Complete Recordings For Solo Guitar 1937-1950

Poetically speaking, an entire album of unaccompanied guitar solos by Django Reinhardt seems roughly commensurate with the earth's magnetic field, its inner and outer atmosphere, the atomic weight of the sun and all of the elements in the periodic table, in addition to a few more that haven't yet divulged themselves. This is elemental stuff. It borders on the cosmic. Django Reinhardt's solo guitar recordings pop up here and there like will-o-the-wisps or Red Dwarves across the sky chart of his panoramically extended discography. Gathered together in one album for the very first time are 15 solos recorded between 1937 and 1950 in Paris, London, Chicago, and Rome. Some were waxed as warm-ups in recording studios, others were committed to acetates for radio broadcast purposes; one "Improvisation" was recorded live at Chicago's Civic Opera House while two extended pieces ("Belleville" and "Nuages") were intended for use as the soundtrack to a film that was never completed. For the closing track the producers stepped away from the otherwise immaculate chronology (or looped back to track one like a Möbius Strip) to include a three-and-one-half minute sequence entitled "Two Improvised Guitar Choruses," culled from a rare and terrifically scratchy broadcast acetate cut in 1937. None of these performances sound anything like the familiar, rhythmically pulsing proceeds of the Quintet of the Hot Club de France. "Echoes of Spain" recalls the landscape of Andalusia and the verses of Federico Garcia Lorca. "Naguine" is an intimate portrait of the guitarist's wife. "Perfum" (Also known as "Parfum") conveys something like the bouquet from a vial of essential oil, rose absolute, perhaps, or a carnation-scented love potion from a little shop on Royal Street in New Orleans. Django Reinhardt's complete recordings for solo guitar are subtle and potent, sanguine and ethereal, magical and down to earth. ~ arwulf arwulf|