Howdy folks, Rich Ernst here, your vintage multimedia maven with my first contribution to Look Shiny. We’ll start with a softball and go with somebody pretty famous. :)

Django Reinhardt (1910-53) was an enigmatic Belgian gypsy who achieved great fame as a guitarist in the definitive European jazz group of the day (and probably of all time), the Quintet of the Hot Club of France. Most famously he played with the violin virtuoso Stepháne Grappelli, making many recordings throughout the ‘30s and later off and on until his death. He never quite became accustomed to the non-gypsy life, however, and was even said to have abandoned a brand new car on the side of the road after it ran out of gas.

The most amazing thing to me, however, is that at the age of 18, Django accidentally set fire to the caravan he was in and burned his hand horribly. He refused to have his leg amputated and managed to convalesce in bed, guitar in hand.

His left fourth and fifth digits of were permanently curled towards his palm due to the tendons shrinking. He could use them on the first two strings of the guitar for chords and octaves, but all of his soloing had to be done with the index and middle fingers. He was influenced by some of the jazz greats and was able to show off his great improvisations in all of his arrangements.

(Oddly enough, I discovered him, along with my favorite music group of all time, through the great PC video game MAFIA… It has great period music and I highly recommend it.)

He was a very precise and emotive player, as you can see below. It’s also interesting to observe his left-hand acrobatics:

For more info, see this great site Red Hot Jazz site

Be seeing you!
Rich, V.M.M. ;)