(b Liberchies, nr Luttre, Belgium, 23 Jan 1910; d Fontainebleau, 16 May 1953). French jazz guitarist. The son of a travelling entertainer, he grew up in a Gypsy settlement outside Paris. He first played the violin and later took up the guitar, and began working professionally in 1922 with the accordionist Guérino. In 1928 he was badly burnt in a caravan fire; the resulting mutilation of his left hand, which deprived him of the use of two fingers, led him to devise a unique fingering method to overcome his handicap. After a period of convalescence he worked in cafés in Paris and in a duo with the singer Jean Sablon. In 1934 he was a founding member, with Stephane Grappelli, of the ensemble that became known as the Quintette du Hot Club de France; in the years before World War II the group gained considerable renown through its numerous recordings, and Reinhardt became an international celebrity. He appeared throughout Europe and recorded with many important American musicians who visited the Continent. During the war, while Grappelli lived in Britain, Reinhardt remained in France. He led a big band, then achieved considerable success as the leader of a new quintet in which the clarinettist Hubert Rostaing took Grappelli’s place; he also became interested in composition and, with André Hodeir, arranged the music for the film Le village de la colère (1946). In 1946 he visited England and Switzerland, toured the USA as a soloist with Duke Ellington’s band (playing an amplified guitar for the first time) and worked in New York. After his return to France he lived in Samois and toured and recorded with his quintet, which sometimes again included Grappelli.
Reinhardt’s grasp of harmony, remarkable technique and trenchant rhythmic sense made him an excellent accompanist; his incisive support is heard to advantage on Stardust (1935, HMV), recorded with Coleman Hawkins. He later developed into a soloist of unique character, creating a deeply personal style out of his own cultural patrimony. By 1937, when he recorded Chicago for the Swing label with the Quintette, he was established as the first outstanding European jazz musician, a stylist with great melodic resourcefulness and a mastery of inflection. He was a gifted composer of short evocative pieces and had a flair for pacing a performance so that the maximum variety could be wrung from it without compromising its homogeneity; an excellent example is St Louis Blues (1937, Swing). Endowed with remarkable sensitivity, Reinhardt could work with visiting American performers without forsaking his own essentially romantic style. In the 1940s he changed to the electric guitar, but without coarsening his playing, as he used its power with discretion. The rhythmic content of his work became more varied, as in Minor Swing (1947, Swing), and his improvised lines more flexible. The asymmetrical, occasionally violent playing heard in some of his later performances shows the continual widening of his expressive scope.
C. Delaunay: Django Reinhardt: souvenirs (Paris, 1954; Eng. trans., 1961/R, 2/1981/R) [incl. discography]
G.S. McKean: ‘The Fabulous Gypsy’, Jam Session: an Anthology of Jazz, ed. R.J. Gleason (New York, 1958), 111–19
M.-C. Jalard: ‘Django et l’école tsigane du jazz’, Cahiers du jazz, no.1 (1959), 54–73
D. Schulz-Köhn: Django Reinhardt: ein Porträt (Wetzlar, 1960)
A. Hodeir: Toward Jazz (New York, 1962/R), 186–8 [short transcription and commentary on a Reinhardt recorded solo]
G. Hoefer: ‘The Magnificent Gypsy’, Down Beat, xxxiii/14 (1966), 21
C. Delaunay: Django, mon frère (Paris, 1968)
C. Evans: ‘Django Reinhardt’, JazzM, no.162 (1968), 30–31; no.163 (1968), 31 only
C.N. Cooper: ‘Djangologie: an Examination of a Monument to a Jazz Master’, JJ, xxiv/6 (1971), 10–12
M. Abrams: The Book of Django (Los Angeles, 1973) [bio-discography]
D.E. Hensley: ‘Remembering Django Reinhardt’, Down Beat, xliii/4 (1976), 15–38
M. Abrams: ‘Django Reinhardt: the Jazz Gypsy’, Storyville, no.77 (1978), 163–70
I. Cruickshank: The Guitar Style of Django Reinhardt and the Gypsies (Woodcote, nr Reading, 1982, enlarged 2/1985)
R. Spautz: Django Reinhardt: Mythos und Realität (Luxembourg, 1983) [incl. discography]
A. Schmitz and P. Maier: Django Reinhardt: sein Leben, seine Musik, seine Schallplatten (Gauting, 1985)
M. Zwerin: La Tristesse de Saint Louis: Swing under the Nazis (London, 1985)
F. Billard and A. Antonietto: Django Reinhardt: un géant sur son nuage (Paris, 1993)
MICHAEL JAMES