The Genius of the Electric Guitar

Christian, Charlie

album cover

The First, and One of the Best

One of the first jazz musicians to explore the possibilities of the electric guitar, Charlie Christian forged an identity for the instrument and established many of its enduring qualities. His brief career is an illustration of how, even in the 1930s, sound traveled fast. An Oklahoma kid who grew up hearing country music, the guitarist with the crisp, heavy-handed attack auditioned for Benny Goodman's band in 1939 at the behest of talent scout John Hammond. Christian got the gig, and from his sideman's perch immediately began rearranging the furniture in the parlor of jazz. Through recordings with Goodman and several under his own name, Christian became one of the most talked-about (and copied) musicians of the age. He started fires with just his ringing tone, and when he took the spotlight (see his signature "Solo Flight"), he swung with such force it didn't matter how timid the other musicians were—he and his Gibson carried them.

"He had that ability to take a note . . . and just pound it into your head until it was the greatest note you ever heard," recalled the guitarist Les Paul, another pioneer, who considered Christian a friend.

By 1941, Christian was a star. The next year he succumbed to tuberculosis—at the age of twenty-five. He left behind a pile of recordings, collected on the four-disc The Genius of the Electric Guitar, that displays both irrepressible creativity and an enviable command—Christian's playing established a long-unchallenged technical standard for the instrument. His solos foreshadow bebop, and his furious and exacting chording style was emulated decades later by many rock and blues guitarists. In fact, his fingerprints are all over much of the music that came after him—he's audible in Wes Montgomery and Jimi Hendrix, Leslie West and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and countless others. It's a mind-boggling legacy even before you consider this: Christian's entire discography was recorded in just three years.

Genre: Jazz
Released: 2002, Sony Legacy
Key Tracks: "Solo Flight," "What's New."
Next Stop: Tal Farlow: Tal Farlow's Finest Hour
After That: Wes Montgomery: Boss Guitar.
Book Page: 169

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