Where is Django's Selmer?

bill raymond

Django's Selmer has been on display at the Musee for a number of years. I saw it there about 5 yrs ago when I was in Paris. If you read the section "recent acquisitions" carefully you will understand that the recently acquired items have been added to their ongoing collection which includes Django's guitar; it wasn't recently acquired, just part of their longstanding collection.

As for Django playing a Grande Bouche: I don't think that there's clear evidence that he ever did, although I may be mistaken. He was photographed with a Grande Bouche classical model, but I don't recall any photographs of him with other than a Petite Bouche Selmer. Undoubtedly, he had a number of Selmers in his lifetime and gave some away, but unfortunately his "collection" was never documented!

Michael Bauer

There are two photographs in Dregni's Gypsy Jazz showing Django at least posing with a d-hole Modele Jazz/Orchestre. One dates from 1935 (when Dregni claims that Django began playing the Selmer-Maccaferri), and one from 1936. There is another photograph dated from 1935 showing Django with the Quintet in Django Reinhardt and the Illustrated History of Gypsy Jazz (p.71) and an undated one on page 69, and a repeat of the 1936 photo on page 44, all with a d-hole Selmer. Sel-Macs with resonators have a very distinctive sound, and my ear tells me that's what I have heard on many of the early recordings, and I am 3/4 convinced, now that I have spent alot more time with a Selmer d-hole, that "Minor Swing" was recorded on a Sel-Mac, not an oval hole. Don't hold me to that; I am still trying to decide. The earliest photo I can readily find of Django with an oval hole in from 1938, although Teddy Dupont may have something earlier. But there seems to be ample evidence that he made his name with the Quintet on a d-hole.

What I'd like to know is what happened to the d-hole that Django played in the "j'Attendrai" video, with the extended fingerboard. What a great-sounding guitar!

Jeff Moore

M. Bauer's outline is the lineage as I've understood it. D-holes for a few years then ovals to the end. But how many? And was the j'Attendrai oval really a short scale? It looks like it.
The sound of his early recordings sounds thinner than the latter recordings, which is reverse of what you'd expect from the respective guitars.
In these forums people have speculated about the extent that the recordings themselves (technology) color what we hear.
The sound he got in Rome doesn't even seem related to the guitars-recording in the earliest tracks. Thick as molasses compared to tinny sound in the earliest stuff presumably played on a D hole. Curious!
Some of it seems clearly to be his distance from the mic. In the Rome recordings I distinctly hear clipping. He's very close and sometimes blowing the mic away. The Rome sound is the one that stays in my head as a reference. There's no "room" sound, just close mic'd guitar is seems. Very nice!
We may never know a lot of this, but you can't help but wonder.

When listening to the current greats playing in vast spaces to thousands of people, the sound seems hardly worth a damn. Thin top and the bottom notes often simply aren't there at all, like a big hole in the song.
When Django played with an orchestra, he didn't seem to suffer this as much Birelli or whomever today!, which makes me wonder why modern engineers can't overcome it better than their counterparts did in 1936? Django's sound with orchestras wasn't great but you can at least hear it even when his volume relative to the orchestra is tiny.

Michael Bauer

Duh! I misstated it. I meant to say what happened to the OVAL hole in the J'Attendrai video.

scot

There is ample evidence that Django played a D-hole, including the film and photos from the Hague 10/37, and the photos with Larry Adler at the Alhambra, ca 05/38 . Then there are many photos of him playing guitars other than Selmers like the one from 1935 where he's playing what looks like a bean-mouth Gerome(?!), the one with Marcel Bianchi's black Carbonell (Bianchi said that Django really liked this guitar and I always wondered if he was playing this on the spring 1937 sessions because the guitar does sound different on those sessions), and plenty of others. Then there is the Selmer oval from summer 1937 which lacks the scallop on the guitar end of the fingerboard (the board is squared off above the soundhole), seen in one photo only. The guitar from "J'attendrai" is also seen in the quintet photo from the Decca London studios from around 1/38. Roger notes that in an interview in 1948, when Django was asked about his guitars, he said that he had only one - "this one" - referring to 503. As has been noted here before, professional guitarists tend to be less sentimental about guitars than amateur guitarists today often are. Django wasn't sentimental about his guitars, we can be pretty certain of this. He played whatever guitar was at hand.

Something I always wonder about re Selmers - where have all the maple-body d-hole guitars gone? We know there were at least a few of them, yet I have never seen even a hint of one in all my looking. Even Charle does not mention them. Has anyone here ever seen or heard of one?

As for Django's stuff being burned, to learn more about this tradition I recommend reading "Gypsy World" by Patrick Williams. It's not exactly simple to explain or understand.

Loritmo

Django's #503 was still on display at Cite de la Musique as of last March along with one of Baro Ferre's guitars and one of Stephane's violins.

frater

Damn, isn't it a shame nobody will play that guitar EVER? I'm not sure Django would approve that... and, by the way, the instrument's sound has probably already deteriorated...

Michael Bauer

I've thought the same thing, Frater. It can't be good for the guitar to just be sitting there unplayed. I read somewhere that some thought was given to taking it out to be played and perhaps recorded by a handful of world-class players, but that there was a huge outcry from the gypsy community and the project was scrapped. I have no idea if that is true, but the basic idea of having it played again appeals to me. And this would have been the year to have done it, celebrating Django's 100th and the guitars 60th!

frater

If I remember well, Birelli asked for that when he was going to record his first "Gypsy Project" album but no was the answer. Of course the instrument has become a sort of totem for manouche people and that's understandable but to condemn that guitar to perpetual silence... it's hard for me to believe that would have been Django's will.