Comments

• MikeK Asheville, NCNew Altamira M-30 D-Cedar, Gitane DG-320 John Jorgensen

  September 12 Posts: 521

  For me, it started in the early 90's when I read an interview with Jerry Garcia, my musical hero at the time. He said that his favorite guitarist of all time was a guy named Django Reinhardt, who like Garcia, had injury issues with his fingers, but played in spite of it. I had to know who that was (pre-internet), so I drove to my local record store & bought 2 Django albums on vinyl and one on cd. I liked what I heard, but coming from the jam-band world, it didn't sound like anything I could ever do. Fast forward to 2008, after I moved to Asheville NC. I attended a benefit event for a local animal adoption agency, and there in the corner of the room was the local gypsy jazz band One Leg Up playing this music with finesse & heart. I remembered that this was that music that I'd heard all those years before, but I'd never seen it played live before. With fascination, I watched what the guitar players were doing and I remember saying to myself "I love this music & I think I can do that". I finally found a GJ guitar teacher in 2016 who showed me the way. Over a thousand gypsy jazz gigs later, here I am, still enchanted by & enthralled with this music. Thanks for asking such an important question, I'll be interested to see what others here have to say on the subject.

  
• adrian AmsterdamVirtuoso

  September 12 Posts: 580

  My story is pretty similar to Mike's!

  In the summer of 1999, I was reading an interview with Jimmy Page in an American guitar magazine (either Guitar World or Guitar Player). He mentioned one of his influences was Django Reinhardt.

  I'd never heard that name, and in fact I didn't even know whether it was the name of a person or a band (!). But I went to the record store and bought a CD, sight-unseen. Verve Jazz Masters 38. I ended up really liking it.

  I subsequently bought more Django CDs, eventually collecting the Integrale series (the complete Django recordings), but I didn't dare attempt to learn to seriously play it. I was already an OK guitarist, but the sound of the Django music was so exotic, and the audio quality was so poor, that it was difficult to fathom figuring that out.

  Plus, I didn't realize contemporary people were actually playing it. The term "gypsy jazz" did not exist, as far as I know, and there was no YouTube.

  Circa 2000, I was surfing Napster and was amazed to find recordings by modern guitarists that played the same repertoire in the same style. The first one I found was Jimmy Rosenberg, and it blew my mind to hear that sound with modern recording quality.

  Then in 2004, I saw Alfonso Ponticelli play in Chicago, and I discovered he was teaching a weekly class in this style at the Old Town School of Folk Music (!). I immediately signed up for the class, and I've been playing this style ever since.

  Fast forward to January 2025, and I played the opening set for Jimmy Rosenberg at the Django Amsterdam festival. When I was waiting backstage for that show, I remembered how I'd stumbled upon Jimmy's recordings 20+ years earlier, and how they were my first encounter of a non-Django player of Django's music. At the time, if somebody had told me I'd be playing an opening set for that guy a few decades into the future, my mind would have been blown.

  Thanks for the opportunity to reflect on my own journey.

  Adrian

  

  Give my albums a listen: Melodic Guitar Music and Layer Cake
• flaco ✭ 2023 Holo Traditional, Shelley Park #151, AJL Quiet and Portable

  September 12 Posts: 257

  Similar to others, I had heard the Django’s name in guitar magazines in the 90s, but I had never heard the music. In the early 2000s I came across the box set “the complete early recordings in chronological order.” I bought that and fell in love with the music and playing, but never tried to learn it. It’s was really within the last few years that I really wanted to start learning to play it. I mostly wanted to improve my improvisation on bluegrass tunes, and there is some crossover on Gypsy jazz repertoire into bluegrass: Lady Be Good, Sweet Georgia Brown, Swing 42, etc. But once I started trying to play this it’s all I want to do, and I rarely play any bluegrass now!

