How Django Changed My Life

The gift of a Django Reinhardt album has kept on giving.

- JIM CAMPILONGO

WAY BACK IN 1974, when I was in high school, I took a ceramics class from a teacher named Mr. Rafello. My specialty was ashtrays. The big perk of the class was that we had a community stereo. Students could bring music to play as we worked. After a month or so, Mr. Rafello noticed I was bringing albums by Cream, Jimi Hendrix, the Allman Brothers Band and so on. One day he pulled out a selection of his own: Django Reinhardt et Stephane Grappelli, a compilation of recordings with the Hot Club of France. The album jacket was covered with dried clay and dust, and featured an illustration of a debonair Django. "Jim, you should hear this," Mr. Rafello said as he put the disc on the turntable. It was like hearing music by divine aliens. I was knocked out: the shredding guitar phrases, the driving quarter-note rhythms, and a sound so real it was like nature.

Immediately, I stopped bringing in my own music and would play Django Reinhardt et Stephane Grappelli every day. After a few weeks, Mr. Rafello gifted the album to me. Of the small mountain of records I own, it remains one of my most cherished.