Charles Henry Christian was born on July 29, 1916, and died on March 2, 1942. He was an American guitarist who played swing and jazz music. He was one of the first people to play the electric guitar. He played an important role in creating bebop and cool jazz. He changed the electric guitar from an instrument that keeps the beat into the main instrument for playing solos in jazz. He became well-known in the United States as part of the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra from August 1939 to June 1941. His special way of playing, called single-string technique, along with using amplifiers, helped the guitar move from being part of the rhythm section to being the main instrument for solos. Because of this, he is often given credit for helping create the role of lead guitarist in musical groups and bands.

Early life

Christian was born in Bonham, Texas. His family moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, when he was very young. His parents were musicians. He had two brothers, Edward and Clarence. Edward was born in 1906, and Clarence was born in 1911. Edward, Clarence, and Charles all learned music from their father, Clarence Henry Christian. Clarence Henry became blind due to a fever. To help support the family, he and the boys worked as buskers, which the Christians called "busts." They would guide him to better neighborhoods, where they performed for money or goods. When Charles was old enough to join, he first performed by dancing. Later, he learned to play the guitar. After his father died when Charles was 12, he received his father's instruments.

Charles attended Douglass High School in Oklahoma City. There, he received more music training from an instructor named Zelia N. Breaux. Charles wanted to play the tenor saxophone in the school band, but Breaux encouraged him to play the trumpet instead. Charles believed playing the trumpet might harm his lip, so he left the band and focused on baseball, in which he excelled.

In a 1978 interview with biographer Craig McKinney, Clarence Christian mentioned that during the 1920s and 1930s, Edward Christian led a band in Oklahoma City as a pianist. Edward had a tense relationship with trumpeter James Simpson. Around 1931, Simpson asked guitarist "Bigfoot" Ralph Hamilton to secretly teach the younger Charles jazz. Hamilton taught Charles to play three songs: "Rose Room," "Tea for Two," and "Sweet Georgia Brown." When the time was right, Hamilton took Charles to after-hours jam sessions in the Deep Deuce area of Oklahoma City, where Edward's band was performing. After some encouragement, Edward allowed Charles to play. Edward was surprised that Charles knew the songs, which were well received by the club.

Charles soon performed locally and traveled throughout the Midwest, including states as far as North Dakota and Minnesota. By 1936, he was playing electric guitar and had become a well-known musician in the region. According to record producer John Hammond, Christian played with many famous musicians who passed through Oklahoma City, including Teddy Wilson, Art Tatum, and Mary Lou Williams, the pianist for Andy Kirk and His Clouds of Joy.

Career

In 1939, Christian auditioned for John Hammond, who recommended him to bandleader Benny Goodman, who was the fourth white bandleader to include Black musicians in his live band. Goodman had heard other guitarists, such as Leonard Ware and Floyd Smith, and had tried but failed to buy Floyd Smith’s contract from bandleader Andy Kirk.

There are different stories about Christian and Goodman’s first meeting. Christian later told a 1940 article in Metronome magazine, “I guess neither one of us liked what I played.” Despite this, Christian said Goodman invited him to a show that evening. Another account says Hammond decided to hire Christian as the band’s guitarist without asking Goodman first.

Goodman’s band, including Christian on guitar, performed that night at the Victor Hugo restaurant in Los Angeles. The bandleader played a song called “Rose Room,” which he thought Christian did not know. However, Christian knew the song and played twenty choruses of improvisation, a surprising and impressive performance. Because of this, Goodman hired Christian as a member of the band. In just a few days, Christian’s pay increased from $2.50 per night to $150 per week.

Christian joined the newly formed Goodman Sextet in September 1939. The group included Lionel Hampton, Fletcher Henderson, Artie Bernstein, and Nick Fatool.

Amateur recordings made in September 1939 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by Jerry Newman, a fan of Benny Goodman, captured Christian while traveling with Goodman. These recordings also feature Goodman’s tenor sax player Jerry Jerome and local bassist Oscar Pettiford. On these recordings, Christian played many solos, showing the same improvisational skills later heard in recordings from 1941. The Minneapolis recordings include songs like “Stardust,” “Tea for Two,” and “I’ve Got Rhythm,” which became favorites among bop composers and musicians.

By February 1940, Christian was leading the jazz and swing guitar polls and was elected to the Metronome All Stars. In the spring of 1940, Goodman let most of his band go but kept Christian. In the fall of that year, Goodman led a sextet that included Christian, Count Basie, Cootie Williams, Georgie Auld, and Dave Tough. This all-star band dominated the jazz polls in 1941, with Christian again elected to the Metronome All Stars.

