Reinhardt was not an educated musician in the ordinary sense. He never learned to read and write -- words or music. But his instrumental technique was so unorthodox and his music so brilliant that guitar players the world over stood in amazement whenever they saw him perform.

His was a natural and all-consuming affinity for musical sounds. As Charles Delaunay put it in his biography of Reinhardt (Django Reinhardt, Cassell & Co., Ltd., London): "As water is a fish's element and the air a bird's, music was Django's."

This sensitiveness to sound almost made Reinhardt musically educated. Violinist Stephane Grappelli, a close associate of the guitarist, once said, "You could go with Django to a performance of a most complex symphony, and he would point out any mistakes that might occur during the playing." Get Grappelli, who has been classically educated, was sometimes stunned when, during a musical discussion, Reinhardt would turn to him and ask, "A scale? What is a scale?"

Many times, when the guitarist was bored with the music being performed, he would walk off the bandstand to sit outside alone, playing solo, accompanied by the sounds of nature. In Paris, where he lived, he could usually be found in his roulotte (a gypsy trailer), surrounded by some "cousins" (a group that included all the gypsies in France), listening and sometimes playing along with the records of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and other American jazz artists.

For as Reinhardt became more familiar with jazz (and the compositions of his favorite classical composers -- J.S. Bach, Debussy, Stravinsky, and Maurice Ravel), he found no satisfaction in the folk music that was the normal musical outlet for gypsies.

His creativeness and awareness extended to his relationships with other musicians. The French tenor saxophonist, Alix Combelle, who recorded frequently with Reinhardt, has said, "Django had a kind of second sight which made everybody's musical ideas an open book to him. He was a fine accompanist."

When guitarist Charlie Byrd was stationed in France with the U.S. Army in 1945, he played with Reinhardt. Years afterwards, Byrd said, "Reinhardt had an infallible ear. He was famous for his explosive attack and scintillating passages of single notes. It would take years of concentrated study to play like Reinhardt. The same applies to Art Tatum."

On another occasion Byrd noted: "The tragedy of Reinhardt is that he so seldom got to play in sympathetic surroundings. When I heard him play live, it was always 98 times better than anything he ever recorded." (There are 557 sides listed in Delaunay's Reinhardt discography included with the biography.)

Another contemporary guitarist, Barney Kessel, has said, "The main thing I get out of Django's playing is the intensity, the emotion. He had a real fire in his playing. He was one of the real originals.

"If Django had wanted to stay in the United States and learn the language," Kessel said, referring to Reinhardt's brief stay in this country in the mid-'40s, "I'm convinced he would have altered the course of contemporary jazz guitar playing -- perhaps even the course of the music itself."

Django was born Jean Baptiste Reinhardt on Jan. 23, 1910, in Liverchies, Belgium, a village near the French border. At the time, his parents were traveling in a gypsy show troupe. His father, Jean, was a violinist, and his mother, La Belle Laurence, sang and danced.

For the first couple of years of his life, the son -- possibly already answering to "Django," as his mother called him -- traveled with his parents as the caravan roamed France, Italy and Corsica....