Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 11:38:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Winslow Yerxa Subject: Ddjango's Fingers (no harp content)
Tim M. writes:
>Just to clarify, although Django had all the fingers >on his left hand, two were in a permanent claw. The >result was he could only use two fingers on the fret >board.
Not entirely true. I have transcribed a number of Ddjango Reinhardt solo guitar pieces (about 12 of them) in which Django plays full six-string chords.
The forefinger and middle fingers were the only one he could use with any flexibility, and therefore the only ones he used in melodic playing. But he did use the last two fingers on the B and high E strings, to play chords. This seems to have been a last resort, when the chord he wanted could not be played without them. But he did definitely use them.
>He was a child prodigy before the accident (a caravan >fire) at 18 years of age. He was forced to re-learn >the guitar and the result was nothing short of >revolutionary. He turned the liability of his >injuries into a new and unique style of guitar >playing.
The older folks were all weepy and lugubrious, and supposedly all ready to turn him into an icon of lost promise. Django wasn't interested in that, and taughthimself to waalk and play the guitar again. Suppssedly the doctors wanted to amputate, and his relatives spirited him out of the hsopital in the middle of the night.
Don't know how true any of the surrounding stories are, but his achievement in the face of imposed disability is quite amazing.
Winslow
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