What's Your Gypsy Jazz Origin Story???

jlander9

Lango-Django: Sweet job on Pennylane 8).
Bones: It's the first Beatle song that came to mind when thinking about GJing it. Very cool. When i work up the courage i may give it a shot! :shock:

noodlenot

when i was 18/19 years old i was in jazz guitar school and was interested a lot in the history of jazz and a gypsy with two fingers my teacher talked about grabbed my attention. i listened to django a lot in those days without knowing of a "gypsy jazz" thing and never thought much of him as a gypsy player, rather as a player that happened to be gypsy - above all, i saw him as a great and original swing guitar player, with a drive i´d never encountered before.
eventually i dropped out of school and around 15 years later (fade in-fade out anyone?) i discovered that my son (1 1/2 year old at the time) would start dancing to a Birelli tune that was going on on TV and i decided to grab my old guitar and play the rhythm for him - it was "i´ll see you in my dreams" - but was disappointed on how hard it was for me to get the feeling right... that´s when i found out this forum and gypsy jazz in general. got hooked.
thanks to all of you, BTW, you gave me gypsy jazz!

Teddy Dupont

noodlenot wrote:

.... rather as a player that happened to be gypsy - above all, i saw him as a great and original swing guitar player, with a drive i´d never encountered before.

That's what he was. Not a gypsy jazz guitarist.

Bones

I started listening to classic jazz about 20-25 years ago and that led Venuti/Lang and to the QHC which I loved but had no idea of how to play it so I just started trying to figure out the chord progressions off of the recordings and found some people to show me jazz chords. Tried in vain to figure out the transcriptions but no luck until I (relatively recently) discovered this site and others and of course all the educational materials and now the Youtube, etc and that made all the difference.

BTW, thanks for all the contributions that everyone makes. No way could I have even made the meager progress that I have (and all the enjoyment) without it. I only wish that I had known about all this when I was 30 or so years younger.

Dtpolk

In the 80's I was studying bluegrass fiddle and taking beginning lessons from Dave Balakrishna (sp?). Through Dave, I started hanging around the David Grisman people, from who I learned about Django and, particularly Stephane, who I met a few times (but no, I never played with any of these folks (wasn't anywhere good enough then). I was hooked on Stephane's playing, and switched to jazz violin overnight. Still working on it.

adrian

jlander9 wrote:

I was also a Beatle fanatic, has some one Gypsy Jazzed Honey Pie?

Yes, I did it and posted it to YouTube here! :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51htVfmDCHc

Adrian

jlander9

Hey all, the stories are great! You met Stephane?! sweet, your one degree from Django Dtpolk.
Adrian, great playing. It was awesome to hear honey pie ala GJ, the song just fits so well with the style. if you figure out how to play Revolution #9 in GJ you get a super high five! jkng!

Michael Bauer

Adrian taught me that tune, and our band was lucky enough to have Adrian sit in with us and play "Honeypie" this past Sunday at our gig. He is such a fine player, a great teacher, and one of the nicest people on the planet.

CalebFSU

Cool Topic.

I started playing guitar seriously in my late teens, This was in 98-99, I bought a pawn shop acoustic and started trying to learn as much blues stuff as I could. I also discovered the world of on-line guitar message boards, and started spending time on those. One of the boards I went to there was this guy who talked a lot about Jazz guitar and occasionally would talk about Django, I started then to get really in to Jazz and trying to learn to play it. I took some lessons in my free time and had just started at FSU studying philosophy and religion and playing a lot of blues and punk and garage type stuff and kept my jazz shedding to myself. The guy that occasionally posted on the guitar forums started posting about people like Bireli and Stochelo and turns out that guy was Denis Chang. So I essentially first learned about this music from Denis. Even though we have never met in person he is the guy who is responsible for me hearing about this music. Around that time my girlfriend at the time bought me what she thought was a Django Reinhardt CD, it turns out it was the recording of the First Django tribute at birdland which was the first time I heard Jimmy Rosenberg and after that there was no turning back. In that time, I transferred out of the Philosophy program and into the Music school which kept me in school much longer than I planned but I have a BA in music, and have gotten (limited to be sure) to know great people in this community and to correspond if only on the internet with really awesome people. I don't get to play this music as much as I would like but I am constantly learning and trying to get my sound and technique right. It has been a great experience over all.

David F.

Bought an LP copy of "Souvenirs" by the QHCF more than 30 years ago. Would occasinally put it on after work when cooking dinner, cleaning, chilling etc. Flash forward to late 1990's. My wife who had become an amateur classical violist/violinist bought a Romane book to see if we could play any of it together--I was at the time a completely unskilled guitarist and a half-assed bluesy rock bassist.
I have since gained a big obsession and a tiny bit more guitar playing skill thanks to the odd lesson from Pete Krebs and Stephane Wrembel's playalongs. Hope to keep learning until my hands stop working.