The extraordinary "Little Hands Of Silver"
Guitarist Ricardo Bailardo aka Manitas De Plata. When I spent a year in France in 1968 I was really into Jimi Hendrix. But I saw this guy on TV and my jaw absolutely dropped. He came out on stage to a live audience with long hair like a hippie and played the Flamenco guitar. The passion of his playing, which was completely improvised, and the walls of color he painted on the instrument, the tapestries of sound left a deep impression on me. He's been heavily criticized by Flamenco purists for not obeying the traditional rhythmic forms of the Flamenco "compas". Compared to the amazing geniuses of the Flamenco guitar like Sabicas and Paco de Lucia he doesn't play pure forms and his guitar poems are more personal improvised expressions. I also know for a fact (from many discussions with purists, I used to be into Flamenco guitar when I was young) that some of the criticism is simple discrimination because he's not Spanish. He's a French Gypsy completely illiterate and self-taught. He was born in a Gypsy caravan in the south of France and became famous by playing every year at the Gypsy gathering of the Saintes Marie de la Mer festival, commemorating the arrival of the Virgin Mary in the south of France (the same legend described in The Da Vinci Code) but refused to be recorded for at least ten years after the death of famous Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. Manitas de Plata became world famous, earning praise from Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso (Picasso honored him by making a drawing on his guitar) and received a letter from Jean Cocteau calling him a "true creator". He played Carnegie Hall and was invited to appear for a special performance for the United Nations, as the European musical representative. Briget Bardot was a big fan of his. Despite selling millions of records and earning international fame in the 1960s, he continued living a simple Gypsy life in a trailer. In the early 70s, my cousin was driving in south western France and had trouble starting his car. He asked some people at a nearby trailer camp if they could give his car a jump. He immediately recognized Manitas de Plata who came out to help him start his car. He shrugged off my cousin's excitement at meeting such a famous guitarist and went back to his trailer after my cousin got his car started.
Three of Manitas de Plata's sons and his nephew founded the Gypsy Kings. He is still alive and will be ninety-three years old in August.
