French Jazz Guitar

Jean Reinhardt (23 January 1910 – 16 May 1953), known by his Romani nickname Django (Frch: [dʒãŋɡo ʁɛjnaʁt] or [dʒɑ̃ɡo ʁɑʁt]), was a Romani-Belgian jazz guitarist and composer. He was one of the first major jazz talts to emerge in Europe and has be hailed as one of its most significant exponts.

Reinhardt formed the Paris-based Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1934. The group was among the first to play jazz that featured the guitar as a lead instrumt.

Reinhardt recorded in France with many visiting American musicians, including Coleman Hawkins and Bny Carter, and briefly toured the United States with Duke Ellington's orchestra in 1946. He died suddly of a stroke in 1953 at the age of 43.

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Over the last few decades, annual Django festivals have be held throughout Europe and the U.S., and a biography has be writt about his life.

His Frch, Alsacian father, Jean Euge Weiss, domiciled in Paris with his wife, wt by Jean-Baptiste Reinhardt, his wife's surname, to avoid Frch military conscription.

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Reinhardt spt most of his youth in Romani campmts close to Paris, where he started playing the violin, banjo and guitar. He became adept at stealing chicks.

His father reportedly played music in a family band comprising himself and sev brothers; a surviving photograph shows this band including his father on piano.

Reinhardt was attracted to music at an early age, first playing the violin. At the age of 12, he received a banjo-guitar as a gift. He quickly taught himself to play, mimicking the fingerings of musicians he watched, who would have included local virtuoso players of the day such as Jean Poulette Castro and Auguste Gusti Malha, as well as from his uncle Guiligou, who played violin, banjo and guitar.

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Reinhardt was able to make a living playing music by the time he was 15, busking in cafés, oft with his brother Joseph. At this time, he had not started playing jazz, although he had probably heard and had be intrigued by the version of jazz played by American expatriate bands like Billy Arnold's.

At the age of 17, Reinhardt married Florine Bella Mayer, a girl from the same Romani settlemt, according to Romani custom (although not an official marriage under Frch law).

On these recordings, made in 1928, Reinhardt plays the banjo (actually the banjo-guitar) accompanying the accordionists Maurice Alexander, Jean Vaissade and Victor Marceau, and the singer Maurice Chaumel. His name was now drawing international atttion, such as from British bandleader Jack Hylton, who came to France just to hear him play.

Django Reinhardt (1910 1953), French Jazz Guitarist,

Before he had a chance to start with the band, however, Reinhardt nearly died. On the night of 2 November 1928, Reinhardt was going to bed in the wagon that he and his wife shared in the caravan. He knocked over a candle, which ignited the extremely flammable celluloid that his wife used to make artificial flowers. The wagon was quickly gulfed in flames. The couple escaped, but Reinhardt suffered extsive burns over half his body.

During his 18-month hospitalization, doctors recommded amputation of his badly damaged right leg. Reinhardt refused the surgery and was evtually able to walk with the aid of a cane.

More crucial to his music, the fourth finger (ring finger) and fifth finger (little) of Reinhardt's left hand were badly burned. Doctors believed that he would never play guitar again.

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During many months of recuperation, Reinhardt taught himself to play again using primarily the index and third fingers of his left hand by making use of a new six-string steel-strung acoustic guitar that was bought for him by his brother, Joseph Reinhardt, who was also an accomplished guitarist. 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.

Within a year of the fire, in 1929, Bella Mayer gave birth to their son, Hri Lousson Reinhardt. Soon thereafter, the couple split up. The son evtually took the surname of his mother's new husband. As Lousson Baumgartner, the son himself became an accomplished musician who wt on to record with his biological father.

After parting from his wife and son, Reinhardt traveled throughout France, getting occasional jobs playing music at small clubs. He had no specific goals, living a hand-to-mouth existce, spding his earnings as quickly as he made them.

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In the years after the fire, Reinhardt was rehabilitating and experimting on the guitar that his brother had giv him. After having played a broad spectrum of music, he was introduced to American jazz by an acquaintance, Émile Savitry, whose record collection included such musical luminaries as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Joe Vuti, Eddie Lang, and Lonnie Johnson. (The swinging sound of Vuti's jazz violin and Eddie Lang's virtuoso guitar-playing anticipated the more famous sound of Reinhardt and Grappelli's later semble.) Hearing their music triggered in Reinhardt a vision and goal of becoming a jazz professional.

While developing his interest in jazz, Reinhardt met Stéphane Grappelli, a young violinist with similar musical interests. In 1928, Grappelli had be a member of the orchestra at the Ambassador Hotel while bandleader Paul Whiteman and Joe Vuti were performing there.

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.

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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. In both years the great majority of their recordings featured a wide variety of horns, oft in multiples, piano, and other instrumts,

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 Adelaide Hall, Coleman Hawkins, Bny Carter, and Rex Stewart (who later stayed in Paris). He participated in a jam session and radio performance with Louis Armstrong. Later in his career, Reinhardt played with Dizzy Gillespie in France. Also in the neighborhood was the artistic salon R-26, at which Reinhardt and Grappelli performed regularly as they developed their unique musical style.

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While playing, he noticed American film actor Eddie Cantor in the front row. Wh their set ded, Cantor rose to his feet, th wt up on stage and kissed Reinhardt's hand, paying no concern to the audice.

Wh World War II broke out, the original quintet was on tour in the United Kingdom. Reinhardt returned to Paris at once,

Leaving his wife in the UK. Grappelli remained in the United Kingdom for the duration of the war. Reinhardt re-formed the quintet, with Hubert Rostaing on clarinet replacing Grappelli.

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While he tried to continue with his music, war with the Nazis prested Reinhardt with a pottially catastrophic obstacle, as he was a Romani jazz musician. Beginning in 1933, all German Romani were barred from living in cities, herded into settlemt camps, and routinely sterilized. Romani m were required to wear a brown Gypsy ID triangle sewn on their chest,

Similar to the pink triangle that homosexuals wore, and much like the yellow Star of David that Jews had to subsequtly wear.

Official policy towards jazz was much less strict in occupied France, according to author Andy Fry, with jazz music frequtly played on both Radio France, the official station of Vichy France, and Radio Paris, which was controlled by the Germans. A new geration of Frch jazz thusiasts, the Zazous, had aris and swoll the ranks of the Hot Club.

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In addition to the increased interest, many American musicians based in Paris during the thirties had returned to the US at the beginning of the war, leaving more work for Frch musicians. Reinhardt was the most famous jazz musician in Europe at the time, working steadily during the early war years and earning a great deal of money, yet always under threat.

Reinhardt expanded his musical horizons during this period. Using an early amplification system, he was able to work in more of a big-band format, in large sembles with horn sections. He also experimted with classical composition, writing a Mass for the Gypsies and a symphony. Since he did not read music, Reinhardt worked with an assistant to notate what he was improvising. His modernist piece Rythme Futur was also intded to be acceptable to the Nazis.

In this [Nuages] graceful and eloqut melody, Django evoked the woes of the war that weighed on people's souls—and th transcded it all.

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In 1943,

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