Maury Deutsch

Teddy Dupont · September 2018

François RAVEZ wrote: »

Concerning the anecdote reported by Eddie Barclay, I am wondering if Django was not reluctant to discuss arrangement or orchestration matters with his musicians because he regarded it not only as a waste of time but also as a questioning of his leadership.

I think the Eddie Barclay comment was more in the context of general discussions about music. According to people who worked with him, his comments about music were for the main part limited to "This I like" or That is not very good". If anyone started talking about musical theory, he was not interested.

I don't think Django entered into any discussions about his arrangements with his musicians. He just told them what he wanted and because he was who he was, they accepted it. Coleridge Goode said in the London sessions, Django explained to Stephane Grappelli what he wanted, Grappelli translated it for them and that's essentially what they played.

François RAVEZ wrote: »

What was in Django's head was as he said like a tap he opened and the music came flowing.

Many others involved with him said pretty much the same thing. Charles Delaunay put it that Django's music was ".... a magnificent vision which he himself was the only one to experience...…"

scot · September 2018

This business with Maury Deutsch - it reminds me of how in the 70s and 80s every Selmer for sale in the USA was advertised as being one of Django's guitars, or was obtained from one of his cousins, or something like that to give it a little bit of Django's mojo. Deutsch probably met Django and had an anecdote or two that he told a student, who then embellished it into this nonsense.

What or how much Django knew about any of the standard "rules" of music is something we can't know. What we do know is that on the mythic mid-60s recording from La Lanterne, you can clearly hear Baro Ferret calling out the chord names during tunes. For what that's worth.

In my experience, if you are playing regularly with a musician who (for example) has an encyclopedic knowledge of chords, you will absorb some of this just by osmosis. And many of the people that Django played with over the years (Grapelly, Chaput, Rostaing, Levecque...) were skilled readers and knew theory. And it's true that the more you know about something the easier it is to learn more of that something. Django was a smart and intelligent man and when it came to this kind of thing, he probably learned just as much as he needed to learn.