JERRY REED

Even if I had complete command of the English language, and even if I knew how to be eloquent, I still don't think I could come up with a word, sentence, or phrase that could adequately describe the way I feel about Django Reinhardt's playing. I have never in my lifetime heard another human being perform with such fire and such love and such emotion. He was in my estimation the freest spirit I'll ever hear on the guitar.

LARRY CORYELL

Django was one of the most amazing artists of the first half of the 20th Century. He played "impossible" things on his guitar. The recordings that survive clearly indicate that he was years ahead of most of the people he was playing with. His influence first came to my attention when I was listening to Chet Atkins playing with Homer and Jethro on an old RCA country record around 1956. They were definitely "Django-inspired," especially the mandolin player, Jethro Burns. Django could swing through the changes, and he'd really explode on the bridge. When he returned to the main theme, he would carry on to an even more exciting level, throwing in string bends and octaves that added the extra-special flourish that made Django one-of-a-kind. Charlie Christian used to rip through bridges like that, too, and he and Django helped form the literature upon which all modern jazz guitar is based. Django represents the universality of modern improvised music. There will never be another Django. His music, his guitar artistry, everything he was as a person, smacked of genius. I'll bet he smiled a lot.

CHET ATKINS

The first time I ever heard Django was after I got a job professionally in Knoxville, Tennessee. I was working as staff guitarist with a group called The Dixieland Swingsters, and the trumpet player in the group started telling me about Django Reinhardt and also at the same time about Charlie Christian, who I had never heard. He got some old 78 records of Django out of the library and played them, and I was impressed, but at that time I wasn't far enough along, I guess, to really appreciate it. I was just learning to play myself; I was about seventeen or eighteen years old. Later on when I had a little more knowledge of the guitar, I went out and bought a lot of his albums and started copying some of the things he did. And, of course, at the same time I was hearing Les Paul who was one of Django's "students". After a while I got so I really admired his technique. Then there were all the stories, of course, of his problem with having only two fingers. In 1946, I was up in Chicago without a job, and he played there with Duke Ellington, at the Civic Centre. Well, I got a ticket and went down. I was in the back seats, so I couldn't see very well. But he played with Duke and played a great concert. I went backstage and hung around; and he finally came out, and I stuck a piece of paper up in front of him. He felt around and said, "You have pencil?" I said, "Sure," so I gave him a pencil, and he wrote "D. Reinhardt." And he smiled, and I smiled back, and there was a soldier there that kept asking, "Django, you remember me? I was in that joint one night in Paris, and we played guitar together." He said, "Yes, yes" he seemed like a really nice guy. Anyway, I wanted to play some for him, because I didn't think that he would have ever heard any finger guitar like I play because me and Merle Travis, at that time, were the only ones doing it. But I didn't get to do that. Then later on I was talking to Duke Ellington in Denver, and I asked him what happened to Django. He said Django went back to Paris, because somebody at the William Morris Agency had beat him playing billiards, and he got mad and left. I think Django considered himself to be a great billiards player, and he couldn't stand getting beaten like that. Years later I recorded a tune of Django's, "Manoir de mes Reves" [Nashville Gold, RCA Camden, CAS2555]. I think literally translated it means "Castle Of My Dreams." But I called it "Django's Castle," and a bunch of jazz people picked it up and recorded it under that title. Also because of that, Gene Goodman, a publisher, put it out with some other Django tunes [A Treasury Of Django Reinhardt Solos, Jewel Music Publishing Co., 110 East 59th St., New York, NY 100221]. So I like to think that maybe indirectly I helped his widow a little by getting that folio out. I still admire Django very much, and I listen to him like I do Bix Beiderbecke. You can listen to Django and imagine a modern rhythm section with him and really tell what a great player he was.

