In one of my favorite Woody Allen films, Sweet and Low­down, Sean Penn plays Emmett Ray, a fic­tion­al jazz gui­tarist who embod­ies the tit­u­lar qual­i­ties in equal­ly great mea­sure. “Already con­sid­ered peer­less among Amer­i­can jazz gui­tarists,” Ray admits of only one rival—Parisian gyp­sy gui­tarist Djan­go Rein­hardt, whom Emmett wor­ships, obvi­ous­ly pat­terns him­self after, and can’t stand to see in per­son with­out faint­ing dead away. Where Ray is a tremen­dous­ly con­vinc­ing cre­ation of Allen and Penn, Rein­hardt was very much a real musi­cian, and was indeed the reign­ing king of jazz gui­tar from the 1930s to the 50s. Reinhardt’s incred­i­ble skill is all the more impres­sive con­sid­er­ing he only had use of three fin­gers on his left hand due to injuries sus­tained in a car­a­van fire in 1928.

Rein­hardt and jazz vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li found­ed the Quin­tette du Hot Club de France in 1934, and in the for­ties, Rein­hardt began com­pos­ing, and toured Eng­land, Switzer­land, and the U.S. as a soloist with Duke Ellington’s band. He record­ed his final album, Djan­gol­o­gy in 1949, retired in 51, and died in 53, already a leg­end, “one of the few Euro­pean musi­cians to exert a seri­ous influ­ence on the Amer­i­can art form of jazz,” writes an NPR “Week­end Edi­tion” pro­file. Django’s play­ing, “at times joy­ous, fierce and lyri­cal,” draws heav­i­ly on his Roma roots while mas­ter­ing the vocab­u­lary of swing—a lan­guage, it seems, still new to many audi­ences in 1938, when the film at the top of the post, Jazz “Hot,” was made.

In a pre­vi­ous post, Mike Springer points out the “didac­tic tone” of the first cou­ple min­utes of the doc­u­men­tary, cre­at­ed by Reinhardt’s man­ag­er Lew Grade in order to famil­iar­ize the British pub­lic with jazz in advance of the quintet’s first UK tour. The film “real­ly comes alive when Djan­go arrives on the screen,” play­ing an arrange­ment of the pop­u­lar French song “J’attendrai.” Pri­or to the UK tour, the Quin­tet du Hot Club trav­eled to the Nether­lands and played The Hague. See them in the Dutch film clip above, begin­ning at 0:34. Grap­pel­li solos while Djan­go holds down the rhythm.

By 1944, Rein­hardt was well known to jazz lovers and musi­cians alike, appear­ing at the upscale Paris cabaret Bal Tabarin in the footage above at 2:54, fol­low­ing a clip of Mar­lene Diet­rich look­ing on from the audi­ence.

In 1952, the year before his death, Rein­hardt was famous enough to be cast along­side Louis Arm­strong and Sid­ney Bechet in the French-Ital­ian film La Route de Bon­heur (titled Salu­ti e baci in Italy). In this clip, Rein­hardt enter­tains a packed train car. The song dubbed over the footage is Nuits de St. Ger­main des Pres.

See much more film and pho­tog­ra­phy of Djan­go Rein­hardt and his famous quin­tet in this bio­graph­i­cal doc­u­men­tary, The Genius of Djan­go Rein­hardt. Described as an unsta­ble and child­like man capa­ble of the most unusu­al whims, the por­trait of Rein­hardt, prac­ti­cal­ly the inven­tor of jazz gui­tar, traces his life from birth in a Roma encamp­ment in Bel­gium to his final years in semi-retire­ment. And for even more Djan­go, don’t miss this French doc­u­men­tary film, Trois doigts de genie.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

Djan­go Rein­hardt and the Inspir­ing Sto­ry Behind His Gui­tar Tech­nique

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Iceland’s biggest export, aside from vol­canic ash, is that pixy­ish pop singer, Björk. Or at least that’s how it seems in the Amer­i­can pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion. Björk’s first three of albums were pret­ty much required lis­ten­ing in cer­tain cir­cles dur­ing the ‘90s.  Since then, her stature in the indie world has only grown.

Yet before she had a run of beau­ti­ful and strange mas­ter­pieces; before she was sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly tor­tured in front of the cam­era by Lars Von Tri­er in Dancer in the Dark; and before she was singing about birth­days with her break­out band The Sug­ar­cubes, Björk cut her very first album. It was 1977, and Björk was only eleven.

Björk, whose name rhymes with “work” not “pork,” land­ed the record deal after a tape of her singing Tina Charles’ 1976 dis­co hit “I Love to Love” played on Iceland’s one and only radio sta­tion. The album, called sim­ply Björk, was some­thing of a fam­i­ly affair. While Björk sang and played the flute, her step­fa­ther Sævar Árna­son played gui­tar while her mom, Hildur Hauks­dót­tir, designed the album cov­er. (See above.) Over­all, the record sounds exact­ly like what you might expect an Ice­landic album from the ‘70s sung by a tweenaged chanteuse might sound like – part Abba, part King Crim­son and part ear­ly Miley Cyrus. Björk does pret­ty groovy cov­ers of The Bea­t­les’ “Fool on the Hill” (top) and Syree­ta Wright’s “Your Kiss is Sweet (mid­dle),” both sung in Ice­landic. There’s also an equal­ly groovy psy­che­del­ic instru­men­tal track ded­i­cat­ed to painter Jóhannes Kjar­val, (below) whose work is on Ice­landic cur­ren­cy. Björk report­ed­ly went plat­inum in Ice­land. You can lis­ten to more tracks from that album on WFMU.

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

Ice­land in the Mid­night Sun

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.