Charlie Christian

His father went blind from fever, and the family ate because of it. Clarence Christian was a guitarist and singer in Oklahoma City, where the family had moved from Bonham, Texas, when Charlie was small, and he had his sons lead him into the better neighborhoods to play for cash or groceries — outings the Christians called busts. This was not pocket money. It was the household income. Charlie danced before he played. He was 12 when his father died and he inherited the instruments. At Douglass High School he wanted a tenor saxophone and was handed a trumpet, so he quit the band for baseball. By his teens he was a working professional in the Southwest territory bands, touring as far north as the Dakotas.

John Hammond heard him in Oklahoma City in 1939 and pushed him at Benny Goodman, who did not want him. Accounts of the audition differ, but the one that stuck has Hammond installing him on the bandstand in Los Angeles while Goodman was out, and Goodman relenting after some 20 choruses of Rose Room. The electric guitar already existed — it was a rhythm instrument, chunking chords behind the horns. Christian used amplification to play single-note lines audible against a saxophone section, and phrased like a horn player. Every jazz, blues and rock guitar solo since descends from that.

By early 1941 he was finishing the night with the Goodman Sextet and going uptown. Minton's Playhouse, on West 118th Street in Harlem, ran after-hours sessions with Thelonious Monk in the house band and Kenny Clarke on drums, and Dizzy Gillespie among the regulars sitting in. What those players were doing on the stand — faster tempos, substituted chords, phrases that ran across the bar line — had no name yet. It became bebop. Some of the participants credited Christian with the word itself, from the way he hummed his lines. A Columbia student named Jerry Newman carried a portable disc recorder into the club, and those amateur sides survive. Christian is audible at the birth of a music he did not live to hear arrive.

The tuberculosis was already in him — he had been hospitalized briefly in early 1940 — and in June 1941 he was admitted to Seaview Hospital, a sanatorium on Staten Island. He was reported to be improving. DownBeat said in February 1942 that he and Cootie Williams were forming a band. He died there on March 2, 1942, at 25, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Bonham. How much the touring and the after-hours life accelerated the disease is disputed, and the record does not settle it. His major career runs about two years. In 1990 the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him as an early influence.

Charlie Christian's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Seven Come Eleven song
  Benny Goodman Sextet side co-credited to Christian 1939
• Till Tom Special song
  A Sextet blues built on one of his riffs 1940
• Solo Flight song
  Recorded with the full Goodman orchestra as a showcase for the guitar 1941
• A Smo-o-o-oth One song
  Late Sextet side, a few well-placed notes rather than a flood of them 1941
• Stompin' at the Savoy (Minton's) song
  From Jerry Newman's amateur discs of the Harlem after-hours sessions 1941
• The Genius of the Electric Guitar album
  The Columbia box set of the 1939 to 1941 recordings 2002

• July 29, 1916 aged 0 Born in Bonham, Texas The family moved to Oklahoma City while he was a small child, after his father went blind.
• 1928 aged ~12 Inherits his father's instruments at 12 The Christian boys had been leading their blind father out to busk since Charlie was small.
• 1931 aged ~15 Sits in with his brother Edward's band on Deep Deuce Guitarist Ralph "Bigfoot" Hamilton had secretly taught him to solo on Rose Room, Tea for Two and Sweet Georgia Brown.
• 1936 aged ~20 Playing electric guitar and working as a regional attraction The territory circuit took him from Oklahoma as far as Minnesota and the Dakotas.
• August 1939 aged 23 John Hammond gets him in front of Benny Goodman in Los Angeles His pay went from 2.50 dollars a night to 150 dollars a week.
• September 1939 aged 23 Joins the newly formed Benny Goodman Sextet With Lionel Hampton, Fletcher Henderson, Artie Bernstein and Nick Fatool.
• February 1940 aged 23 Tops the guitar polls and is elected to the Metronome All Stars
• 1941 aged ~25 Jerry Newman records the after-hours sessions at Minton's Playhouse Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke and Joe Guy are on the discs. Dizzy Gillespie was a regular in the room.
• June 1941 aged 24 Admitted to Seaview Hospital, a tuberculosis sanatorium on Staten Island He never played in public again and died there nine months later.

• John Hammond 1910–1987
  Record man who signed Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. discovered by
• Benny Goodman 1909–1986
  Clarinetist and bandleader who touched off the Swing Era hired by
• Dizzy Gillespie 1917–1993
  Jazz trumpeter who co-founded bebop and invented Afro-Cuban jazz played with
• Count Basie 1904–1984
  Kansas City bandleader whose rhythm section reset what a big band could swing like. bandmate
• Chuck Berry 1926–2017
  Guitarist and songwriter whose music established core sounds, themes, and performance styles of rock and roll. influenced
• Jimi Hendrix 1942–1970
  Guitarist whose sound, technique, and performance style revolutionized rock music. influenced