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Outstanding comments and insights! Another thing I think is that his natural musicality was combined with an exceptionally superior knowledge of his fretboard. I mentioned perfect pitch in another forum and was pretty brutally shot down, so I don't want to go open that can of worms. However I feel that his mastery of the guitar allowed him to absolutely know where to go to play exactly what he heard.
Dump that forum and stay here. Is it moderated by Jimmy Bruno by any chance?
Since I can’t add to all the brilliant comments already made above, I will simply observe that loving Django’s playing doesn’t actually rule out loving the playing of many, many other wonderful guitarists who came before, during or after Django.
What is the ‘best’ wine of all time?
Who is the ‘most beautiful’ woman of all time?
What is the ‘greatest’ film of all time?
Who was the ‘better’ artist, Picasso or Van Gogh?
Merely to ask such questions is to reveal how ‘questionable’ their premise is.
But what is ‘unquestionable’ is that Django holds a unique and special place in the hearts of guitarists and music lovers all over the world.
And I believe he always will always be so loved, just like Mozart, or Debussy, or the Beatles...
Will
Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."
Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
What is the ‘best’ wine of all time?
I wish there was a clip that lived on the internet, but Justin Wilson, the Cajun chef, said once on his show that "de best wine for de meal is de kinda wine you like!"
I think it is analogous with music. We all love Django or we wouldn't be here. Some of us like certain other players more or less, according to our own tastes. But we should never feel our own personal enjoyment of this music is being questioned or altered by the tastes of another.
One other characteristic of Django that could be relevant: he apparently had exceptional hand-eye coordination. Both Michael Dregni and Ian Cruickshank report this: “he was amazingly adept at games, from pinball to pool”.
Incidentally Joe Pass, Freddie Greene and Wes Montgomery were also top class pool players.
Incidentally Joe Pass, Freddie Greene and Wes Montgomery were also top class pool players.
Well, you can certainly put Eddie Lang in that group, Bill!
It was said that Eddie made even more money as a pool shark than he did as a musician, and he was one of the highest paid jazz musicians of the era, touring with Paul Whiteman and Bing Crosby, and making Hollywood movies with Bing at $10,000 per....
The story goes that when on tour, Lang's favourite dodge was to hang around the local pool hall and rack 'em up "just for practice", deliberately missing a few shots... until the local hotshot would challenge him to play for money...and somehow, Eddie would just "barely manage" to win when the stakes got really high...
Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."
Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
Yeah, don't like the "who's the best?" discussions. I just find him so satisfying to listen to.
Neat video also appreciating Django, especially his amazing phrasing:
This is actually really nice and level video, really well spoken guy. YT has been trying to serve it to me lately but I was avoiding it because of the "cute poster" as I do with most videos like that (YT has become such a weird market place). This guy actually managed to put Django's shenanigans in much better light.
Only thing I don't quite agree with is this insistence on his horizontal playing. I'm certainly not an expert on the subject but I did learn to play I'll See You solo and few other short things using two fingers and pretty much the whole thing can be played with shapes you'd choose when using all fingers. What I think he did a lot is double stops and quick bars with the same finger on adjacent strings. One of these years I'll make a video with my take on that (it only took me 5 to do I'll see you...). I can see him using some of these horizontal lines, I remember reading from people who have seen him play live saying just that . But I don't think it's something he mostly relied on as it's usually presented, IMO.