Belgian born and of gypsy upbringing, Django Reinhardt perhaps owes his status among the foremost European jazz artists to a terrible accident he suffered when only 18, in which severe burns disabled two of the fingers on his left hand. He painfully and painstakingly re-learned to play the guitar using his two remaining digits, causing him to develop a unique style of single-note runs. Despite the privations of his life, which ended with a stroke in 1953 when he was in his early 40s, and the fact that his career was interrupted by World War II, there is an effortless, vivacious languor about Reinhardt's music, amply showcased in this collection from 2007. Reinhardt was conversant with the speedy intricacies of US bebop, yet there is a distinctive European-ness about his music — the whiff of Gitanes, especially when in the company of his longtime musical companion violinist Stephane Grappelli.

Reinhardt's cover of “Old Man River” eschews the lugubrious solemnity of the original, skittering across it like a dragonfly. The title track, his famous version of the French national anthem, takes some of the stuffiness out of the tune, replacing it first with gentleness, then a rattling, romping cheeriness. By covering familiar… read more »