What guitar is Django playing in the J'Attendrai clip?

Matteo

We'll never know why he chose that particular guitar for the gig in Den Haag. But I find all this mystique quite appealing. What we have left is the the most important stuff, the music. And the fun detective work for the rest!

Matteo

Ah, now I saw it, Joseph's guitar. Maybe they were worried about taking their favourite instruments on the road, and instead used their back up guitars?

Archtop Eddy

Getting back to the "transition" guitar in the J'attendtrai clip, I'll throw this out there for grins...

My bet is that if the guitar every shows up, it will be in the UK. Why? Because that's where I think Django left it.

The pictures we have show the guitar from at least Jan 1939 to sometime in 1939 when the J'attentrai short film was made by the BBC. I seem to recall hearing that the clip was made as part of the promotional effort for the English tour.

According to the Django stories, the QHCF had just started the tour when war was declared on England and the Germans bombed London. Upon hearing the sirens, Django immediately left London -- catching a cab and then a boat back to France.

That would be around Sept 1939.

My guess is when he rushed out of England, he left the transition guitar behind, and shortly after getting back to France he received #503 in 1940.

Early pictures of his band in France show both Django and Joseph with oval hole guitars (without the fret extension as seen on the transition guitar).

I'm not a Django historian -- I'm just amusing myself with these guesses. It would be nice if some of the fellas here who really study these things might join in with their thoughts... AE

Archtop Eddy

... also, btw -- here is close crop of a picture in Michael Dregni's book Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend, of the Quintette on stage during their first English tour in mid 1938. You can see Django is clearly playing an oval hole guitar. While we can't be sure if it's the same guitar used in the J'attentrai or seen in the other pictures, it's clear he played a petite bouche back as early as mid 1938. The Dregni book also notes Django and the band played their concerts in Den Hague in both July and November 1937. It must have been one of those concerts that was filmed in the clip Matteo posted. So this picture may put us within a 3-6 months of when Django started to play a petite bouche guitar. AE

(Sorry for the lousy picture but I had to shot a copy with my phone-camera from my ipad...)

Matteo

Good find! I just had a look at the photo pages in Dregni's book. Two pages forward there's a picture of Django's Noveau Quintette. The oval hole Selmer that Joseph is holding seems to be a 12 fret (short-scale?) guitar and has a position mark at the ninth fret à l'american instead of the tenth. And this could be the "transitional model" that John Le Voi is building. The variety of the constructions chez Selmer really is interesting.

I'm not a historian either, I just love the music and try to learn how to play it.

(By the way, the film from The Hague concert was posted by "seeirwin" in another thread. I just saw the connection and made a link. And later I managed to get the two threads mixed up myself when I wrote a post in the other thread. Now what was it we were talking about here again? )

Archtop Eddy

It's great being an amateur at this 'cause I can make these sweeping statements and if I'm wrong someone can correct me and I can go "Oh, okay -- never mind." With that qualifer, allow me to suggest the following: If you look at the guitars in Charle Selmer-Macaferri book, you'll see most of the Maccaferri D-holes had fret markers on the 9th -- not the 10th fret. The 10th fret markers seemed to have generally appeared starting with the Eddy Freeman Special model and tenor guitars which were made to appeal to banjo players converting to guitar. The 10th fret seemed to continue as the standard with the Hawaiian guitars and then moved on eventually to the 14 fret-to-the-body petite bouche guitars. However, you can find photos and illustrative examples of guitars in most of these models showing fret markers on either the 9th or10th fret. (See below citing for examples).

On a related note, I've heard people argue about the value of the marker on the 10th vs the 9th fret as if some advanced "guitar logic" was involved in the change. It seems to me the standard for guitar markings on the initial Maccaferri guitars was the same as that used by American builders (i.e. 9th fret), and the transition to the 10th fret may not have been so much to do with any "guitar logic" as it was a hold-over from design changes made to appeal to banjo players.

I'm use to the 10th fret now. I like it that way, I like the way the guitar looks that way, and I'm sticking with it. However, it's never appealed to me because of some sort of superior fretboard logic or mapping. I just accepted it as a cool idiosyncrasy on the GJ guitar models. Besides, it's always fun watching someone used to the 9th fret marker to go WTF?! as they start playing up the neck. :P AE


(Note The following examples refer to Francois Charle book The Story of Selmer-Maccaferri Guitars. If you don't have this book, I recommend you consider this one. Looking for things like fret-markers and what-not makes the search like a Sel-Mac version of Finding Waldo!) AE

Examples: D-hole with 10th fret marker -- see Noye Malha's guitar in photo of Swing Quintette de Paris. page 87.

Eddie Freeman Special model with 9th fret marker -- guitar in advertisement on page 95.

The Hawaien with a 9th fret marker -- illustrative example on page 107.

Transitional round-hole 12 fret to the body. Example of 10th fret marker, page 114; example of 9th fret marker on guitar being played by Louis Gaste on page 115.

Selmer petite bouche with 14 fret to the body. both 9th fret (No. 511) and 10th fret markers (Stochelo's No. 504) on color plate (page 137)

Svanis1337

This photo, apparently dated 1937, (source: Djangostation) shows Django playing a petite bouche:



What I can gather from very little research is that the (or one of) the earliest photo(s) of Django playing on oval hole is that 1937 photo. Photos from 1938 and 1939 feature him almost exclusively with the J'attendrai guitar, apart from a photo taken during a 1938 London Decca recording session that features him on a dark, never again seen D-hole and another photo taken during a concert with Larry Adler in the Alhambra, where he's playing another D-hole, also 1938.

Django is playing the J'attendrai guitar in the photo Archop Eddy posted.

Matteo

Thanks Archtop Eddy and Svanis, interesting facts! Yes I have the Selmer-Maccaferri guitar book. I'll take a look later. For now I conclude that the dot on the 9th fret of my D-hole guitar doesn't seem to be a deviation from Selmer standards, which I thought. On the contrary, it appears to be just where it's supposed to be on such a guitar. Nice!

I've had a couple of oval hole models earlier, with the mark on the 10th, but gave up on gypsy jazz for a while. When I took it up again I thought it was practical to have the mark on the 9th on my new guitar, the same place as on the other guitars I have, even though I then believed it wasn't strictly according to the tradition.

Archtop Eddy

Cool find Svanis. If the photo is dated correctly, it seems to confirm what Dregni said about Django playing an oval hole in 1937. Who knows all this sleuthing might turn up a picture with Django playing an oval hole in 1936 thus confirming what Michael Bauer posted about Charle statement that the first 14 fret oval hole was in '36. Thanks for posting the pic. AE

Tele295

Bob Holo wrote:

Lol.

Ok... I'll see if I can finish it tonight.


**edit**

Well... here it is, and don't blame me if it's long - you asked for it!.... ;-)

Tele295 wrote:

I would like to play a 640mm 14 fret oval hole. Richer sound?

Thanks, Bob. That is awesome!