Djangomania!

a

what kind of guitar is J.M. Pallen playing in that picture?

nwilkins

Michael Horowitz wrote:

Actually, that's not Babik. It's Lousson, Django's 1st son. I would definitely characterize him as a Gypsy jazz guitarist. The few surviving recordings of him are on electric. He's playing Django repertoire with a 60s jazz vibe. But he's using characteristically Gypsy types of ideas and was most likely a rest stroke player. Just look at that right hand! He sounds very Gypsy to me...

'm

that was my point - I would classify Lousson as a gypsy jazz guitarist and I meant to imply so by pointing out that I would not classify Babik (who IS in the pic) that way.

scot

I posted this unknown photograph of two excellent but difficult to recognize guitarists (even Michael did not recognize Babik) not to provoke a discussion about their playing style, but to make this point: if these two guys showed up a US “djangofest” equipped as they are in this photo, many people would summarily dismiss them because they don’t have the de rigeur equipment. If their identity was kept a secret, whether they could play or not wouldn’t matter to a lot of people – once they saw those guitars, they’d tune them right on out. Which I think is pretty sad.

Lousson was an excellent guitarist though in my mind he would not be called a “gypsy jazz guitarist” nowadays. He almost always played electric and his playing style was nearly identical to Django‘s 1947 style, which (if it wasn’t Django) wouldn’t be called “gypsy jazz” today either. Lousson preferred an ES-175 though during the 60s he didn’t own a guitar. I know J-M Pallen and he’s told me many great stories about tending bar for Baro Ferret and playing with Lousson – when he would take an engagement with Lousson the first thing he had to do was find him a guitar. Pallen isn’t a gypsy jazz guitarist at all - he’s more of a jazz player. He can play quite well in a “Django-esque” style (he does not copy licks, though), and you can hear him swapping solos with Francis Moerman on the CD “L’infini Voyage”. As long as I’ve known him, his main interest has been solo guitar playing. He has a very unique solo style – he used to use an old Epiphone strung with Argentines or an L-5. I agree 100% with Michael about J-M Pallen’s sense of harmony – it’s really unique. The recordings he did with Lousson are an extension of recordings I have of him playing in the “Guitares Montmartre” quartet from 1962 - the style was the same. He also arranged many classical pieces for solo guitar.

Michael, are you certain that is J-M Pallen in that photo?

Best
Scot

MichaelHorowitz

scot wrote:

Michael, are you certain that is J-M Pallen in that photo?

Yes..he sent it to me!

nwilkins

I'm not so sure I agree with Scot's pessimism on this issue - for instance, everyone (including North American players) was more than happy to play Andrew Lawrence's L-5 at Samois when I was there in 2003.

I suppose you could argue however that the kind of people who have such attachment to "proper" equipment have never been to Samois or experienced this music much outside of their stereos and the internet.

trumbology

a wrote:

what kind of guitar is J.M. Pallen playing in that picture?

Yeah, what is that beast? It reminded me a little of PD Gruen's guitars <http://www.hotclub.co.uk/html/gruen.html&gt; in terms of body size and shape, but with more traditional soundhole, talepiece, etc. design elements. And are recordings of Pallen currently on the market?

Neil

nwilkins

no he meant the photo of J-M Pallen

Jack

TedGottsegen wrote:

but in N-A there are definite expectation as to what people expect. This will change as more newbies are weeded out and those people who do make it through realize the limitations one sided thinking.

Agreed-there's also a big issue of people thinking that simply buying the 'right' guitar will suddenly make them a 'gypsy jazz' musician...

Jack

And I'd make a mint! Sadly, I'm sure Michael's servers would crash the instant they were offered online...

All best,
Jack.

Cuimean

Wow, that's weird. Ted, I've seen you express some strong opinions here and on the UK forum and I certainly don't agree with all of them, but I can't ever recall you crying out for dogmatic adherence to any particular school of music.

I seem to remember an older post on this forum in which Michael noted that the beginners are usually the most dogmatic, and that's often for the best. It's one of those "you have to know the rules before you can break them" kind of things. Eventually some folks will move on to greener pastures, while others will dig deeper into the record bins and realize that the music they love has a wider scope than they first imagined. In the meantime, there's a lot of gear fetishism and many of strong opinions ventured (sometimes without the knowledge to back them up). It's just part of the territory. I'm glad folks like Teddy Dupont and Scot Wise have been patient with this and stuck around long enough to impart some knowledge to us beginners.

I don't see any of this as discouragement. Maybe the term "weeded out" was a bit strong, as it implies that there's an authority that's hand-picking some to succeed and some to go into the trash bin. It seems more like a marathon to me. Some folks will drop out before the finish line. The ones that keep going eventually realize that there is no finish line, and eventually, that it's not even a race, just a long and rewarding run.