Christian’s work on the Goodman Sextet recordings, such as “Soft Winds,” “Till Tom Special,” and “A Smo-o-o-oth One,” shows his use of simple, well-placed melodic notes. His performances on ballads like “Stardust,” “Memories of You,” “Poor Butterfly,” “I Surrender Dear,” and “On the Alamo” and on “Profoundly Blue” with the Edmond Hall Celeste Quartet (1941) hint at the style later called cool jazz. Although credited for few, Christian wrote many of the original tunes recorded by the Benny Goodman Sextet.

Christian was an important contributor to the music that became known as bop, or bebop. Some people who attended early after-hours events at Minton’s Playhouse, a club in Harlem where bebop began, say Christian helped name the style. They claim the term “bebop” came from Christian humming phrases, which sounded like the word.

Examples of Christian’s bebop playing can be heard in recordings made in 1941 at Minton’s Playhouse by Jerry Newman, a student at Columbia University, using a portable disk recorder. On these recordings, Christian played with Joe Guy on trumpet, Kenny Kersey on piano, and Kenny Clarke on drums. Christian’s use of tension and release, a technique later used by musicians like Lester Young and Count Basie, is also heard on Newman’s recording of “Stompin’ at the Savoy.” Other recordings were made in 1941 at Clark Monroe’s Uptown House, another late-night jazz club in Harlem, with Oran “Hot Lips” Page and tenor sax player Don Byas. Bop musicians like Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk often attended these jam sessions, with Monk regularly playing in Minton’s house band.

Kenny Clarke said Christian wrote the songs “Epistrophy” and “Rhythm-a-Ning,” which Christian played with Clarke and Thelonious Monk at Minton’s jam sessions. The “Rhythm-a-Ning” line appears on “Down on Teddy’s Hill” and behind the introduction on “Guy’s Got to Go” from the Newman recordings. It is also found in Mary Lou Williams’s “Walkin’ and Swingin’.” Clarke added that Christian first showed him the chords to “Epistrophy” on a ukulele.

The Minton’s and Uptown House recordings have been released under titles like After Hours and The Immortal Charlie Christian. On these recordings, Christian plays many solos on a single tune, showing long stretches of melodic ideas with ease.

Personal life

Charles had a daughter named Billie Jean Christian (December 23, 1932 – July 19, 2004) with Margretta Lorraine Downey of Oklahoma City.

In the late 1930s, Christian got tuberculosis. In early 1940, he was in the hospital for a short time, and during this period, the Goodman group took a break because Goodman had back problems. Later in 1940, Goodman was hospitalized after a short visit to Santa Catalina Island, California, where the band stayed when they were on the West Coast.

Christian returned to Oklahoma City in late July 1940 and went back to New York City in September 1940. In early 1941, Christian resumed his busy life, going to Harlem for late-night music sessions after finishing performances with the Goodman Sextet and Orchestra in New York City. In June 1941, he was admitted to Seaview Hospital, a tuberculosis treatment center on Staten Island in New York City. He was getting better, and DownBeat magazine reported in February 1942 that he and Cootie Williams were starting a band.

Death

Christian's health worsened after a visit to the hospital that same month by a "musician friend." He passed away from tuberculosis on March 2, 1942, at the age of 25. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Bonham, Texas. In 1994, a Texas State Historical Commission Marker and headstone were placed in Gates Hill Cemetery. There was a disagreement about the location of the marker and headstone. In March 2013, Fannin County, Texas, acknowledged that the marker was placed incorrectly and confirmed that Christian is buried under a concrete slab, as his brother Clarence had claimed.

Style and influences

Charlie Christian is widely seen as one of the most important early innovators of jazz guitar. His solos are often compared to those of a saxophone, and he was more influenced by musicians who played brass instruments, such as Lester Young and Herschel Evans, than by earlier guitarists like Eddie Lang or Lonnie Johnson, even though these musicians also helped shift the guitar’s role from a rhythm instrument to a solo instrument. Christian said he wanted his guitar to sound like a tenor saxophone. Although the French guitarist Django Reinhardt had little direct influence on him, Christian was familiar with some of Reinhardt’s recordings. Mary Osborne, a guitarist, remembered hearing Christian play Django’s solo on the song "St. Louis Blues" exactly as written, then adding his own ideas afterward.

By 1939, there were already electric guitar soloists, including Leonard Ware, George Barnes, Eddie Durham (who recorded with Count Basie), Floyd Smith (who played "Floyd's Guitar Blues" with Andy Kirk and his Clouds of Joy using an amplified lap steel guitar), and Eldon Shamblin, a Western Swing pioneer who played with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.

