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Django Reinhardt books
Released in November 2004 there is finally
an excellent Django biography entitled Django:
The Life and Music of a Gypsy. Beside that, we have a few
Django Reinhardt tab book noted below.
Django:
The Life and Music of a Gypsy
From Amazon Product
Description:
Django Reinhardt was arguably the greatest guitarist who ever lived,
an important influence on Les Paul, Charlie Christian, B.B. King,
Jerry Garcia, Chet Atkins, and many others. Yet there is no major
biography of Reinhardt. Now, in Django, Michael Dregni offers a
definitive portrait of this great guitarist. Handsome, charismatic,
childlike, and unpredictable, Reinhardt was a character out of a
picaresque novel. Born in a gypsy caravan at a crossroads in
Belgium, he was almost killed in a freak fire that burned half of
his body and left his left hand twisted into a claw. But with this
maimed left hand flying over the frets and his right hand plucking
at dizzying speed, Django became Europe's most famous jazz musician,
commanding exorbitant fees--and spending the money as fast as he
made it. Dregni not only chronicles this remarkably colorful
life--including a fascinating account of gypsy culture--but he also
sheds much light on Django's musicianship. He examines his long
musical partnership with violinist Stephane Grappelli--the one suave
and smooth, the other sharper and more dissonant--and he traces the
evolution of their novel string jazz ensemble, Quintette du Hot Club
de France. Indeed, the author spotlights Django's amazing musical
diversity, describing his swing-styled Nouveau Quintette, his big
band Django's Music, and his later bebop ensemble, as well as his
many compositions, including symphonic pieces influenced by Ravel
and Debussy and his unfinished organ mass inspired by Bach. And
along the way, the author offers vivid snapshots of the jazz scene
in Paris--colorful portraits of Josephine Baker, Bricktop, Louis
Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and countless others--and of Django's
vagabond wanderings around France, Europe, and the United States,
where he toured with Duke Ellington. Capturing the extraordinary
life and times of one of the great musicians of the twentieth
century, Django is a must-read portrait of a true original.
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