Charles Henry "Charlie" Christian (July 29, 1916 – March 2, 1942), was an important early performer, American swing and jazz guitarist, and is cited as a key figure in the development of bebop and cool jazz. He gained national exposure as a member of the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra from August 1939 to June 1941. His single-string technique combined with amplification helped bring the guitar out of the rhythm section and into the forefront as a solo instrument. John Hammond and George T. Simon called Christian the best improvisational talent of the swing era. In the liner notes to the 1972 Columbia album Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian, Gene Lees writes that "many critics and musicians consider that Christian was one of the founding fathers of bebop, or if not that, at least a precursor to it".
Christian's influence reached beyond jazz and swing — in 1990 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Christian was raised in Oklahoma City and was one of many musicians who jammed along the city's "Deep Deuce" section on N.E. Second Street. In 2006 Oklahoma City renamed a street in its Bricktown entertainment district Charlie Christian Avenue.
Christian was born in Bonham, Texas, but his family moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma when he was a small child. His parents were musicians and he had two brothers, Edward, born in 1906, and Clarence, born in 1911. All three sons were taught music by their father, Clarence Henry Christian. Clarence Henry was struck blind by fever, and in order to support the family he and the boys would work as buskers, on what the Christians called "busts." He would have them lead him into the better neighborhoods where they would perform for cash or goods. When Charles was old enough to go along, he first entertained by dancing. Later he learned guitar, inheriting his father's instruments upon his death when Charles was 12.
He attended Douglass School in Oklahoma City, and was further encouraged in music by instructor Zelia Breaux. Charles wanted to play tenor saxophone in the school band, but she insisted he try trumpet instead. Because he believed playing the trumpet would disfigure his lip, he quit to pursue his interest in baseball, at which he excelled.
In a 1978 interview with Charlie Christian biographer Craig McKinney, Clarence Christian said that in the 1920s and '30s Edward Christian led a band in Oklahoma City as a pianist and had a shaky relationship with trumpeter James Simpson. Around 1931, he took guitarist "Bigfoot" Ralph Hamilton and began secretly schooling the younger Charles on jazz. They taught him to solo on three songs, "Rose Room", "Tea for Two", and "Sweet Georgia Brown". When the time was right they took him out to one of the many after-hours jam sessions along "Deep Deuce", Northeast Second Street in Oklahoma City.
"Let Charles play one," they told Edward. "Ah, nobody wants to hear them old blues," Edward replied. After some encouragement, he allowed Charles to play. "What do you want to play?" he asked. All three songs were big in the early 1930s and Edward was surprised that Charles knew them. After two encores, Charles had played all three and "Deep Deuce" was in an uproar. He coolly dismissed himself from the jam session, and his mother had heard about it before he got home.
Charles fathered a daughter, Billie Jean Christian, born December 23, 1932, with Margretta Lorraine Downey of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. They never married. Billie Jean (Christian) Johnson died 19 July 2004.
Charles soon was performing locally and on the road throughout the Midwest, as far away as North Dakota and Minnesota. By 1936 he was playing electric guitar and had become a regional attraction. He jammed with many of the big name performers traveling through Oklahoma City including Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum. It was Mary Lou Williams, pianist for "Andy Kirk and His Clouds of Joy", who told record producer John Hammond about Charlie Christian.
Christian's solos are frequently referred to as "horn-like", and in that sense he was more influenced by horn players such as Lester Young and Herschel Evans than by early acoustic guitarists like Eddie Lang and jazz/bluesman Lonnie Johnson, although they both had contributed to the expansion of the guitar's role from "rhythm section" instrument to a solo instrument. Christian admitted he wanted his guitar to sound like a tenor saxophone. Belgian gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt had little influence on Christian, but he was obviously familiar with some of his recordings. Guitarist Mary Osborne recalled hearing him play Django's solo on "St. Louis Blues" note for note, but then following it with his own ideas. By 1939 there had already been electric guitar soloists—Leonard Ware, George Barnes, trombonist/composer ("Topsy") Eddie Durham had recorded with Count Basie's Kansas City Six, Floyd Smith recorded "Floyd's Guitar Blues" with Andy Kirk in March 1939, using an amplified lap steel guitar, and Texas Swing pioneer Eldon Shamblin was using amplified electric guitar with Bob Wills. However, Charles Christian was the first great soloist on the amplified guitar.
Guitarists who followed Christian and who were influenced by him include Oscar Moore (Nat King Cole trio), Les Paul, Tiny Grimes, Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis, Jimmy Raney, Tal Farlow, Kenny Burrell, Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, and Jim Hall. Tiny Grimes, who made several records with Art Tatum, can often be heard quoting Christian note-for-note.
Christian's exposure was so great in the brief period he played with Goodman that he influenced not only guitarists, but other musicians as well. The influence he had on "Dizzy" Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Don Byas can be heard on their early "bop" recordings "Blue'n Boogie" and "Salt Peanuts". Other musicians, such as trumpeter Miles Davis, cite Christian as an early influence. Indeed, Christian's "new" sound influenced jazz as a whole. He reigned supreme in the jazz guitar polls up to two years after his death.