Christian helped shape the modern electric guitar sound that later musicians, such as T-Bone Walker, Eddie Cochran, Cliff Gallup, Scotty Moore, Franny Beecher, B.B. King, Chuck Berry, Carlos Santana, and Jimi Hendrix, would follow. Because of this, Christian was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

During his short time playing with Benny Goodman, Christian became very well known. His influence reached not only guitarists but also other musicians, such as "Dizzy" Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Don Byas, whose early bebop recordings, like "Blue 'n' Boogie" and "Salt Peanuts," show his impact. Musicians like trumpeter Miles Davis also named Christian as an early influence. Christian’s unique sound changed jazz music overall. He remained the top-ranked jazz guitarist in polls for two years after his death. Jim Simpson, the first manager of Black Sabbath, described the band’s first song, "A Song for Jim," as clearly inspired by Charlie Christian’s style.

Instruments

• Epiphone Deluxe guitar (a type of acoustic archtop guitar), 1934–1937
• Gibson ES-150 guitar (with a sunburst finish and small dot markings on the neck), and EH-150 amplifier, 1937 or 1939 – April 1940
• Gibson ES-250 guitar (custom made by Gibson with a natural finish, a Super 400 tailpiece, and bowtie-shaped markings on the neck), April 1940 – February 1941. This instrument was found again in 2002.
• Gibson ES-250 guitar (custom made by Gibson with a natural finish, an L-7 style neck, and special markings on the neck), February 1941 – March 1942
• Gibson L-5 guitar (custom made by Gibson with a "Charlie Christian pickup" instead of a P-90). This guitar was given to Christian just before his death in March 1942. It was later owned by Tony Mottola.

The bar-style pickup used on the ES-150 and ES-250 became known as the "Charlie Christian pickup."

Legacy

John Hammond and George T. Simon said Charlie Christian was the best improvisational talent during the swing era. In the notes inside the album Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian (Columbia, 1972), Gene Lees wrote that many critics and musicians believe Christian was one of the founders of bebop or at least someone who helped it develop.

In 1966, 24 years after his death, Christian was added to the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame. In 1989, the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame honored seven people for the first time, including Christian.

In 1990, Christian was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the "Early Influence" category.

In a 1985 interview with Frets magazine, Jerry Garcia named Christian and Django Reinhardt as the guitarists who most inspired him.

In 2006, Oklahoma City, where Christian grew up, renamed a street in its Bricktown entertainment district after him.

Discography

Charlie Christian was never recorded as a leader. Many collections of his music have been released, including recordings of his work as a supporting musician where he plays a solo, practice and warm-up sessions for these recordings, and some lower-quality recordings of Charlie Christian's own groups performing in nightclubs, made by amateur technicians.

• Charlie Christian with the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra (Columbia, 1955)
• Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian (Columbia, 1972)
• The Genius of the Electric Guitar, 1939–1941 recordings (Columbia, 1987)
• The Benny Goodman Sextet Featuring Charlie Christian 1939–41 (Columbia, 1989)
• Solo Flight, with the Benny Goodman Sextet (Vintage Jazz Classics, 1991)
• Guitar Wizard (Le Jazz/Charly, 1993)
• Complete Studio Recordings (Definitive, 2000) 4-CD box set
• Complete Live Recordings (Definitive, 2001) 4-CD box set
• Radioland 1939–1941 (Fuel 2000/Varèse Sarabande, 2001)
• The Genius of the Electric Guitar (Columbia/Legacy, 2002) 4-CD box set
• First Master of the Electric Guitar: Selected Broadcasts & Jam Sessions, Remastered (JSP, 2002) 4-CD box set
• Charlie Christian – The Original Guitar Genius (Proper, 2005) 4-CD box set
• The Genius of the Electric Guitar (Definitive, 2005)
• Solo Flight: Live! with the Benny Goodman Sextet (Definitive, 2008)
• On the Air (Fuel 2000/Varèse Sarabande, 2009)
• Yale University Archives, Vol. 5: NBC Broadcast Recordings 1936–1943 (Nimbus, 2010)
• Electric, with the Benny Goodman Sextet and the Charlie Christian Quartet (Uptown, 2011)

• The Complete Lionel Hampton 1937–1941 (Bluebird, 1976) 6-LP box set

• From Spirituals to Swing – Carnegie Hall Concerts 1938/39 (Vanguard, 1959) 2-LP

Filmography

• 2005 Solo Flight: The Skill of Charlie Christian
• 2007 Charlie Christian – The Life and Music of the Famous Jazz Guitarist (Grossman Guitar Workshop)