  
• Jangle_Jamie Scottish HighlandsNew De Rijk, some Gitanes and quite a few others

  September 12 Posts: 429

  For me, I'd been aware of Django's music from occasional family discussions - my grandad had played swing jazz guitar and double bass, but died before I was born. Then along came The Django Legacy, a 1991 film narrated by Sacha Distell and featuring Django, Gary Potter, Birelli, Stochelo, Paulus, Jimmy, Babik and Boulou and Elios. My Mum recorded it off the telly, and when I saw these people playing at Samois and jamming round the camp fire, it spoke to me very deeply. Around the same time a free Django cd came out with The Sunday Times newspaper. It's still my favourite collection of Hot Club tunes. It's called Django Reinhardt - Guitar Genius. Unfortunately, despite managing to just about play the chords to Sweet Georgia Brown with my classical guitar teacher, I never assumed that style of playing could be learnt. As far as I was concerned, you could either play it or you couldn't. So I never even tried. How would I have started? I had no clue. That was about 1994. I bought a Gitane D hole in 2003. My now wife and I went to Samois in 2004. A seminal moment. I was in heaven. It was there that I bought two Colin Cosimini chord books, and the journey began. Thanks Colin if you read this!

  I now wonder what my kids make of gypsy jazz, and how it will affect them later on. they're 5 and 8, and they're growing up with me playing the music every day, and surrounded by gypsy guitars. I'd like them both to play violin, which is easy here as there are teachers everywhere.

  Great to hear everyone's stories.

  
• pdg ✭✭

  September 12 Posts: 615

  In the early 70s I was in a bluegrass band (playing guitar and banjo). My grandfather had been a violinist in the L.A. Philharmonic. He and my grandmother had an extensive collection of "78s" -- i.e., 78rpm records. One was an "album" (like a booklet of records) of the Quintette of the Hot Club of France. I listened to it, and the guitar solos sounded high-pitched, strange at first. Gradually I heard more and started trying to play the music. But there was nothing anywhere near me -- no information about it at all.

  It wasn't until I met L.A local guitarist Jerry Mancuso, who had lived in New York and seen Django play at a club, that I got more into it.

  I even bought a Selmer guitar (no. 760) for $3,500, got cold feet and later sold it for $3,000 net (in Japan on consignment, where it is now)! (George Gruhn had said he "couldn't possibly sell it for what [I] paid for it"!) Ha!

  Later on, when I saw the djangobooks book on right-hand "rest stroke" technique, I thought, "Oh, sh*t," and that's when I embarked on a more serious path!

  
• Russell Letson Prodigy

  September 12 Posts: 433

  Sometime in the late 1960s I found a budget-label Everest LP of some '40s Django material that didn't quite light my fire, but after hearing Grappelli (particularly the "Paris Encounter" LP with Gary Burton), I backtracked to the classic QHCF albums (mostly the EMI/Pathe Djangolgie set) and was able to follow his entire career. Which also led to the successors--Schuckenack Reinhardt, the Ferre brothers, a very young Bireli, and so on. Delaunay's and Cruickshank's books were also useful guides--especially Delaunay's discography.

  As much as I love the music and can chunk along as an accompanist, I don't consider myself a real GJ player, any more than I consider myself a slack-key player or a baroque violinist. (I don't play violin at all, but it was Bach's solo violin works that led me to Grappelli.) I'm a moderately obsessive listener and compulsive researcher who transferred his grad-school training to his music-appreciation activities. And don't get me started on aviation history. . . .

  
• Phil Portland, ORModerator Anastasio

  September 12 Posts: 861

  1977 saw Grappelli at Leeds Town Hall, UK, with Diz Dizley and Martin Taylor

  Shortly after that bought Django LP and was blown away by his solo on Blue Drag, which was a guitar sound I'd never heard before especially the note bending which he makes the guitar sing!

  1987 Edinburgh, UK, every Wednesday evening Swing 87 played The Malt Shovel pub. Was my 1st exposure to others playing this music.