IRVING ASHBY

It was circa 1937 when I first heard Django on the radio-Hot Club Of France. He shook me up! I had never heard anyone play that fast. He used what was called in those days the "tremolo gliss." Guitarists to this day have been trying to perfect it to the extent that Django had. Arv Garrison and Oscar Moore are still the only guitarists I know of who come close to doing it. I never met Django, but when I was in Paris I heard about how he played for the kids on the streets - or anyone, for that matter. I feel that he inspired me and many others to venture forth with new ideas and play-play what comes from the heart. "To thine own self be true"-we learned it from Django.

HOWARD ROBERTS

Django was before my time, so I'm not an expert on the subject. But two things stand out:
1) Whatever he did had a lasting impact on guitar playing up to today; his input is still obvious.
2) Guitar players will be hard-pressed to blame the hands for not being up to the task of physical facility. Django, with a severe handicap in his left hand, demonstrated blinding speed, which should settle the question that the fountainhead of technique is not a physical but a mental source.

BARNEY KESSEL

Django's music became important to me many years after the initial exposure. When I first heard him I probably was incapable of really seeing what he had to offer at that time, but that was based on my inexperience. Mostly, Django was a master improviser; I wouldn't call him a "Jazz" player. He had great feelings and was very individual - because when he came out in those days he didn't have a chance to listen to long playing records or meet many American musicians. Being in Europe, he did not have the stimulus and interaction of meeting many other people, so he developed quite a bit on his own. He just had a great Gypsy talent and a love for jazz, and it all just sort of came out to be "Django." For me personally, he is a voice that I like to listen to; I'm more aware of the music than the guitar - what he is saying and the feeling and conviction and assurance behind it. His playing has surprise, unpredictability, moments of gentleness - then all of a sudden some fantastic, fiery run in the middle of everything. At this point in time, he maintains a position of being one of the few truly individualistic voices on the guitar, without it necessarily being what I'd call "hip jazz" or a part of any school or movement. As an indication of the way Django was, I once recall hearing that he was playing at a club in England or France, and he was taking a break, and someone drove by in a car and asked him if he would like to go to Germany. And Django said okay and just got in the car and left-didn't even go back to finish his set or get his instrument. Playing with Stephane Grappelli in Paris, and having a chance to get one of Django's guitars, and meet his family, and just to be in that environment, I picked up a lot of vibrations of the feeling that those people that he knew and played with had for music. It was a very passionate, Gypsy feeling. Django today has become kind of a superstar in his own way, the way that the Marx Brothers, Mae West, and W.C. Fields have become. He symbolises the Gypsy spirit, the thing in everyone that wants to be free-to be an adult but not lose the childlike quality. Above all-and this is the inspiring part-he had already been playing guitar for some years before his injury, but the fact that he wasn't able to use two fingers did not discourage him. Rather, he kept on and went on to be the guitarist that he hadn't even been before the accident happened. He evolved to a point with his handicap that was far higher than he had before his handicap. His life, and the way that he continued, should be an inspiration to anyone to overcome adversity and rise above it.

B.B. KING

Django was one of my idols. He had a touch that made him Django Reinhardt and nobody else and as far as I'm concerned, one of the greatest in the guitar business. He'd identify himself on his instrument. Today we've got a lot of great guitarists, but most of them don't identify themselves. But with Django, you knew without a doubt who he was the minute he'd start to play. And to me, it was sweet music; his guitar seemed to talk, in other words, I heard it. He played music that was sophisticated to me, but a layman like myself could still understand it. I've got more albums on him than on anybody; when I was in France I must have bought fifty records of the Hot Club Of France. I would never have the speed or the technique that Django had, but I love him so much that I'm sure if you listened carefully you could hear a little bit of him in my playing. I just wish everybody could hear him.

