Django Reinhardt is considered by many people to be one of the greatest jazz style
guitar players of all time. For the bulk of his career, the instrument he chose to
play was a Selmer Modele Jazz acoustic guitar.
Jean "Django" Reinhardt was born in Pont-à-Celles, Belgium in 1910. His family was basically comprised of gypsies who made wicker furniture that they weaved by hand. At the age of twelve, Django was given a banjo and taught himself how to play by observing the fingering positions of other amateur musicians that he was surrounded by at the time. Just a year later, Django was making his living by playing his banjo in whatever live setting he could find.
When Django was eighteen, he returned home from a performance and accidently knocked over a candle. His home quickly caught fire and he had to be dragged from his burning house by his neighbors. As a result, Django received first and second degree burns over half his body, his right leg was paralyzed, and most devastatingly, his ring and pinky fingers on his left hand were damaged to the point where doctors thought he'd never be able to play again.
Django proved the doctors wrong however, and taught himself to play with just his index and middle fingers. From there, he kept playing and started to gain attention and recognition for both his ability and skill playing some of the most amazing jazz guitar the world had ever heard. The great Les Paul, who had the opportunity to hear and play with Django Reinhardt on several occasions would later state, " I considered him the greatest guitar player around."
Well then, what did the greatest play? For most of his career, after he gained notoriety, Django settled almost exclusively on Selmer Modele Jazz Guitars. Selmer was founded in the later 1800's around Paris, France by Alexandre and Henri Selmer. At first the company was geared toward producing mainly clarinets and other woodwind instruments. In 1932, the company manufactured it's first Selmer Guitar, and would go on to produce around 900 of them from that point until 1952.
The original line had wide letter D shaped soundholes, but in 1936, they updated their design to feature a small oval shaped soundhole instead; this would become known as Le Modèle Jazz. The Modele Jazz had laminated Indian rosewood back and sides, a solid spruce top, an ebony fingerboard, and a walnut neck with a grafted headstock. The neck of the guitar was quite long at 26½ -inch scale length and and the tuning machines were of course sealed gears.
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| 1936 Selmer Modele Jazz |
Django would purchase his first Selmer guitar in the mid-1930's. After gaining a reputation for being one of the greatest jazz guitarists playing in the world, Selmer decided to officially endorse Reinhardt, and for the rest of his life, Django would become the ambassador of the Selmer brand. Additionally, as an endorsee, he never had to worry about purchasing guitars anymore, and would sometimes stop by the factory and pick one up and take it home with him.
Django Reinhardt didn't have much, he made a decent living, but never achieved the sort of financial compensation one would expect for his efforts. That being said, some of this could of course be attributed to actions taken by the man himself, but, regardless of this fact, one thing is certain, he was a generous person. Indeed, more often than not, the guitars he picked up out of the Selmer factory would eventually end up in the hands of a friend. This has led to wide speculation in subsequent years that nearly any vintage Selmer guitar was at one time owned or played by Django Reinhardt. This is could obviously not be true.
The truth is, there are only two Selmer Modele Jazz Guitars in the world that can be attributed to belonging to Django Reinhardt without any trace of doubt. I do not mean at all to say that there isn't a great deal of validity to many of the claims, hell Les Paul shows off a Modele Jazz that Reinhardt had supposedly given him in the documentary Les Paul: Chasing Sound. All I am trying to convey is that beyond anecdotal evidence, there is only two Selmer Moderne Jazz guitars that there is absolutely irrefutable evidence that they belonged to Django.
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| Selmer Modele Jazz |
The first is his most famous, Number 503. Django first acquired this guitar in 1940 and played this as his main number one instrument for the rest of his life until he succumbed to a brain hemorrhage in 1953. The guitar was then passed down to his son Babik, until his mother thought better of it, and donated the instrument to the Musée Instrumental de Paris 1964.
The second Selmer Modele Jazz is number 704. This is the only instrument the Selmer logbooks show as baving been shipped to Reinhardt. Reinhardt picked up this guitar in 1948 just before a tour of Italy, during which the originai top was crushed. An unknown Italian luthier replaced the top, using a round soundhole rather than Selmer's distinctive oval. Reinhardt gave the repaired guitar to his partner Stéphane Grappelli, who in turn gave it to an Italian friend. The guitar remained with Grappelli's friend in Rome until it was sold a few years ago. French luthier Maurice Dupont restored it to Selmer specifications using a 50‑year‑old piece of spruce and also replaced the fingerboard.
Selmer is not a household name like Gibson or Martin, but they are well known and highly prized instrument. Most of their notoriety and fame is due almost exclusively to their association with Django Reinhardt. It is due to this association as well as to the fact that less than 1,000 were ever produced, and that many remain unaccounted for that these guitars are extremely hard to come by, and prohibitively expensive.
That being said, if you happen to go up to your grandparents attic one day, and find a dusty old Selmer hidden away in some forgotten corner, I highly recommend that you wipe away the grime, extend your index and middle fingers and play "Minor Swing", with the memory of one the greatests in your mind.
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