LimeWire Music Blog

With the possible exception of Charlie Christian, to this day there has been no jazz guitarist as innovative and groundbreaking as Django Reinhardt. In the 1930s, the Gypsy jazzman laid down the template for hot jazz, becoming the toast of the Paris jazz scene and influencing a host of open-minded musicians on the other side of the Atlantic as well, but the fearsome fretmeister was not content to leave it at that. He kept on pursuing his muse, following his vision forward into the bop era, and in the ’40s he entered into a distinctly different period of his playing. That’s the Django we hear on this collection, flexing his fingers circa 1947 on what have become classics of his repertoire. Sure, the Django of the Quintette du Hot Club de France days is still present in the bluesy swoops and confident swing, but the man who blazes through the fiery licks of tunes like “Blues Primitif” and utilizes unusual voicings and harmonies on “Django Blues” (elsewhere recorded as “Django’s Blues”) is a guitarist who refused to rest on his laurels or to disappoint the little voice in his head that undoubtedly kept pushing him onward to ever greater levels of musical mastery.