Bebop and Minton's Playhouse
Charlie Christian was an important contributor to the music that became known as "bop" or "Bebop". Private recordings made in September 1939 in Minneapolis, Minnesota by Goodman aficionado Jerry Newhouse capture the newly hired Christian while on the road with Goodman and feature Goodman tenor sax man Jerry Jerome and then local bass man Oscar Pettiford. Taking multiple solos, Christian shows much the same improvisational skills later captured on the Minton's and Monroe's recordings in 1941, suggesting that he had already matured as a musician. The Minneapolis recordings include "Stardust", "Tea for Two" and "I've Got Rhythm", the latter a favorite piece of bop composers and jammers.
More of the unrestrained Christian is apparent in recordings of the partial Goodman Sextet made in March 1941. With Goodman and bassist Artie Bernstein absent, Christian and the rest of the Sextet recorded for nearly 20 minutes as the engineers tested equipment. Two recordings were released from that session years later: "Blues in B" and "Waiting for Benny", which showed hints of bop jam sessions. The free flow of these sessions contrasts with the more formal swing music recorded after Goodman had arrived at the studio. Other Goodman Sextet records that foretell bop are "Seven Come Eleven" (1939) and "Air Mail Special" (1940 and 1941).
An even more striking example is a series of recordings made at Minton's Playhouse, an after-hours club located in the Hotel Cecil at 210 West 118th Street in Harlem by Columbia student Jerry Newman on a portable disk recorder in 1941. Newman captured Christian, accompanied by Joe Guy on trumpet, Kenny Kersey on piano and Kenny Clarke on drums, stretching out far beyond what the confines of the 78 RPM record would allow. His work on "Swing to Bop", a later Esoteric Records company re-title of Eddie Durham's "Topsy," is an example of what Christian was capable of creating "off the cuff."
His use of tension and release, a technique employed by Lester Young, Count Basie and later bop musicians, is also present on "Stompin' at the Savoy", included among the Newman recordings. The collection also includes recordings made at Clark Monroe's Uptown House, another late-night jazz haunt in the Harlem of 1941 that include Oran "Hot Lips" Page. Other recordings include tenor sax man Don Byas. The Minton's recordings were long rumored to feature "Dizzy" Gillespie and Thelonious Monk, but that has since been proven untrue, although both were regulars at the jam sessions, with Monk a regular in the Minton's house band.
Kenny Clarke claimed that "Epistrophy" and "Rhythm-a-ning" were Charlie Christian compositions that Christian played with Clarke and Thelonious Monk at Minton's jam sessions. The "Rhythm-a-ning" line can be heard on "Down on Teddy's Hill" and behind the introduction on "Guy's Got To Go" from the Newman recordings, but it is also a line from Mary Lou Williams' "Walkin' and Swingin'".
Clarke said Christian first showed him the chords to "Epistrophy" on a ukulele. These recordings have been packaged under a number of different titles, including "After Hours" and "The Immortal Charlie Christian." While the recording quality of many 
Christian was just as adept with understatement as well. His work on the Goodman sextet sides "Soft Winds", "Till Tom Special", and "A Smo-o-o-oth One", show his use of very few, well placed melodic notes. His work on the Sextet's recordings of ballads "Stardust", "Memories of You", "Poor Butterfly", "I Surrender Dear" and "On the Alamo" as well as his work on "Profoundly Blue" with the Edmond Hall Celeste Quartet (1941) show hints of what was later to be called "cool jazz". Although credited for very few, Christian composed many of the original tunes recorded by the Benny Goodman Sextet.
Health
Proposed gravesite of Charlie Christian in Gates Hill Cemetery, Bonham, Texas, based on eyewitness accounts from the funeral taken by Christian biographer Craig McKinney.
In the late 1930s Christian had contracted tuberculosis and in early 1940 was hospitalized for a short period in which the Goodman group was on hiatus due to Benny's back trouble. Goodman was hospitalized in the summer of 1940 after the band's brief stay at Santa Catalina Island, California, where the group stayed when on the west coast. Christian returned home to Oklahoma City, in late July 1940 before returning to New York City in September 1940. In early 1941, Christian resumed his hectic lifestyle, heading to Harlem for late-night jam sessions after finishing gigs with the Goodman Sextet and Orchestra in New York City. In June 1941 he was admitted to Seaview, a sanitarium on Staten Island in New York City. He was reported to be making progress, and Down Beat magazine reported in February 1942 that he and Cootie Williams were starting a band.
After a visit that same month to the hospital by tap dancer and drummer Marion Joseph "Taps" Miller, Christian declined in health and died March 2, 1942. He was 25 years old. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Bonham, Texas, and a Texas State Historical Commission Marker and headstone were placed in Gates Hill Cemetery in 1994. The location of the historical marker and headstone has been disputed.
It is just amazing to me that he accomplished so much in such a short life. It is also pretty remarkable that he has been gone for almost 70 years, yet his contribution to music lives on. It certainly sets the bar pretty high for those of us looking to make our own contributions! But then, a bar set high helps us stretch our limits.
Wishing you a wonderful, musical 2012. Until next time,
Musician By Night . . .
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