[Dixielandjazz] Django

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

The influence on Django as jazzman would seem to have been Eddie Lang, who also had a considerable influence on Shetland folk music, where the Lang chording heard on shortwave transatlantic broadcasts had a considerable impact on the guitarist Peerie Willie Johnson, under whose name a CD was issued posthumously, collecting sundry jazz performances over the years -- Johnson (Peerie is a dialect word for small) took exactly the same lesson from Lang as I think Django did, which was to do with what can be done by actively creative harmonically ambitious and wholly idiomatic chording. 

Thus while Johnson could play jazz, and was revered by Martin Taylor, a letterday virtuoso partner of Stephane Grappelli, his own considerable gifts were expressed in improving Shetland performances without the least hnt of jazz. 

Influence generally shows in a period of imitation, but by the time Django was first recorded on guitar he was doing in general terms what Eddie Lang had done, but with harmonic resources deepened by his awareness of Roma music, and with a considerable imagination of his own, soloing well beyond anything I can think of on Eddie Lang's recordings. And he certainly had an influence on later blues guitarists 


Besides which, the young GI called Charlie Byrd who sought out Django when the Allies had liberated Paris didin't switch to electric guitar as his main instrument.  There is even a session from relatively late in Charlie's career in which Byrd has a band on a Django QHCF format, though not I think so accomplished as Martin Taylor's ensemble.  


Robert R. Calder