Eddie Lang is playing the original arch-top F-Hole design, the Gibson L-5, designed under the auspices of Lloyd Loar, who oversaw a golden age of Gibson stringed instruments.
The "old guitars" weren't "painful to play" on as one commentator surmised. Not so. But Eddie Lang strung his instrument with heavy strings. VERY HEAVY STRINGS. Likely a wound B.
Eddie Lang composed "Perfect" with Frank Signorelli. Some of Eddie Lang's other compositions included "April Kisses", "Wild Cat", "Goin' Places", "Doin' Things", "Stringin' the Blues", "Cheese and Crackers", "Guitar Blues" with Lonnie Johnson, and "Pickin' My Way" and Feelin' My Way" with Carl Kress. His 1927 recording "Singin' the Blues" with Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Both Django and Eddie (Sal) started out playing banjo guitar, each man played an ethnic music: Django playing waltz time musette and Eddie playing Italian pop tunes very much related (both with accordion accompaniment). Eddie was really the first one to swap the banjo for the guitar, you can hear all the jazz bands featured banjo before him. Philly just held Eddie Lang day!
starts a bit ragtime goes into a Debussy/Satie bag then we hear Lang play a bit of blues known and again then we hear "in a mist" you sure get your moneys worth!
Funny how he and Django came up around the same time on separate continents and never crossed paths..
But Eddie did die at age 31in 1932 and Django didn't visit the States until 1934 I think..
There would have been some fireworks.
i'd never heard of eddie lang until today... i met a guy who said he had a cousin named eddie lang who played jazz guitar back before the advent of the electric guitar... i looked up his name, and there he was. great.
