Charlie Christian

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Charlie Christian

Charlie Christian (born July 29, 1916 in Dallas , Texas , † March 2, 1942 in New York City ) was one of the most famous guitarists of jazz and one of the pioneers of the game on the electrically amplified guitar . His special achievement on the jazz guitar consists in the development of melody lines that are based on the melody and phrasing of wind instruments, especially that of the tenor saxophone , as it was played by Lester Young . With his guitar playing in ensembles of the band leader and clarinetist Benny Goodman from the late 1930s, Christian was also one of the pioneers of the bebop jazz style .

Live and act

Christian came from a musical family and first learned tenor saxophone and bass from his father. He grew up in Oklahoma City in a poor black neighborhood, where he came into contact with the Texan country blues at an early age . The parents had worked as a trumpeter and pianist to background music for silent films and made music with their children at home. In this environment, Christian started playing music on a guitar he had made himself and performing with the school band at an early age. During his childhood he heard the bands playing in the southwest, as the Blue Devils and the Twelve Clouds of Joy by Andy Kirk .

From 1934 the young Charlie Christian played in several bands, such as the Anna Mae Winburn Orchestra (1937), the Orchestra of Alphonse Trent ( Al Trent Sextet , 1938) and the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra in St. Louis, which quickly made him known locally . At that time he was also a companion of traveling musicians like Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum and was recommended by Mary Lou Williams to jazz impresario John Hammond , who brought him to New York in 1939, where Christian became a member of Benny Goodman's band through Hammond's recommendation. Mostly in smaller formations and with some members of the Count-Basie- Bigband as well as with Goodman ( clarinet ) himself, they made a whole series of recordings in which his electrically amplified single-note playing came into its own. In addition, Christian recorded the piece Solo Flight with Goodman's Big Band ( Benny Goodman Orchestra ) , which featured him as a soloist. Christian based his themes from the beginning on a number of typical riffs from the southwest; Flying Home , A Smo-oo-oth One and Air Mail Special "were fresh, sparkling and exciting pieces that gave new life to jazz music."

Charlie Christian was - like Lester Young  - one of the first in jazz to play longer melody lines in their improvisations , using triad extensions (especially ninth and sixth ) and can therefore be considered a pioneer of bebop - a jazz style that is centered on Was to become popular in the 1940s, even if Christian wasn't an outspoken bop guitarist. Christian found a safe base for his musical ideas in the Harlem Minton's Playhouse in the company of musicians such as Thelonious Monk , Dizzy Gillespie , Kenny Clarke or Don Byas . As soon as he finished his job at Goodman at the Pennsylvania Hotel in the evening, he rushed to Minton's to jam obsessively until everyone went home, ” said Arrigo Polillo .

Along with Eddie Durham (trombone, electric guitar, arrangement), Charlie Christian was one of the first to make the electrically amplified guitar popular (in this case a Gibson ES-150 , a fully acoustic jazz guitar with a single-coil pickup ). It was Durham who first made Christian aware of the electrically amplified guitar in 1937, whereupon Christian began to use the longer decay time ( sustain ) of the electrically amplified tone to achieve a sound similar to the saxophone. Many early listeners to Christian's first sound recordings are said to have mistaken the sound of his guitar for a tenor saxophone. Polillo stressed that the credit for introducing the electric guitar to jazz goes to Eddie Durham; In any case, Christian was the one who invented a new way of playing the guitar, elevated this instrument to a solo instrument and created the conditions for the bebop revolution.

In addition to the studio recordings with Goodman, there are the outstanding sessions that were recorded by an amateur in Minton's Playhouse in New York in 1941 and that show Christian in top form. Charlie Christian died in 1942 at the age of 25 of tuberculosis , which he got in the late thirties and for which he was hospitalized several times from 1940 onwards.

Quotes

“When Charlie amused and amazed us at school with his first guitar from a cigar box, he was playing his own riffs. But these were based on sophisticated chords and tone sequences that Blind Lemon Jefferson had never known. "

- Ralph Ellison

“His guitar style was completely original. His long and echoing phrases with unison melodies, the sound of which was electronically amplified and lengthened, were based on principles inherent in wind instruments, more precisely the saxophones. They are therefore very different from the easy individual phrases of the pioneers of the jazz guitar such as Lonnie Johnson or Eddie Lang . If a spiritual father is to be found for Charlie Christian, he must therefore be sought among the saxophonists, and he can probably be seen in Lester Young . "

- Arrigo Polillo

“In my entire career I have met only a few geniuses, people like Lester Young, Teddy Wilson, Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins . There are really not many. But Charlie was obviously one of them. He got something absolutely new out of his instrument. Like Lester in his best days, he played one chorus after the other, inventing and developing ideas for each chorus that were more original than his previous ones. "

- John Hammond

Trivia

The electromagnetic pickup (pickup) of the played by Christian guitar model, introduced in 1936 Gibson ES-150 , is now known as "Charlie Christian pickup" because of its characteristic design among experts.

Christian's circle of friends included the pioneer of the electric Chicago blues , T-Bone Walker, who was influenced by him .

Selection discography

collection

literature

  • Literature by and about Charlie Christian in the catalog of the German National Library
  • Arrigo Pollilo: Jazz - History and Personalities . Munich, Piper, 1987
  • Maurice Summerfield: The Jazz Guitar - Its evolution and its players (English). Ashley Mark Publishing 1978. ISBN 0-9506224-1-9
  • Guitar & Bass - The Musicians' Magazine , Issue 12/2004: Article “Charlie Christian and the Gibson ES-150”, p. 76 ff. MM-Musik-Media-Verlag, Ulm. ISSN  0934-7674
  • Hannes Fricke: The guitar myth: history, performers, great moments. Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-020279-1 , pp. 144–151 and passim.

Web links

Commons : Charlie Christian  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Notes / individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Summerfield: The Jazz Guitar , p. 73
  2. ↑ Christian did not play regularly in the Big Band Goodmans, he was only involved in a few recording sessions.
  3. ↑ Pollilo, p. 464; Pollilo goes on to say that Lionel Hampton and Benny Goodman deserved well with these titles they ascribed to themselves, but they weren't the only ones to claim the themes Christian invented.
  4. ↑ a b Polillo, p. 465
  5. ↑ cf. Polillo, p. 461
  6. ↑ Summerfield: The Jazz Guitar , p. 15
  7. ↑ Christian played increasingly diminished and excessive chords. Hannes Fricke (2013), p. 144.
  8. ↑ Ralph Ellison met Christian as a youth, quoted in after Polillo, p. 461
  9. ↑ cit. after Polillo, p. 463
  10. ↑ Guitar & Bass. 12/2004, p. 78.
  11. ^ Hannes Fricke: Myth guitar: history, interpreters, great hours. Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-020279-1 , p. 37.
personal data
SURNAME Christian, Charlie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz guitarist
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Dallas , Texas
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1942
Place of death New York City