LES PAUL

I first heard Django Reinhardt in 1935 when I was in Chicago on the radio. In those days, we used to have to buy the records for the station ourselves. So my friend Harry Zimmerman went over to get the records one day, and he came back and said, "I want you to sit down, because I've got two players I want you to hear." It was Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli. I just about went into shock; I'd never heard anything so great-and I didn't realise he was doing all this with only a couple of fingers! Then around 1945 I was playing at the Paramount Theatre in New York, and the stagehand yelled up to the dressing room, "There's a fellow named Django Reinhardt here to see you." So I said, "Send him up and send Jesus with him" you know, I thought it was a joke. He came upstairs with Johnny Smith, and of course I was very surprised. I considered him the greatest guitar player around. Django asked for a pick, so I reached in my pocket and gave him a choice of a whole bunch. He made me feel good, because he picked out the Les Paul pick and I doubt that he knew it was mine. Johnny Smith grabbed one of my spare guitars, and they started to jam, and I heard Django play for the first time in person. I was very honoured and pleased to have him in the dressing room there, playing it. It was a little hard for us to communicate, but we got along fairly well between all of us, we managed to figure out who was saying what. Later I saw Django on the same trip with Duke Ellington, in Ohio. Throughout his whole tour, he hadn't brought his guitar, so he was playing an electric Gibson L5. And it didn't do him justice like his own acoustic Selmer Maccaferri. When he got back home to Paris, he began to change his style, because he heard our way of playing over here. He even started playing my choruses and those of other guitarists here in the States. I told him he should never copy us, because we were copying him! Django had recorded a copy of my version of "Brazil" and also "How High The Moon." But he was totally confused with the electric guitar; it was a real opponent to him, because he used a very stiff pick and was a down-picker. Then in 1951, I landed in Paris and found Stephane Grappelli playing piano in a little bar. Stephane said, "If you find Django I'll be surprised, because I haven't seen him in two years." So I gave $40.00, two $20.00 bills, to two cab drivers but I tore them in half. I said, "You get the other half when you find Django." The next morning, Django called me from South France, and he was there the next day with me. We went to a music store and jammed, and he picked out a Selmer Maccaferri guitar for me with an amplifier and a pickup. He told me he was very depressed. He'd gone down to the Gypsy camp to fish and goof off, because the people were not accepting him. The club owners would say, "I'll hire you for five dollars tonight, but the first time you leave that melody you're going to be right out in the street." So 1 talked him into playing again. The last time I saw Django alive, we were riding in the back seat of a taxi, and he tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I could read music. I said, no, I didn't, and he laughed 'till he was crying and said, "Well, I can't read either. I don't even know what a C is; I just play them." I talked to Django at length about his fingers. And they were open wounds. He'd soften them with powder. 'Till the day he died, those wounds never healed. When he got depressed he'd ask me, "Am I good?" I said, "I think you're the greatest." "Well, why is it I'm not accepted?" He couldn't understand why. I told him, "When I was in Chicago, I got a violin, a bass, and another guitarist, and proceeded to copy Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli; I idolise you so much." I ranked Django then and I rank him now, like [pianist] Art Tatum and [tenor saxophonists] Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins, all the greats. When they died, they just closed the coffin; they just took it with them. They are probably the masters and always will be. Though today we find many more talented guitar players, we still don't find any greater guitar players than the master. Oscar Peterson can become so great on the piano, but he still talks about Art Tatum as being greater. Today, with guitar players who are real superstars, one will have the technique but no feeling, one can pick fast but can't play slow, the other is slow but doesn't have any speed, another won't have the fire of Django. Reindhardt's probably the only one who had most of this together. If you stop and think, when we were kids we had a choice of only Eddie Lang, Dick McDonough and Carl Kress and then the air got very thin there wasn't anybody around. Nowadays there are a million guitar players, and the calibre has improved, but the geniuses still remain few - guitarists who can make the instrument talk. You can turn on the washing machine if you want to hear technical things. It's hard to beat a Rhythm Master, but it has no feeling. The third time I went to Paris to see Django, he had just died. His wife had none of his records, no phonograph, no running water, no electricity, nothing. So we went out and bought a gravestone for him, and clothes for her, and a phonograph, and all the recordings of Django we could find. Then I asked her if it was okay for me to get her some money, and she said she'd be very happy. So I called a publishing firm and the record companies, and said, "Look, I'm taking over his catalogue, and we want to send in an accountant to check it out." This scared a lot of them right out of their shoes. They made a settlement for $10,000.00 with his wife. I was only around Django four different times, but each time we spent a lot of time together - days and weeks. He was a very sweet man; he loved to laugh. We were very close and had a great admiration for each other.

