Django's Voice in High Fidelity

Lango-Django

Well I certainly thank you, Svanis, for that amassing that list and noting those links down for us to check out whenever I want to remind myself that yes, Django was a real human being who really did talk to people.

Will

PS I hope this doesn't kill your thread though, cause it's a cool thread.

... sometimes my overly-magnetic personality, which comes through even in these comments, seem to repel and attract equally...

Svanis1337

Hi Will! I found some more samples of Django's voice. I added them to the list above as well;

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. :oops: (says: Ahh Yeah. [during third tune])

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.

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

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

Duke Ellington was the first to Anglosize "Manoir de mes Rêves" to "Django's Castle". He was aware it didn't really translate into that, though.

One of Django's paintings was called Manoir de mes Rêves. I'll show it below.






I'm sure of you have all seen the Den Haag footage. But what I don't think you've seen/heard is the last second or so of it. Nearly all videos seem to be missing this. Even the Intégrale series didn't include the last second. Here is a link to the original footage with that missing second in good quality:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pohLhAxrOKc

Note how pumping the rhythm is. The three recordings from that session (Dutch Polygon Journal) are very, very swinging and awesome.

Steveareno

Thanks for posting the audio clips. Much appreciated. So nice to hear Django's laid back, mellow voice. At least there are a few film clips out there on YouTube. The la pompe on the Dutch clip with their heads nodding in time is great..wish there were more. :?
Swang on,

Teddy Dupont

Django was always very taciturn and invariably answered questions in a monosyllabic way. Just about everyone who ever spent much time with him made the same comment. Grappelli once said that Django would sometimes not talk for hours. Jacotte Perrier claimed that Django and Steph used to jam at her father's apartment in Paris before the war and Django hardly said anything, just laughed a lot.

Django had no interest in intellectualising about music. He was only interested in playing it.