Django Reinhardt, pioneering French virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer, was born 113 years ago today.
Reinhardt is often regarded as one of the greatest guitar players of all time and regarded as the first important European jazz musician who made major contributions to the development of the idiom.
Reinhardt invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique (sometimes called “hot jazz” guitar) that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture. With violinist Stéphane Grappelli, he co-founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France, described by critic Thom Jurek as "one of the most original bands in the history of recorded jazz."
Reinhardt's most popular compositions have become jazz standards, including "Minor Swing," "Daphne," "Belleville," "Djangology," "Swing '42" and "Nuages."
While walking from the Avon railway station after playing in a Paris club in 1953, he collapsed outside his house from a brain hemorrhage. It was a Saturday and it took a full day for a doctor to arrive. Reinhardt was declared dead on arrival at the hospital in Fontainebleau at the age of 43.
For about a decade after Reinhardt's death, interest in his musical style was minimal. In the fifties, bebop superseded swing in jazz, rock and roll took off and electric instruments became dominant in popular music.
Since the mid-sixties, there has been a revival of interest in Reinhardt's music. Acoustic music was revived with the folk movement.
Several of Reinhardt's near-contemporaries, such as Paul "Tchan Tchou" Vidal, recorded for the first time in the sixties and seventies.
Here, Reinhardt performs with Stephane Grappelli in Jattendrai Swing, 1939