The sprawling ‘Intégrale Django Reinhardt, Volumes 1 through 20’ (Frémeaux et Associés) is a massive, amazing tribute to Django Reinhardt’s life.
The basic outline of Django Reinhardt’s remarkable career is familiar to just about anyone who loves the guitar: how he started playing guitar-banjo as a child in the bals musette, the rough, working-class dance halls of Paris; how he nearly lost his life in a fire that badly burned his left hand; how, in the process of relearning to play guitar with his crippled hand, he developed a mastery of his instrument that still astounds other guitarists; how he formed the Quintet of the Hot Club of France with violinist Stephane Grappelli and created the style now known as Gypsy jazz; and how, after filling hundreds of records with his astonishing music, he retired to the little village of Samois, where he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1953 at the age of 43.
Most fans also know that Reinhardt made a lot of records, but until the release of Intégrale Django Reinhardt, they probably weren’t aware of how prolific he really was. This series of 20 two-CD sets was compiled by Daniel Nevers and includes every commercially released recording that Reinhardt played on as a leader or a sideman, as well as every known private recording, air check, test pressing and outtake. The mammoth task of rounding up the more than 900 tracks Reinhardt recorded in his lifetime was begun in 1996 and completed in late 2005. Reinhardt was a man who lived for music, and we’re fortunate he lived much of his life in front of a microphone. The Intégrale Django Reinhardt is a sort of biography through music and it tells Reinhardt’s story more profoundly than mere words can.
via Django Reinhardt’s Life on Record | The Fretboard Journal: Keepsake magazine for guitar collectors.
