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PAUL VERNON CHESTER

Manouche Maestro
 


Django's Epiphone
Django & Stimer
Django & Harry Volpe
Django 'n Johnny
Django 'n Les
Django 'n Chet
Stephane Grappelli
Django in Books
Django on Film
Django Remembered
Django and Art
Art and Django
Jazz Violin
Video Performances
Samois Sur Seine
Beyond the Legacy

Gypsy Jazz (Manouche Swing) as inspired by

Jean Baptiste 'Django' Reinhardt (1910-1953)

Profile of Django Reinhardt

Django's Fret Hand - On November 2nd, 1928 an event took place that would forever change Django's life. At one o'clock in the morning the 18 year old Django returned from a night of playing music at a new club "La Java" to the caravan that was now the home of himself and his new wife. The caravan was filled with celluloid flowers his wife had made to sell at the market on the following day. Django upon hearing what he thought was a mouse among the flowers bent down with a candle to look. The wick from the candle fell into the highly flammable celluloid flowers and the caravan was almost instantly transformed into a raging inferno. Django wrapped himself in a blanket to shield him from the flames. Somehow he and his wife made it across the blazing room to safety outside, but his left hand, and his right side from knee to waist were badly burned.
Initially doctors wanted to amputate his leg but Django refused. He was moved to a nursing home where the care was so good his leg was saved. Django was bedridden for eighteen months. During this time he was given a guitar, and with great determination Django created a whole new fingering system built around the two fingers on his left hand that had full mobility. His fourth and fifth digits of the left hand were permanently curled towards the palm due to the tendons shrinking from the heat of the fire. He could use them on the first two strings of the guitar for chords and octaves but complete extension of these fingers was impossible. His soloing was all done with the index and middle fingers! Film clips of Django show his technique to be graceful and precise, almost defying belief.

Django's name means- 'I Awake'

QDHCDF

Louis Vola, the bass player with the original Quintette Du Hot Club De France, an affable, Maurice Chevalier type of man, he talks glibly of his fifteen-year old granddaughter who plays the piano and can relate many tales about Django. He really knew Django the longest, starting at Toulon, where Vola had a band. He heard the two gypsy brothers, Django and Joseph playing on the beach one night and invited them to jam after hours with some of the members of his band. One member of note was Stephane Grappelli. Vola subsequently moved to the Palm Beach Hotel at Cannes and hired Django alone, as an accompanist for his own accordion. Later, when Vola switched to bass, he hired Eugene 'Nanine' Vees, Joseph Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli, in addition to Django - thus the Quintette Du Hot Club De France was born. Shortly after it was started on its recording career by Charles Delaunay and Pierre Nourry.


 

Jo Privat and Gus Viseur Accordionists accompanied Django Reinhardt.

About Django
Barney Kessel owned one of Django’s Selmer guitars, and he said it was difficult to play chords on and didn’t stay in tune very well. There are definitely some inherent tuning issues with that style of guitar. Sometimes, if you play an octave on the B and the D strings in the middle of the neck, the D string is flat and the B string is sharp.  Django definitely developed a style to suit that instrument, although he played other guitars before the Selmer. The Selmer came out in 1932, I think, and he didn’t get his first one until 1934. So his style was already intact at that time. There are stories about when he came to America without a guitar, because he figured the Americans would be lining up to give him guitars to play. Well, they didn’t, so his tour manager bought him a non-cutaway Gibson with a P-90, and he was really bummed out. He wrote back to his manager: “Don’t speak to me about American tin-pot guitars anymore!”

Romantic, Yet Technically Brilliant.

Django was explosively egotistical, a careless and carefree gambler, but a generous charmer as well. Musically, he was gifted in a way that seldom has been seen before or since his classic recordings were made.

Born into a troupe of gypsies in Belgium and raised outside Paris, this son of a travelling entertainer was working professionally at the age of 12.

At 18, an event marked him, and his career, for life: a caravan fire that robbed him of the use of two of his fretting fingers. While tragic, it forced him to develop a style of playing that was his alone.

Intensely rhythmic, remarkably nimble even for a musician with full capacity, Django in later years developed into a soloist who played with an emotional fervour and romanticism that is common in the folk music of his ancestry.

 

 

 

 

 


Ade Holland

Above is a Picture of Ade Holland a fine exponent of Manouche Swing taken in the early 1960's (only a short period after Django's death) in Corby with his original
1930's Maccaferri's - not one but two - Petite and Grande Bouche.  Life was far for simple then. Ade now lives in Reading and is available for teaching both Jazz Guitar and Manouche Swing Techniques - he now wishes he had kept both Macca's instead of almost giving them away.
Ade's Anecdote................
In 1990 I went with my son Nathan to the Django Reinhardt festival in Samois-Sur-Sene near Fontainebleau about 40 miles south of Paris.  I read that Django’s guitar was in the Paris Conservatoire, so a train to Paris was on the agenda.  We bought our tickets which covered the metro as well, on entering the centre of Paris we thought it would be a good idea to get a taxi to the Conservatoire.  The cab driver said which Conservatoire? There are 16 conservatoires in Paris!!  After choosing one only to find they had never heard of Django let alone his guitar!! We called into a small hotel to ask for advice; the receptionist phoned every conservatoire in Paris for us only to find that his guitar had recently been taken away by Django’s son Babik!  That receptionist was wonderful, she didn’t charge us a penny (or a franc) for all she did, a fine example, and to anyone who don’t like the French……she was great.  After a day roaming round the music shops we decided to make our way back, and at the last metro station that took us to the overland train station, the machine swallowed our tickets!  Thinking no more of it we jumped on the train which started to pull away, after a short while I spotted an armed guard at the far end of the carriage checking the tickets!!......ironically my son gave me the same advice as Ian did years before in Maidenhead…….pretend that you are asleep!!!  I looked behind and there was another guard checking tickets starting from the other end!!.........we were doomed!!..............the Bastille beckoned or worse still the Guillotine!!  We happened to be sitting right in the middle of the carriage and as the two of them met we were the last to be checked………fate took a hand as the family opposite us didn’t have any tickets either !! so they carted them out of the carriage and didn’t come back, goodness knows what happened to them, but on our part it was totally un-intentional, the tickets we bought which included the metro stops did not include a return fair.  Perhaps Django was smiling down on us that day after all



Colin Cosimini has been playing Gypsy Jazz Guitar for over 20 years.

He is of Italian Gypsy descent, but born in the UK. He learnt his craft by touring the capitals of Europe playing with the Gypsy guitarists at their local haunts and studying their work to obtain that unique sound.

Hi Eddie, I have two tours in the UK this year with Manouche guitarists, first the end of June with Matcho Winterstein, and September with Moreno, I will get back to you with the exact dates!

Moreno

http://www.gauloisbrothers.co.uk/

DjangoFolllies

Tchavalo Schmitt exponent of Manouche, French Gypsy Jazz.

Jimmy Rosenberg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Django's Forgotten Era

TRIVIA

The Allman Brothers Band instrumental Jessica was written by guitarist Dickie Betts in tribute to Reinhardt. He wanted to write a
song that could be played using only two fingers.

Django's "Minor Swing" can be heard in the background during the oracle scene in The Matrix

Noddy Holder of Rock Group - Slade named his son Django which means - I Awake

Most of Woody Allen's films feature Django Reinhardt in the Soundtrack
 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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Last modified: 01/02/2010