Electric guitarist and blues singer Charlie Christian is one of the relatively unknown pioneers of jazz. Christian was an early influence on bebop, a harmonically complex jazz style based on extended, improvised solos. He was also noted as the first solo stylist and populariser of the electric guitar in jazz. His blues-based music illustrates, too, the transition from “hot” to “cool” jazz, a style that had a great impact on modern music. However, Christian died before the musical revolution he helped to inspire had come to public notice.
Born in July 1916 into a musical family in Bonham, Texas, Christian grew up in Oklahoma City. He learned from his father, a blind, travelling guitarist and singer. Charlie made his first instrument out of cigar boxes, and as a child played in the family band with his parents and brothers. Later, he took up the electric guitar, which was then a recent innovation. By 1934, he was working in the regional bands of Nat To wies, Lloyd Hunter, Anna Mae Winburn, Lesley Sheffield, and Alphonso Trent, sometimes also playing the bass.
In 1939, Christian’s career was transformed when entrepreneur and producer John Hammond brought him from Oklahoma City to Beverly Hills to audition for the Benny GOODMAN Sextet. As legend has it, Christian so impressed Goodman with his extended single-line soloing during a 90-minute version of “Rose Room,” that Goodman hired him on the spot. Goodman’s sextet, which also featured pianist Teddy Wilson, trumpeter Cootie Williams, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, and drummer Gene Krupa, gave Christian tremendous exposure. Christian loved an audience, and he never disappointed his listeners, especially if he knew they were paying close attention to his improvisations.
Not content in the swing-band setting, Christian joined an underground movement of young musicians who were interested in changing the sound of jazz. Every night, after playing his evening set with Goodman at New York’s Pennsylvania Hotel, Christian would go over to saxophonist Henry Minton’s open-stage jazz club in Harlem. These late-night jam sessions at Minton’s Playhouse became a regular event, as Christian joined Charlie PARKER, Dizzy GILLESPIE, Thelonious MONK, Bud POWELL, and Kenny Clarke on the stage. Minton’s became known as the birthplace of bebop, providing a creative atmosphere at a time when experimentation and innovation were leading to a completely new sound in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Christian died, however, before he could see the fruits of his experiments. His health, delicate from overindulgent alcohol use and plagued by paralysing tuberculosis, declined drastically in the summer of 1941. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, and later to Seaview Sanatorium on Staten Island. He died in March 1942, age just 25, after friends smuggled him out to a party and he caught pneumonia. His death was a great blow to the jazz community, and to his friends, who used to gather to play and party in his hospital room.
For an artist as influential as Christian-a seminal figure in the emergence of modern jazz, and an icon for all other jazz guitarists-it is astonishing how rarely he was recorded and how little of his original work is available today. Most of his recorded work was with the Benny Goodman Sextet, but the most interesting documents of his talent by far are a small number of poor-quality recordings made by a fan on a portable recorder at Minton’s club.
Todd Denton
SEE ALSO:
BEBOP; BLUES; COOL JAZZ; JAZZ; SWING.
FURTHER READING
Blesh, R. USA: Eight Lives in Jazz (New York: Da Capo Press, 1971);
Sallis, James. The Guitar Players: One Instrument and Its Masters in American Music (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Charlie Christian; The Genius of the Electric Guitar, Live Sessions at Minton’s Playhouse; Solo Flight; Swing to Bop.