MARY OSBORNE

In the February 1974 issue of Guitar Player there appeared a picture of Django with me. During his tour with Duke Ellington, he came into Kelly's Stables where I was appearing with my trio and spent several evenings listening. He kissed my hands after every set, and he was a most gracious person. This was a highlight in my life, because when I first started playing guitar I listened to records of Django with the Quintet Of The Hot Club Of France.

SAL SALVADOR

I've always likened Django to pianist Art Tatum: Django's flawless, incredible technique; totally uninhibited abandon in his improvising; his intense, fierce involvement in what he was performing; his absolutely full, imaginative use of the instrument; the tremolo effect and string bends I hear in so much of today's contemporary music. Yet he had a romantic touch when playing the melody of a tune. He's touched most of us; he's always been there and probably always will be in one way or another as long as somebody's playing lead-guitar solo lines. He was certainly an innovator who has fed many things to many guitarists. Django was the first I ever heard play octaves on the guitar. His long, flowing lines with sparkling bursts made for fascinating choruses. He may have, but I've never heard him play an uninteresting chorus. Lesson for today's player: Learn your instrument as thoroughly as he did, so you'll have command at the playing level, and you can bring out what's inside of you no matter what bag you're into. Throughout the years I've been playing he has provided me with many happy listening and learning hours. Hats off to "Django the Great"!

TONY MOTTOLA

I remember as a youngster of sixteen forming a group patterned after Django's quintet. We called ourselves The Blue Blazers, and AI Quail was the other guitarist. Another fond memory is the all guitar jam sessions [in New York City] at the old Epiphone factory on Fourteenth Street and at Eddie Bell's and Johnny D'Angelico's where young aspiring guitarists would get together and try out the new axes and try to "out-Django" one another. Django did it all. His playing of ballads with such warmth and sensitivity and his tremendous technique on up-tempo performances (in spite of his handicap) were truly unbelievable. And on that acoustic guitar yet! Recently I was involved in a recording project that required my listening to performances of a varied group of guitarists. Django was one of these, and his playing made it a labour of love. The passage of time has in no way diminished his greatness. His recordings should be required listening for every serious student of the guitar.

MARCEL DADI

In Paris the legend of Django is alive. I don't know if it's the same in the USA, but here we have many places where you can go and listen to some good Django-type music. A lot of Gypsies are maintaining the tradition of his playing - you may have heard of the Ferre family. The influence of Django on guitarists today is the biggest I have ever encountered. A lot of his albums are available in Europe, and he is one of the first influences on the beginner. Here in France you're not considered a good guitarist if you don't play "Nuages" and "Minor Swing." That may be ridiculous, but it's the evident sign of a big popularity among the French audience. Django is the mentor of thousands of guitar players, and I know that the biggest names in guitar have all been influenced by him. Personally, Chet Atkins is my biggest influence (along with Merle Travis), and even if I have not been directly submitted to Django's music, Chet has taught me everything about the Gypsy. If you find this strange, just listen again to Chet's earliest recordings. Of course, I have many of Django's albums at home and play them often. My dream is to play and improvise like he used to. But I have made up my mind, and I'll keep on picking with my thumb and fingers. Recently, though, I have found the way to make my dream come true: I have discovered a sixteen year-old guitarist who can play for you any of Django's tunes! He, too, is a Gypsy, and his name is Raphael Fays. But the great thing is that he doesn't copy; if you ask him to play a song ten times he won't play it the same twice. He can find unlimited ways to play the same tune.