  1995 Seattle. US, Pearl Django every Friday at The Hopvine Pub, Neil Anderson, Dudley Hill and Shelly Park on guitars!

  2000 the 1st DFNW and Robin Nolan workshops!!

  It's been a joy!😊🎸🙏

  
• crookedpinky Glasgow✭✭✭✭ Alex Bishop D Hole, Altamira M & JWC D hole

  September 12 edited September 12 Posts: 939

  Like others have posted when I started playing guitar I kept coming across the name Django Reinhardt but that was about all it was, a name. And then a mutual friend gave me cassette tape of Django and I played it in the car on the way home. This would be about 10 years after first becoming aware of the name, I was blown away by what I heard but made absolutely no attempt to play it myself. I couldn't figure out what he was doing, especially given his handicap, so I just appreciated the music for what it was. This was around 1983 when Grappelli was touring with Martin Taylor and the chap who gave me the cassette said that he knew Grappelli. I was skeptical however we went to see Grappelli and Martin at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow and after the show we waited at the stage door. Lo and behold when Grappelli came out the first thing he did was to hug and greet my friend. I said to Grappelli that I loved the stuff he was playing to which he replied in a strong French accent "I hate zee f**king things".

  Fast forward to 2008 when I bought a cd of the Mills Brothers in a charity shop and thought the guitarist played a bit like Djangos rhythm section. Bored with my guitar playing of the time I thought I'd try and play gypsy jazz. I hadn't realised that there was a whole world of players out there so my eyes were opened once again. My first gypsy jazz gig proper was Angelo Debarre in Glasgow in 2008 and once again my tiny mind was blown away.

  So here I am 17 years later still striving to play gypsy jazz and still failing. But I wouldn't change it for anything.

  

  always learning
• djazzy New Riccardo Mordeglia, AJL

  September 12 edited October 12 Posts: 141

  Great thread!

  My discovery was in the early 1990s while watching Latcho Drom, the film by Tony Gatlif, specifically the scene with Dorado & Tchavolo Schmitt. My friend told me as we were leaving the movie theater (which happened to be the Academy Of Music in Northampton, MA) that I was having "convulsions" in the seat during that scene. LOL. But this music wasn't a thing yet in the US so it wasn't until decades later when I saw some videos of guys jamming on YouTube that I decided to dive in.

  I'll also add that someone (a friend of my parents who was a jazz guitarist) had made me a tape of various recordings of The Quintet of the Hot Club of France, in the mid/maybe late 1980s -- along with a Bireli tape and a Vic Juris tape --- & I didn't like any of it. Django & Stephane's music in particular sounded corny and quaint. I think what I take away from this experience is that the times you're living in are a big, big factor in how you receive things.

  
• Buco NOVA, DCDeity Ivanovski maple/spruce

  September 12 Posts: 5,713

  We've had this come up before but it's always cool to hear the old stories again and then the new ones. Several super cool details.

  I saw a Hot Club style band on the TV show in early to mid 80s. The music immediately bit me. It was unlike anything I've ever heard before. I never found out who the band was, this was back in Yugoslavia. Especially when their lead player was interviewed after they played a few songs and he started talking about this guitar player who played with this enormous handicap but he, as the guy said, is still unsurpassed guitar player in his opinion. I was struck hearing this and it stuck with me.

  And that was it until the winter on '95 when I was in a friend's car and and he hit play on the cassette player and within a few seconds I yelled out "this must be that guy, that played with two fingers!!". He turned to me and said, yeah this is Django, haha.

  A few years after, I was living in the US and browsed Tower Records for Django CDs and found Verve Jazz Masters 38 (I was super bummed that they didn't include Minor Swing).

  I took the first class with Alfonso in Chicago's Old Town School, probably 2004, maybe 2005. I remember Alfonso cracking up at how excited I was when he showed me the turnaround that you hear in Billet Doux, when they go from slow to fast.

  

  Every note wants to go somewhere-Kurt Rosenwinkel