I Love Django. Do You Love Django? (see video)
 

For those of you who may not know of Django Reinhart, he was the precursor to Eddie Van Halen, Tony Rice, Hendrix, and just about every other guitarist in the last century. He was a gypsy whose wagon caught fire, so he only had two fingers to play with on his left hand. He did more with two than just about anyone else with five.

He played mainly in the 1920s, so there is very little footage of him extant. Here's a rare clip:



Enjoy!
Scott Memmer

Django is most definitely The Man when it comes to single-note lead playing... just phenomenal! Wish he hadn't had such a bad first trip to America and had stuck around a bit longer, maybe made a few recordings over here...

I first tumbled to Django when I read an interview with Jerry Garcia; Garcia was citing some of his influences and both Django and Les Paul were among them. That piqued my interest and I bought a record of Django and Stephane Grappelli with the Hot Club Quintet...

That cemented Django in my own pantheon of guitarists... and I still have that record!

Yes indeed, I am regularly fighting the urge to pick up a gypsy jazz style guitar...

Yes, love Django.
My favourite cd is a duets one where his accompaniment skills combining rhythm and bass lines defy belief.
He's amazing.
I was about 17 when a bloke called Diz Disley came to our local folk club with a weird looking guitar. He had with him a double bass player and they struck up some hot club music which was a style I'd never heard till then. I was immediately hooked, though getting hold of the records was not so easy then. Diz promoted the "rebirth" of Stephane Grappelli and hot club music here in the UK. God bless him and God bless Django.
Nick

I love Django too, but if you’re going to list him as the precursor to the guitarists you mentioned, how about some credit to two precursors to Django - Eddie Lang and Lonnie Johnson? Django played mainly in the 1930s.

Django is tops. Very addictive. I have several of his CDs. The rest of the Hot Club were awesome as well.