Django Reinhardt’s three-fingered genius

Jean “Django” Reinhardt was a promising young musician when a crippling injury seemed to end his chance of having a music career. Born in Belgium in 1910, Reinhardt grew up in Romani (Gypsy) camps near Paris, learning banjo, guitar, and violin. As a young man he and his wife lived in a caravan and scraped by on his earnings from music and his wife’s sales of artificial flowers that she made out of celluloid and paper in their little home.

One night Django knocked over a candle while climbing into bed, and all that celluloid and paper went up in flames. He was pulled from the fire badly burned, and lost much of the use of the third and fourth fingers on his left hand — his fret hand.