Male Gypsies exist in a timeless macho continuum in which obligations and appointments are largely meaningless. In 1946, Django, dreaming of sitting with Hollywood stars by their pools, finally got to America for a three-month tour. He travelled with the Duke Ellington Band in its private railroad car, and it played in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh before finishing up with two nights at Carnegie Hall. But on the evening of the second concert, Django ran into the Champion French Boxer Marcel Cerdan, who had a scheduled bout at Madison Square Garden, and, slipping into Gypsy time, went to a bar with Cerdan to drink and talk about life and France. When he suddenly remembered where he was supposed to be, he jumped into a cab and, because he spoke almost no English, ended up somewhere on the East Side. He got to Carnegie Hall at eleven o'clock and probably played the same four numbers, backed by the band, that he had played in Chicago - a blues, a variation of "Tiger Rag," one of his own dreaming pieces, and "Honeysuckle Rose." (The Chicago concert was recorded.) The applause was reportedly thunderous.
Ellington, in his autobiography, "Music Is My Mistress," says of Reinhardt, "Among those I think of as citizens of Paris was Django Reinhardt, a very dear friend of mine, and one whom I regard as among the few great inimitable of our music. I had him on a concert tour with me in 1946, so that I could enjoy him the more."

Jack Solomon's was pretty much on the mark in his summation of Cerdan. The Casablanca Clouter was in no way a deception with his powerful arms and shoulders, his barrel chest and his gold-toothed rugged handsomeness. He was every inch a furious fighting man at 5’ 7” and 158lbs, a thinking man’s puncher whose strength and hitting power were allied to an imaginative mind and excellent footwork. How could his footwork be anything less? Playing league soccer for Casablanca had honed his speed and agility and taught him how to manoeuvre his way out of tight corners.

Marcel made his first defence against Jake LaMotta.  Cerdan injured his left shoulder in the opening round of that famous fight, battling heroically until the pain forced him to retire at the end of the ninth round. Fighting LaMotta with two arms was a nightmare even for a man of Sugar Ray Robinson’s exceptional talent. How good was a handicapped Cerdan? As one ringsider noted, “Even with one good arm, he gave LaMotta all the trouble he could handle.”

Marcel Cerdan was already an acquaintance of Edith Piaf's before they met up in New York. She had been introduced at the Club des Cinq, Paris in 1946. He was a boxer. Born in Algeria, he was remarkable in his talent and had rarely lost a fight. His fame equalled Edith's but they belonged to different worlds. She went her own way, never imagining they would meet up again.

Epi Or Gibson

Charles Delaunay, who was the son of the unique and celebrated Parisian geometric colourists Sonia and Robert Delaunay, supervised most of Reinhardt's recordings. This, he said, is what music meant to Reinhardt: "Life for Django was all music. He was full of constant enthusiasm when he played - shouting in the record studio when someone played something he liked, shouting when he played himself … When he was accompanying in the bass register he sounded like brass and in the treble like saxophones. He had a constant vision of music - a circle of music - in his head. I think he could see his music." Reinhardt's style had such presence and power and imagination that, in the manner of masters like Charlie Parker and Sidney Catlett and the Armstrong of the early thirties, he surpassed his very instrument. He created an almost disembodied, alternately delicate and roaring whorl of music. Charlie Christian, who flourished between 1939 and 1941, when Django was near the top of his powers, became the first consummate electric guitarist and, following Lester Young's lead on the tenor saxophone, fashioned long, hornlike lines that had their own flawless logic and beauty. (Jim Hall, the paramount guitarist, still idolizes Christian, and Hall, in turn, is idolized by such contemporary guitarist, still idolizes Christian, and Hall, in turn, is idolized by such contemporary guitarists as Pat Metheny. Reinhardt's utter originality largely confounds imitation.) But Reinhardt turned the sounds he played inside out, decorating them with his winging vibrato, his pouring runs and glissandos, his weaving and ducking single-note lines, and his sudden chordal tremolos and offbeat explosions. All these sounds were controlled by an adventurous rhythmic sense. Like Billie Holiday and Red Allen and Jimmy Rowles, he could leap ahead of the beat, or fall behind it or ride it mercilessly. And this rhythmic sense was constantly coloured by his dynamics, which moved back and forth between flutters and whispers, talking tones, and cascades and roars. Two peculiarities shaped Reinhardt's playing: he had enormous hands, and the two smallest fingers on his left hand - his fret-board hand- were permanently bent at the second knuckle. (The had been burned in a fire in his caravan, and he was so badly injured that his wounds never healed properly.) The huge hand made the crippled fingers work nonetheless; thus the mysterious chords and melodic lines that no one had heard before. Reinhardt might start a medium-tempo ballad with three or four bars of slightly altered melody, played in single notes behind the beat, each phrase graced by his vibrato (almost a tremble), pause for a beat, and go into a brief mock double-time, rest again, drop in an abrupt, massive chord, and release a hissing upward run. Then he'd cut his volume in half and turn into the bridge with a delicate, fernlike single-note variation of the melody, letting his notes linger and bend and float on his vibrato. Just before the end of the bridge, he would loose another offbeat chord, let it shimmer for three or four beats, work through a humplike arpeggio, lower his volume again, and return to a single note variation of the original melody and come to rest. Almost all his solos in the thirties and early forties have an exotic romanticism, a hothouse quality; the notes roll and echo with Eastern European and Spanish overtones. Armstrong and Ellington had taught him to swing and be cool, but he filtered them through his Gypsy mind.

Django, Gibson ES300 and  Paul Whiteman

A review of the concert on the 23rd, in part:
It also served to introduce Django Reinhardt to a New York audience, and, though he was well received, it was obvious that he was nervous and that his performance on this particular evening could have been equalled or even bettered by any one of many dozen top-flight guitarists playing in bands, studios, or on 52nd Street. Django did Rose Room, Tiger Rag, Honeysuckle Rose, and Body and Soul, employing all the time worn clichés in the book. Only on Improvisation No.1, - the blues, did he show any of the imagination and technique for which he is noted. Suffice to say, Reinhardt didn’t belong in the hall that night.

This gives us a glimpse of the less than 'warm' reception Django received here in the US at least on that night. Django arrived in America without his trusty Selmer guitar, thinking that US Guitar builders of the day would present him with guitar - but it didn't happen. This little review gives more insight into that quote of Django's. The Carnegie Hall concert would have been the 'big event' on this tour, and getting a less than favourable review would not be something anyone would want to remember or anything that would take a career upward. I wonder who the dozen top-flight guitarists were that would have upstaged or equalled him?
Les Paul was in NYC at the time, as was Tal Farlow, Herb Ellis was with Jimmy Dorsey in 46 and 47, Charlie Byrd was in town during that period too. George Van Eps and Barney Kessel were on the West Coast.

In the Les Paul 'Chasing Sounds' DVD he talked about meeting Django, who he called the 'greatest guitar player' he ever knew'. So, I'm not sure that the reviewer of the Carnegie Hall concert was all that correct. He maybe was a bit disappointed with the 'wait' or the way Django was incorporated into the show or defensive of the Home Artists.

Les Paul on Django

Leonard Feather when reviewing the Carnegie Hall concert said patronisingly " .....Django was a pleasant surprise because I had expected so little, but to others he was a big disappointment because they had expected too much." He then went onto compare Django unfavourably with "....Oscar Moore, Barney Kessel, Chuck Wayne, Mary Osborne, Johnny Collins (Nat Cole Trio) and other top people in jazz on this instrument"..