hope you had a nice, restful vacation.

As to Django: remember that the 3rd and 4th fingers of his left hand were crippled in a fire (though he had partial movement so he could use them occasionally for playing chords). Most of his soloing was played using just the first and second fingers of his fretting hand.

Though he's primarily remembered for playing his single-cutaway Maccaferri acoustic guitar, he also played an arch-top electric:



This is one of the few video clips I've found where you can actually see Django soloing (It's starts at about 0:10)

[Doug Marks]

That was interesting. Did you notice that the audio and video weren't in sync on the second one? It appears that the audio was from a different recording.

[weldfish]

I have a buddy that just worships Django. He lives in Connecticut so he goes to a Gypsy Jazz Festival in Honor of Django in New York every year.

[Steve Dunlap]

Tony Iommi is a huge fan of Reinhardt. It was Reinhardt that gave Tony the inspiration to keep on playing after Tony's accident with the sheet metal machine.