Django's Levin archtop?

Archtop Eddy

Surfing around today I found this article on a 1938 Levin de Luxe archtop owned by Fred Guy. What'a ya think fellas--is this the one Django's playing in the famous WIlliam Gottlieb photo? Article posted Aug 8, 2011. AE

http://www.guitaraficionado.com/the-find-1938-levin-de-luxe.html

Svanis1337

Absolutely. The guitar was even put up for auction, and is still for sale:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Levin-G ... 0618990772

Nobody won the auction.

$125.000.00 and it's yours.

It's a really beautiful and colourful guitar, something you wouldn't have guessed by seeing the B&W photos.

Archtop Eddy

Thanks for sharing the eBay listing. Down to just $105,000. An absolute steal!

Love the pic there of Fred Guy playing the guitar ala Freddie Green style with it angled on his lap. People -- check out the listing and see the pics of this guitar while they can. AE

Svanis1337

You're welcome. That pic was taken by William Gottlieb, same place and date as the Django photo you posted. All the black and white photos on the ebay listing are taken by Gottlieb at "The Aquarium" in New York on Django's very first day in the US. You can view them all here:

Go here to browse photos:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wghtml/gott ... ndex1.html

Or here for all Fred Guy photos:

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?a ... ,+Fred+?++))

Don't forget to click "Retrieve higher resolution JPEG version".

All the Gottlieb Jpegs are badly compressed. You will achieve a much greater result by downloading the TIFFs and coverting them to Jpegs yourself, making sure to convert them in HQ.

Archtop Eddy

Thanks again. About 15 years ago, our local historical museum brought William Gottlieb to town to exhibit and talk about his photos. My wife and I had a chance to speak with him after his presentation and my wife just reminded me we bought his book of photos which he autographed for us. AE

thickpick

This is at least its third time around on eBay. (And it was talked about here on the forums.) The good news it's on sale -- 50% off from the $250,000 they were asking previously.

Just goes to show you, what's a guitar worth? What someone's willing to pay for it.

AndyW

12 years later, it’s up for auction again.

lucky

And it now has a list price of £70k-140k.

I think that’s very ambitious. The association with Django is very weak, there’s no evidence he ever played the guitar, he just posed with it for one set of photos. No doubt he had a strum or two but ultimately that’s conjecture.

The guitar itself is not particularly collectible and Fred Guy is a minor figure in jazz history, so I can’t see where the value is in this lot.

MichaelHorowitz

I've had so many vintage Selmers, Bustaos, etc come through the shop over the years. I'm certain Django probably strummed a chord on at least one of them at some point. I just wish I knew which one and had a photo of it!

billyshakes

Apparently this one does have a photo. Second photo of Fred Guy of Duke Ellington's band from the same club. But I don't think that gets one any closer to playing like Django!

Lango-Django

This guitar was on display when I went to the 2013 Django exhibition at the Cite de la Musique in Paris.

According to the display case information, the famous photo of it was taken when Django was in New York City playing with the Ellington band.

Djnago was scheduled one afternoon for an important newspaper or magazine interview.

The photographer wanted photos of Django playing his guitar, and of course Django, being Django, showed up without any guitar.

So thinking quickly, somebody realized that Freddy Guy of the Ellington orchestra was nearby didn’t mind lending Django his Zephyr for the shoot.

Wouldn’t you let Django borrow your guitar? I would!

Freddy Guy was one of those 1920’s banjo players who switched to guitar in the early thirties. He was a fine rhythm player, but I never heard him play any solos.

His real greatness was as a tenor banjo player, and if you, like me, dig all the great early “jungle music” Ellington played in the Cotton Club era, then you will certainly dig Freddy’s innovative banjo work from that period.

Funny how Freddy’s guitar achieved an immortality that Freddy never did.