Yeah, the ring and pinky were sort of curled back. Nope, I doubt if he ever thought of open tunings, although he might have come across a Hawaian guitarist sometime. As to the chord formations, lemme check on this. I have them in a book somewhere. Since I rarely deal with students with immobilized fingers, I use different fingerings for those chords. I'm still seriously busy with tour bookings at the moment so perhaps someone could do a bit of a net search for Django info. I know there's lots out there.
Django was an expert fly fisherman, and billiards player.
When he was asked to go on tour in the U.S. he didn't take a guitar 'cause he thought Gibson would give him one for an endorsement. They didn't 'cause they hardly knew he existed. Bad move. He was pissed, and used an unfamiliar electric on a gig with Duke Ellington. The revues say he didn't play well. During the war Grappelli went to Britain and Django stayed in occupied France. Hmmmm, lets see... any other anecdotes? Oh, Django never met Mario Macaferri. His son Babik got so sick of playing Django's style that he completely revamped his method of playing into a "Santana meets DiMeola" thing. I've gotten to know Robin Nolan from Holland who's one of the best "Django type" players around. Very nice guy. Ask Mudcatter Tony Burns for info on Toronto's Club Django, and when the group meets.
Luv
Rick