Fapy unleashed

redblues

all we have from Django are one-take singles despite the quantity

This is a fact that irks me no end. It doesn't take long listening to realise the recorded output we have of these guys no way resembles what they would have played like on stage. A 5 hour set broken down into 2:30 mins tunes is not the way a virtuoso plays a gig, not to mention two virtuosos in the same band. I can easily picture an 8 min long Appel Indirect judging from the recording, the guys are only getting going on a lot of recordings and its wrap up time.

stubla

One take singles ?....what nonsense

Jeepers Creepers two takes
I'm Confessin two takes
I wonder where my baby is tonight three takes
Hungaria at least three takes
Tea for two three takes
Twelve year two takes
Appel Direct(5 mins live version-- circa march 1940)
...that 1940 live recording of Appel Direct(incredible btw) shows that Django knew when to stop--he was generous to the other soloists that night


Stu

Teddy Dupont

Other multiple takes include:-
Chinatown
Mabel
My Sweet
Lover Come Back To Me
I Got Rhythm
Duke & Dukie
Babik
Del SAlle
I'll Never Smile Again
Gypsy with a Song
How High the Moon
Micro

stubla

Its great that we have all those alternate takes to listen and compare.
Re the live versus studio situation don't forget we have the 1948 Django quintet live concert in Brussels(integrale 16) and most of the tracks from that gig come in at under 3mins;i'm sure Django would stretch out in jam sessions and i agree it would be great to have some of those to listen to.
I suppose the 1943 Blues Clair gives us the best idea of what Django stretching out would sound like.

Teddy Dupont

And although they are not strictly second takes as they were recorded just under two months apart, the two totally different versions of "Japanese Sandman" illustrate beautifully the breadth of Django's creativity against essentially the same basic musical structure.

Michael Bauer

I have a CD, "Jazz in Paris" (?) that has alternate takes of most of the tunes that Stubla mentions. What amazes me is how little repetition there is in the alternate takes. You'd have thought Django might have thought, "Well, that was good, but I want to improve the last four bars of the section chorus," and then repeated most of what he had just played with "improvements", but instead, he goes off in a different direction in almost every take. It's just stunning to me how fertile his imagination was, and how much "in the moment" he was playing. A good friend of mine, who is a pretty fair player himself, once said to me that he thought Django must have worked out alot of his solos. He felt that the recorded solos were almost too superb to have been played ad lib. The alternate takes really disprove that contention. They really establish Django's genius for me at a whole other level, because I listen and think that I just heard the perfect solo for that song, and then hear the alternate take and hear him go off in a totally different direction, yet one just as good. It's jaw-dropping!

We can debate about Django's technique vs. modern players, but to me that misses the point. Okay, so Jimmy Rosenberg can play "Blues Claire" note-for-note faster than Django did, but Django was making it up as he went, not memorizing something as an etude. Django played it at the tempo it sounded good to him; there was no mark to beat. I'm sure he could have gone much faster if needed. I never have had the impression Django was racing a metronome; he just played what fit.

Elliot's right to say we only have a small sample of what Django could do if turned lose in an after hours jam (We are lucky to have the session at Minton's for Charlie Christian!), but unlike with many players, we have a huge catalog of recordings documenting what Django was capable of. And where he stands out (to me) over any modern player, including our beloved Fapy, is melodic inventiveness. He simply does more things in more ways than any other guitarist I can think of. I sometimes find myself listening almost too exclusively to modern players. When I get back to Django, I get reminded just how much more inventive than everyone else he really has been, at least to my ear.

Anyway, what a rip-roaring debate this has been! And fun, too, when it wasn't getting personal.

Jeff Moore

I'd read this thread but couldn't put into words what is unique and unprecedented about Django.
Michael's post seemed to say a lot what was bubbling incoherently in me.

