Musical Guest {Django Reinhardt}

Remember a couple of months ago during my Woody Allen month for Cinema Tuesdays, I covered Sweet and Lowdown about a jazz guitarist who idolized Django Reinhardt so much that he would faint at the sight of him? Well, I thought it was high time that I write a little post about him. Not only is M. Reinhardt one of my favourite jazz musician, he is also, quite possibly the greatest guitarist ever.

M. Reinhardt is famous not only for his unique style of guitar playing, as a result of a fire which left part of his left hand paralysed (see photo) but also for inventing a new style of guitar technique called "hot jazz guitar".

M. Reinhardt was born into a family of French gypsies and began performing the guitar publicly at a young age. In 1934 he hooked up with the jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli and together they put together the Quintette du Hot Club de France, usually for a jazz band, it had no percussion instruments. The Quintette remains one of the most original and interesting in the history of jazz. If you're not a fan of them, or have never heard of their name before, you will have heard their recordings in countless movies and TV shows. The Quintette performed and recorded throughout Europe until 1948, with a hiatus during the war as M. Grappelli stayed in England but M. Reinhardt returned to France. During my extensive research for this post (Wikipedia) I could not find out exactly how a gypsy jazz musician managed to survive in occupied France but it might have something to do with the fact that some Nazi officers loved his music.

Unfortunately, M. Reinhardt dropped dead of a brain haemorrhage in 1953 at the age of 43 just as he was moving in a new musical direction with the electric guitar. Despite this, he lives on in his recordings and through modern musicians who have been influenced by his style.

What truly makes Django Reinhardt a unique jazz artist and a genius musician is that when listening to other musicians you can hear their personality through their music but when you hear a recording of Django Reinhardt, you can hear his soul.

"Minor Swing" is my favourite.

This is the only video I could find of the Quintette performing

This is an interview with him from the late Forties and the only example I could find of him speaking.

"Djangology" his last major composition.

Any suggestion for which musician you want covered next?

Musical Guest {Leon Redbone}

I thought that it was about time to start a long overdue irregular feature on vintage music. I don't listen to much Rockabilly, Motown, Pop or, with a few exceptions, anything after 1959. Whenever anyone mentions any modern musical acts, I just stare blankly at them. But what I do listen to, and have been for my entire life, is Jazz. Which brings me to my first musical guest.

Leon Redbone is a still touring gravel voiced interpreter of early Twentieth Century Jazz, Blues and Tin Pan Alley standards. Not much is really known about him. From what I could find out, Mr. Redbone is a mysterious and eccentric carbon-based life form known for his trademarked Panama Hat, dark glasses, suits, facial whiskers and cult following. He started performing in nightclubs and folk festivals in the Toronto area in the early 1970's. Even before he had a recording contract, Rolling Stone wrote an article about him, stating that his performances were so authentic that you could hear the surface noise of an old 78. He gained a larger public profile when he made several appearances on Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in the Seventies and Eighties.

In addition to being a vocalist, he is also extremely proficient on the acoustic guitar, particularly with finger picking and is a talented whistler. His stage presence (I have not seen him live, but would love too) is very simple, usually just him in a chair with his guitar, mixing stories, jokes and eccentric tales about himself with his songs.

So far, Mr. Redbone has released fifteen albums, although you might have heard him singing with Zooey Deschanel over the closing credits of Elf and a number of his songs were featured in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (last year's Woody Allen movie) including this one:

What I like about Leon Redbone in how he uses his own, unique voice to interpret Jazz and Blues songs, some well known and some not, and how you can hear how much fun he is having and how much he loves playing these songs. It really hurts when you hear a musician play a song and you can tell that they are tired of singing the same song over and over again, but at least with Mr. Redbone, he is still just as fresh and lively now as he was in the Seventies.

Here he is in 2008 talking about the origins of Jazz and then singing "Mr. Jelly Roll Baker"

Mr. Redbone and band playing "Ditty-Wah-Ditty" on Johnny Carson in 1988