Django's Voice in High Fidelity

Svanis1337

Snatched from ina.fr.

Django Reinhardt on Benny Goodman's Concert in Paris, 1952.

Available on Intégrale 19, disc 1, although with much worse sound quality. Let's hope they find more Django, even though their archives only seem to go back as far as 1944.

Here it is:


Imagine if we find something like this:


Django with Duke Ellington - Film Footage.



Missing portion of the Harry Volpe 8mm film with Django eating Spaghetti.

kevingcox

Wow, what an idiotic interviewer! She seems more concerned with talking about how much better France is than everywhere else than she is talking about music... although Django doesn't seem too interested in talking to her about music or anything else, hahaha.

He sounds pretty laid back, maybe he's had a few glasses of wine by this point

For anyone who doesn't understand French, he basically says that he will be playing with Benny Goodman on Friday, they met once at the 400 club in New York but Django didn't have the right to play with him. They plan on playing a couple of improvised songs, but got together last Thursday to practice. I'm not clear on whether this is where the practice took place, he says it was at the Palais de Chaillot (sp?) which I'm guessing would be in France (she says "also" so maybe that is the same place they are playing on Friday) but she makes the point that Django was in Rome recently which he says was really nice and then it turns into an infomercial for Paris tourism and French national pride. Really, France is just the best and he prefers living there to everywhere else. Yes, he loves him some France. She thanks him, he seems like he is a bit distracted or disinterested by this point and he says no problem.

Svanis1337

Thanks for the translation!

Yes, it's the same interviewer who interviewed him on his painting(s) when it(they) were for display.

Didn't realize she was so idiotic.

kevingcox

Svanis1337 wrote:

Thanks for the translation!

Yes, it's the same interviewer who interviewed him on his painting(s) when it(they) were for display.

Didn't realize she was so idiotic.

Haha, I might be overstating things. For all I know Django was giving negative body language about the music questions so she decided to go another route, but it seemed strange to me that she followed up with so many questions about his opinion of France after he mentioned being in Rome. Maybe there was still a lot of post-war pro-France hoopla that was standard to any media production at the time, but she really seemed to paint him into a corner after he made a fairly non-committal statement about liking France over Rome until he finally has to insist on how wonderful France is.

Of course looking back there are at least a hundred questions we would have preferred her to ask, but she was probably just some silly entertainment reporter and not a musical historian by any means.

Lango-Django

Thanks for posting this, svanis1337. How wonderful to hear Django speak. His voice was a much more suave, resonant baritone than I had expected...

All I had heard of his voice previously were his spontaneous encouragements of Grappelli ("Go man!" or "Yeah man!") during some of their recordings... on these recordings his voice sounded rather pinched and nasal.

Listening to this voice, I hear a very assured, relaxed, sophisticated man, perhaps even a bit avuncular, as if the female interviewer were quite a bit younger than him, and maybe a little bit hyper?

I for one won't hold Django's ovbiously sincere love of Paris against him, since I love Paris, too--- all the more so because it reminds me of Django and Grappelli.

Will

Guillaume

To clarify, the conversation in the second half turns to Parisian women, not really Paris. Django is asked his opinion on the elegance of parisian women, in contract with Rome where he has just come back from. He is then asked if he would prefer to live in Paris over any other city, to which he answers: France...

Lango-Django

Merci, Guillaume... I had difficulty in hearing if Django was talking about Parisiens or Parisiennes...

That being said, I have to agree: having been to both Rome and Paris, though there are a lot of dazzling head-turners in each city, but I think just like Django, I'd have to choose the Parisiennes...

kevingcox

I never said he didn't prefer Paris, I just found it funny that they seemed to have a more in depth conversation regarding that than they did music.

Guillaume

There is a longer excerpt from this interview in the recent and excellent "Trois Doigts de Genie" film where she asks Django about his painting. She tries to get him to compare playing music and painting, to which he answers something like: for me it's different... clearly Django seems to have been more eloquent with his guitar playing than his words. Interestingly, his French is grammatically very correct (in spite of numerous accounts to the contrary) except for at one point for "to paint" he says "peigner" instead of "peindre", which is the kind of mistake a child might make...

Lango-Django

he says "peigner" instead of "peindre", which is the kind of mistake a child might make...

... or perhaps someone whose first language isn't French?

Which raises the question, what was Django's first language: French or Romani?

Svanis1337

That's a good question. But while we try to figure that out, here are all the recordings I can think of which feature Django's voice.

1936 "La jambe en bois" (says: A lot of things in french...)

1936 "Miss Otis regrets" (says: See above.)

1936 "Blue Drag" - take 1 (UNISSUED, NO INFORMATION)

1936 "Blue Drag" - take 2 (Sings and laughs.)

1936 "Spanish Fantasy" (UNISSUED, NO INFORMATION)

1937 "Minor Swing" (says: Ahh Yeah!)

1937 "Crazy Rhythm" (says: Go on, go on.)

1937 "Swinging with Django" (says: Ahh yeah, man. Playing!)

1937 "Dutch Polygon Journal" Three-tune medley including the "Swing Guitars" sample from the Den Haag footage as well as "Bricktop" and another tune I can't identify at the moment. (says: Ahh Yeah. [during third tune])

1938 "Honeysuckle Rose" (says: Yeah, [unintelligible] come on!)

1938 "Sweet Georgia Brown" (says: One more Steph, one more.)

1938 "My Sweet - Take 2" (says: Come on Vola! [To Louis Vola] Yeah!)

1938 "Lover, come back to me - Take 2" (says: Come on, Larry! [to Larry Adler])

1938 "Billet Doux" (says: Come on!)

1939 "Tiger Rag (Radio)" (Django sighs, exlaims: YES! and says yeah.) -Side note; Very good performance and higher-than-average recording quality as is the case of nearly all Django's radio broadcasts.

1940 "Festival Swing" (says: Django Reinhardt, 02:25. and Hubert Rostaing, 02:53.)

[b]------------------------------Voice Deepens?------------------------------[/b]

1944 or 1945 "Interview et orgue organ" (Django's mass playing in background. There is a 7 minute version of the mass on the album "Gypsy Jazz School" played on organ.



1950 "Django Reinhardt sur le concert Parisien de Benny Goodman (on Benny Goodmans concert in Paris.)

1951 "Dream of You" (says: Dream of You.)

1951 "Manoir de mes Rêves" (Django's Castle) (says: Manoir de mes Rêves)

1951 "Sur la peinture en Fa dièse mineur (On Painting in F Sharp Major) with Georges Patricks & Django Reinhardt.



1952 "Yesterday" (says: Yesterday.)

1952 "Interview sur la peinture de Django"



1953 "Interview & Yesterdays"



This post was time consuming and I would appreciate some thanks for my effort.