JAM: February/March 2006 Issue: Storyville

Wayne Goins and Craig R. McKinney
A Biography of Charlie Christian,
Jazz Guitar's King of Swing
Edwin Mellen Press (US, UK , Canada ), 2005

by Charlton Price

Charles (Charlie) Christian was a shooting star. He streaked into jazz stardom for just a few months, from August 1939 (when hired by Benny Goodman) to July 1941 (when rushed to Bellevue Hospital , New York , with advanced, incurable tuberculosis). The next year, at age 24, he was dead.

But during that brief turn in the big time, Charlie Christian did it all. He created for electric guitar a “linear,” style likened by many to that of Lester Young —phrasing through bar-lines, using “space” in phrasing, and propelling the beat by playing around it. He pioneered electric guitar as a solo jazz instrument. At the height of the big-band craze, he became instantly one of the most celebrated players, and certainly the top guitarist — per his peers, the polls, and fans. He was one of the early few to break through the color line in jazz. And in Harlem all-nighters at Minton's and Monroe's — with Thelonius Monk, Kenny Clarke, and, later, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie — he paved the way for a music beyond swing that came to be called bebop — except by those who were its creators.

Of course Charlie Christian had a fast life, and made a lot of music, before he joined Goodman — but not for long before. : Where did Charlie Christian come from? It's not a simple question. One answer is: the Deep Deuce, black Oklahoma City 's name in the 1930s for a couple of blocks of night spots, restaurants, and juke joints on Second Avenue . On the Deep Deuce scene, Charlie Christian was in the right place at the right time. As Goins and McKinney make clear, the Deep Deuce was as important to jazz as Beale Street in Memphis , Bourbon Street in New Orleans , and 12th or 18th and Vine in Kansas City . Oklahoma City was where the territory bands started. It was a launch pad for Bennie Moten, Andy Kirk, Alphonse Trent, the Blue Devils, Harlan Leonard's Rockets, the “western swing” of Bob Wills and Milton Brown — and, out of and in addition to these groups, a galaxy of individual talents — Mary Lou Williams Don Byas, Lester Young, Walter Page, Jimmy Rushing, and others who had already burst into the big time, or were to do so by the end of the decade.

Craig McKinney, a Topeka lawyer and lifelong Charlie Christian fan, built a rich base of CC lore from interviews, publications, and from exclusive access to family memories and records, including informative talks with an older brother, Clarence Christian Jr. Wayne Goins, a jazz educator and musician, co-authored this uniquely comprehensive compilation of Christiania, The authors have provided analysis of many technical aspects of Christian's musical style, showing how his artistry both built on what went before but yet was completely original. They have dug even deeper in their quest to learn where Charlie Christian's artistry came from, and how he did so much in such a brief time.

CC burst into prominence as soon as he had joined Benny Goodman.. His musical creativity and instrumental technique were astonishing. He gained immediate stardom with his unique treatments of tunes such as Stardust, Flying Home , Airmail Special, and the timeless originals of the Goodman Sextet. He didn't have the time or the need to read. music. He could hear any tune, then immediately find an appropriate way or ways reproduce the music, in any key or at any tempo — without a score, even a lead sheet. He carried the complete BG book in his head, with no mistakes or omissions. Uncanny. Unique. Masterful Incomparable. Mozartian!

But he burned the candle at both ends, and in the middle — continual touring and gigs, jamming at all hours, uncontrolled use of controlled substances, and other kinds of pleasuring, nocturnal and otherwise. Surely this led to and was driven by his increasingly compromised physical condition. He must have known, for all of his short life, that he d “got [t.b.} bad, and that ain't good.” John Hammond said, “His only resource was his music. He lived to play. And when he was unable to play, he was unable to live.”

Charlie Christian's pervasive and powerful legacy is celebrated strongly in the comments of later guitar greats. What a list in the back of this book — Herb Ellis, Jim Hall, Wes Montgomery, George Benson, Al Casey, Mary Osborne, Barney Kessel! And here are comments on Christian from two of today's eminent Kansas City guitarists:

Danny Embrey:
He was the first to play a guitar like a horn. And of course he swung real hard. The first guitarist I listened to a lot, Barney Kessel, really dug Charlie Christian. The guitar strings were bigger and thicker then, and of course being amplified added to Charlie's big, horn-like sound.

Rod Fleeman:
Charlie Christian personally took the electric guitar out of being a novelty into a being a valid jazz improvisational voice, on a par with the horns and piano. He wasn't great because he [was one of the first] to own and play an electric guitar , but because he played it so well. That bootleg recording live at Minton's [with Monk and Kenny Clarke] demonstrates that he would have been at the forefront of what became bebop. His voicings and changes on “Stardust,” for example, are unreal, off the chart. Ironically, though Charlie Christian put the guitar ahead for years, his death put the guitar behind for years.