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I was 17 when I first heard Django Reinhardt. A friend of my Dad brought out his old 1930s record player with original records of the Hot Club Quintet when we visited their house. I think everyone else was getting a little bored when he played the records but I was immediately in love with that music, asked lots of questions and carefully wrote down the name "Django Reinhardt" and "Minor Swing" in my notebook. That was our last day in the UK (I spent most of my teenage years there) and we boarded an airplane back to the USA early the next day.
After a long search, I managed to find one CD of his 1940s recordings in a used CD store which I played over and over. I remember attempting to learn one of the solos on my guitar from the CD, but I got frustrated eventually when I could not reproduce even a small section of it and lost confidence in myself. This was before the internet was as developed as it is today and I could not find anyone else who shared my interest or could teach me the special techniques of this style.
I stopped playing guitar for a long time, which I regret now, but continued to listen to Django Reinhardt and discovered other kinds of jazz. When I started playing guitar again recently I managed to find a few great resources on the internet like this one. Finally now, I am studying online at the Gypsy Guitar Academy taught by Joscho Stephan and learning my first full Django Reinhardt solo.
Our paths must have crossed at some point, maybe Bunjies, Les Cousins, Ronnie's or even the Roundhouse? I never did get to the Cambidge festival though (my loss). Small world eh?
Here are scans of the materials included by Ian Cruickshank with his subscription-only cassette "Gypsy Jazz from France", circa 1982...
The "Pierre Ferre" referred to is Matelo, the father of Boulou and Elios.
Enjoy!
Regards - Tony
How does Maurice "Gros Chien" Ferret fit in with the 3 Ferre brothers? Distant relation or none at all? Cousins? Google searches give only a footnote extract from the Dregni book and a couple of fun old lofi videos but little in the way of biography.
@TonyRees Thanks for sharing the above. Sort of an early gypsy jazz fan zine. Pretty cool that he would take that effort to help spread the music.
He must have been a cousin. He was also from Rouen and on one of my visits with him he showed me photographs of a huge family reunion that took place there.
Ian Cruickshank also had a VCR tape that he sold with a huge amount of cool stuff on it. Not always the best fidelity, but you took what there was back then. It had the outtakes from Django Legacy, Boulou and Elios playing with Sven Asmundson and a great version of Matelot playing Chez Jacquet incredibly fast at Samois. Plus Rafael and Louis Fays (Louis Fays was a great rhythm guitarist!), Gros Chien and Joseph Pouville playing La Foule, teenaged Stochelo playing Douce Ambiance and Rosetta... We'd take this stuff for granted today but in 1993 it was an incredible thing to watch.
@scot
My guess is the VHS tape you refer to is the genesis of this clip below (La Foule). I can only imagine how degraded the source material must have been after being copied and copied, etc. Still, as you say, it is amazing stuff and gives us all now a chance to hear some of these folks who were much closer to Django. Today, someone of their caliber might headline any festival for this type of music but are now just dimly remembered footnotes. It is important to preserve this history....where recorded material doesn't exist, this board is a great repository of collected experience over the decade(s) it has been up.
Here's another neat one of Maurice w/ Matelo
Some Boulou + Elios outtakes from the "Django Legacy" film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubjW0T6zgZ0 ...
plus more if you scroll through the results at https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22Django+Legacy%22
I started a new thread which has my 1975 Häns'che Weiss recording from Cambridge as mentioned above... Actually the quality is really good, especially for a recording I have not listened to much in 45 years and had largely presumed was unlistenable!
Regards - Tony
New thread also started for the "Gypsy Jazz from France" material, see here: https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/17526/ian-cruickshanks-1982-gypsy-jazz-from-france-tape
My first taste of this music was through the progressive bluegrass (newgrass, dawg musiic) heyday in the mid 70’s, largely spearheaded by mandolinist David Grisman. I heard Minor Swing, Limehouse Blues and others done in that jazz influenced bluegrass style, with bluegrass instrumentation (think Martin dreads, not Selmer style guitars). Grapelli recorded some of this with Grisman, so I was familiar with him before Django, even though I had heard of this great, almost mythical gypsy guitarist when I was a budding adolescent guitarist.