Have you ever met anybody who claimed to have seen Django live?

DeuxDoigts_Tonnerre

One of our neighbors back in the mid 1980s contracted me to help him build a deck. He was a British gentleman about 60ish years old, and he claimed that he saw Django back in the day. This was the first I ever heard of Django other than from The Big Guitar Book in the school library.

My neighbor would have probably been late teens or 20ish during Django's last years. He loved to tell stories of his own youthful exploits; not sure how many were true. But I have no reason to think that he was fibbing about seeing Django.

Do you know or have you ever met somebody who said they saw Django play live BITD?

Phil

Stephane Grappelli!🙂

pdg

Yeah, two people. One, a jazz guitarist, Jerry Mancuso, who played in L.A. for a while but was originally from New York, went to see Django play a gig at a club in NYC (when he was here with Ellington).

The other, Charles Wisen, emailed me some years back to say:

" I played with DJANGO in 1951 in a cafe in PARIS and living in NY. since 1960 met and played many times with STEPHANE;I created my first group JAZZ a CORDES in PARIS,1953 and had to wait till 1977 to reform my first american group,in 1987 cut my first record as a quintet with RAPHAEL FAYS on solo guitar and 1999 for two more records in QUEBEC with SERGE KRIEF on guitar,attached first cut."

bbwood_98

Charlie Byrd

I used to see Charlie all the time and had the occasion to take a few lessons from him back in the day (as a punk obsessed 'rocker' - he would play beautiful bach and other classical things, and hand the guitar to me to try to play them . . . but he was quite patient and kind about the whole thing). He was totally knocked out by Django, and talked about him once in a while, and played Nuages solo often at gigs - Django was the first brilliant solo guitarist he know about - and had been buying the records since he was like 10 years old. They met during ww2 and again after both in Paris.

BillDaCostaWilliams

If you haven't come across it, this first person account by UK guitarist Allan Hodgkins in

BMG magazine in the 50s is interesting.

https://gypsyjazzuk.wordpress.com/gypsy-jazz-uk-home/djangos-birth-and-early-childhood/djangos-selmer/

Banjo Mandolin and Guitar folded in the 70s but archives are online

https://classic-banjo.ning.com/page/bmg-magazines

Rip

I met Django's cousin's, best friend's, sister's former roommate.

Teddy Dupont

My parents saw Django at the Cambridge Theatre in London when the Quintette first played in the UK in January 1938. I still have their program from that concert.

I also knew Ted Cherrett who compiled "The Genius That Was Django". He saw Django, Steph and Co perform in the UK in 1946. He had both Django and Stephane's signatures from that visit.

Teddy Dupont

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/117258#Comment_117258

There is a photo of Charlie Byrd with Django in France from 1946

Lango-Django

My mother’s cousin Vance from Charleston West Virginia was a professional saxophone player in his youth. But after giving up music he somehow landed a job at an American bank in Paris in the 1930’s.

I met Vance in the 1980’s and he told me he used to go to a place in St. Germain to watch the HCQ every chance he got.

One night Cole Porter was visiting the club and during the intermission he got up on stage and played piano and sang a few songs.

Can you believe the amazing amount of talent on stage that night?

Will