This past February, WordPress, which is the backbone of this website, released version 3.1 which had been called “Reinhardt” when it was under development. The release was named after the famous jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.
Reinhardt gained fame in western Europe during the 1930s for his jazz work with the guitar. He and violinist Stephane Grappelli formed the jazz band, “Quintette du Hot Club de France.” Because of a childhood accident, Reinhardt lost the use of two fingers on his left hand which makes his music all the more remarkable as can be seen in the video below.
Reinhardt died in 1953. In 1954, John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet wrote a musical piece honoring Reinhardt named “Django,” which was later recorded by Lindsey Buckingham before he and Stevie Nicks joined the group, Fleetwood Mac. That 1973 recording is on the Buckingham-Nicks album which is out of print. However, you can hear Buckingham’s interpretation of Lewis’ work on the website, Buckinghamnicks.net (click the button marked “audio” at the top of the screen). Below is the Modern Jazz Quartet performing this classic piece.
It was Lindsey Buckingham’s version of “Django” that I heard first and used as a title for a small fan fiction story I wrote in 2005 about DC comic characters Adam Strange and Shayera Hol. It seems strange to me that it was the latest release of WordPress that got me to think about that 6 year old story the other day in a such roundabout way. The famous “six degrees of separation” works for a lot of things I guess, including fan fiction.