Django Reinhardt

Belgium, 1928–1953

Romani-Belgian guitarist (1910-1953) who played with two working fingers on his left hand after a fire. With violinist Stephane Grappelli in the Quintette du Hot Club de France he established an all-string form of jazz.

MusicRoots documents 5 artists who influenced Django Reinhardt and 9 artists Django Reinhardt influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.

Who influenced Django Reinhardt?

• Eddie Lang — Eddie Lang was the guitar model in Émile Savitry's record collection that revealed jazz guitar to Django — the first to make the instrument a solo jazz voice.
• Lonnie Johnson — Lonnie Johnson's fluid single-string blues-jazz soloing was among the guitar voices that shaped Django's own from Savitry's collection.
• Claude Debussy — Later in his career Django drew on the French impressionists — Debussy, Ravel and Fauré — the harmonic colour behind his more ambitious compositions.
• Louis Armstrong — Armstrong's improvisational freedom and jazz phrasing were foundational for Django; they admired each other and Django absorbed Armstrong's recordings intensely.
• Duke Ellington — Django toured the US with Ellington in 1946; Ellington was his primary model for jazz sophistication and composition.

Which artists did Django Reinhardt influence?

• George Harrison — Django Reinhardt was one of Harrison's earliest musical influences — his guitar mastery was foundational.
• Robert Fripp — Where the picking comes from — a guitar line that moves like a horn rather than strumming behind a singer.
• Stevie Ray Vaughan — Vaughan admired jazz guitarists led by Django Reinhardt — the gypsy-jazz phrasing informing his more melodic playing.
• Chet Atkins — Atkins named Django Reinhardt a primary influence — the gypsy-jazz fluency woven into his fingerstyle.
• Les Paul — Les Paul idolised Django Reinhardt — the gypsy-jazz phrasing that shaped his own virtuoso guitar style.
• Jeff Beck — Django Reinhardt's jazz phrasing was among Beck's cited influences, feeding his melodic, expressive lead style.
• Willie Nelson — Django is Nelson's largest guitar influence - the single-line, behind-the-beat playing on the nylon-string is gypsy jazz, not country.
• Ritchie Blackmore — Listed by Blackmore among his guitar influences, with Les Paul and Wes Montgomery — the jazz end of a hard rock player.
• Black Sabbath — Iommi lost two fingertips in a sheet metal press at 17 and had been told he would not play again; his foreman played him Reinhardt, who had rebuilt his own technique after a fire. Iommi carried on with home-made thimbles and slackened strings, and Sabbath's riffs follow from that.