Sunday, July 4, 2010

The future looked bright for the young Belgian Gypsy.  An accomplished banjo player at age twelve, he had progressed from street-musician to music hall performer in the last six years, and by October 25, 1928, he now had an offer to join John Hylton and His Orchestra.  Hylton’s group was one of the premier symphonic jazz orchestras of the era; in 1929 it would sell 3,180,000 records, “…one record every seven seconds (Dregi, 2004, p. 43)”.   The Gypsy accepted the offer, but in the early morning hours of October 26, an accident changed the life and future of eighteen-year-old Django Reinhardt, the Gypsy jazz banjo-player.