George Benson Django story

flaco

This video interview was just posted by Reverb as George is preparing to list some personal guitars for sale. At 25 minutes in he tells an incredible story of going to France and being gifted a guitar that Django played on, from Django’s “best friend.” One of the claims was that Django was buried there. Has anyone heard these claims before? I wonder who this friend was? It’s fun to speculate that Bireli was one of young guitar players that night.

https://youtu.be/K5jg5PHd6Uk?si=98QNSq4nirLB2Hxh

wim

"incredible" sounds about right 😁

BillDaCostaWilliams

"“I don’t call it practise,

I call it becoming familiar with my instrument”

lucky

Presumably the restaurant was Chez Fernand and the friend was Fernand Loisy. Django certainly wasn’t buried on the sidewalk (who gets buried on a sidewalk?) but he did collapse outside the cafe so Benson’s story is pretty accurate even if the details are a bit garbled.

Apparently Loisy died in 1974 which makes it unlikely that the 14-year old was Bireli. Romane or Tchavolo would be about the right age.

flaco

Ah, interesting! Those details are close enough to Benson’s story. I assumed from the way Benson said it that the bar itself was in Paris, but that’s not exactly what he said, and he could be misremembering details anyway.

Buco

He's such a great storyteller, I could listen to him reading a restaurant menu let alone reminiscing about his life.

But he did say the guitar he received wasn't one of the originals: "guitars that Django Reinhardt used to play...not the originals" (with his finger raised in emphasis). Whatever that means...what did he mean?

As far as buried by the sidewalk claim...I just looked at the map of Samois and saw that there are three cemeteries in the town and each is next to the road. Every road in that town is bound to have a sidewalk next to it. So he might've meant, or this is how the French guy told him but it was supposed to be "see that sidewalk over there? That's where the cemetery is. That's where Django was buried" Easy error to make for a non English speaking person or for George to omitt mentioning during his story.

wim

I guess it means "not a Selmer"?

Chez Fernand is (was) right on the river, near the Ile where the festival used to be held. Django's grave is a fair way away up the hill, maybe 15-20 mins by walking.

Also, Samois is not really so close to Paris that you could call someone for an impromptu jam at midnight. It would probably still be more than an hour by car if you were hauling ass. I assumed he was gigging or hanging around in Paris, not Samois.. it would be interesting to hear more of this story, where in France it actually was