To have to choose whether Django was a Jazz or Gypsy guitarist or the beginning of a style or not, seems to rely to heavily on categories and definitions. Some guy once said "It is as useful to talk about music as it is to dance about architecture".
When I hear the copious invention and relaxed savant that was Django, I hear something (I simply don't know what it is) that I do not hear as much of with other artists, modern or dead. The whole thing that Django was involved with - arrangement, solos, and sense of the conviction of the players is uniquely satisfying and nerve wracking as a creative marker.

Comparing the modern guys to each other and Django to them perhaps cannot capture what that individual or group does for the listener, though I really like this thread.
But obviously many many people hear something special in Django. If they're like me, the effort to define and translate into words what is there on the scratchy cd's at some point is like trying to jump over my house. I wish I could but it's just frustrating.

I can appreciate that Elliot may not hear what others hear that makes Django stand out like a house on an running track. He looks huge to me.

I really like Fapy, DeBarre (sp?), and Birelli. The one so composed, the other a little crazy. Neither bring the same impulse to me as the other or Django. Django nearly always makes me want to practice, not the licks he's doing, but to do things I want to think are new. He seems endlessly new to me and endlessly pointing towards other worlds.
The often referred to impressionist painters come to mind.

stubla

There are a few(very very few) musicians who really come straight 'out of the blue'--ie theres no real precedent for what they do--Chopin was definitely one;Debussy another;Charlie Parker certainly--and then there's Django( and please don't mention Eddie Lang because there's really no comparison.....but we all know that don't we....?)

Theres a very convincing argument that Django was really the greatest improviser of them all(and btw todays hot property Adrien Moignard has told me he thinks exactly the same)

Its on record that Charlie Christian learnt note for note some of Djangos solos("St Louis blues" was one according to Mary Osbourne)--and who was the biggest influence on the young beboppers who changed Jazz forever?....well none other than "Mr Charles Christian on the electric guitar" as Benny Goodman famously introduced him.
Listen to "Billet Doux" and you'll hear 'Bebop';listen to "Appel Direct" and you'll hear 'Modal' playing before the term was even invented.
Truly Django was really 'somethin' else'.

Michael Bauer

Was it someone in Ellington's orchestra who said that Django was the kind of musician that comes along once in a century? This from an American jazz player who was surrounded constantly by the best of American jazz players. Not a bad recommendation!!! If no one remembers, I'll try to dig up that reference.

I do think Django was influenced heavily by American players like Armstrong and later the be-boppers, but influence is one thing; achievement is something else. Django made everthing he heard into something his own. This may sound strange, but to me he's a bit like a cubist in that he took conventional and radical influences and elements, broke them up into fragments, and reassembled them into something no one had ever heard before.

I am a huge admirer of Charlie Christian, but I readily admit that Charlie's "bag of tricks" was much smaller than Django's; Eddie Lang's was smaller still. This isn't to say they weren't great players, but to me establishes just how rare Django's genius was. I think part of it boils down to this: I've read/heard numerous musicians of all genre's and instruments admit to being influenced by Django, even classical musicians like Julien Bream who like to improvise on occasion, and I've met lots of horn players who go nuts for his phrasing (if not his choice of keys). Who else in the "gypsy jazz" world can we say that about? Birelli might come the closest, but it isn't close enough to be significant. To me Django wasn't a guitarist who got good enough to compose and improvise; in my mind he was rather a composer and improviser who happened to get good enough on guitar to express all that was inside him, if that makes sense to anyone but me. The genius was always in there just looking for a way out. And he used the peculiarities of the guitar (and his own hands) to enhance his originality; they never seemed to limit it.

That truly is once in a century genius.

Heavy Django

Michael Bauer wrote:

Was it someone in Ellington's orchestra who said that Django was the kind of musician that comes along once in a century? This from an American jazz player who was surrounded constantly by the best of American jazz players. Not a bad recommendation!!! If no one remembers, I'll try to dig up that reference.

“You only find a musician like Django once in a century"
~Rex Stewart (jazz cornetist/trumpet player best known for his work with the Duke Ellington
orchestra)