This Week in Texas Music History we encounter the electric guitar’s origins in Texas and Oklahoma jazz joints.
Episodes written by Jason Mellard, Alan Schaefer, and Avery Armstrong
The Birth of Charlie Christian and Southern Electric Guitar
Jason Mellard from the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University
On July 29, 1916, guitarist Charlie Christian was born in Bonham in North Texas. His family moved to Oklahoma City shortly thereafter, and Christian’s early career in the 1930s speaks to the dynamic jazz networks connecting Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Dallas, and Fort Worth. Influenced by Lester Young, Bob Wills, and Eddie Durham, young Charlie Christian played in Dallas during the Centennial celebrations of 1936 and toured with bandleader Alphonso Trent the following year.
It was around this time that Christian purchased his first Gibson electric guitar, an instrument he would help bring to the center of American music. In the big band era, the guitar was often an afterthought, a rhythmic accompaniment interchangeable with, and generally quieter than, the banjo. It was hard to hear the nuances of the guitar playing above the noise of all those horns. Charlie Christian changed that
Christian’s electric guitar came to the attention of tastemaker John Hammond. Hammond arranged an audition with Benny Goodman, then at the height of his swing fame. In 1939, Christian joined Goodman’s Sextet and took off like a rocket, winning Down Beat’s influential best guitarist poll for three years running. Christian also played pickup sessions with musicians whose improvisations were defining the new, more experimental, bebop style—Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke, Thelonious Monk—and it was in this context that Christian really brought the electric guitar into its own as a solo instrument.
Few did as much to define its language, leaving an indelible imprint on the future of rock and roll. Christian, unfortunately, would not be there to see it. He died young of tuberculosis, age 26, in the spring of 1942 in New York.
Sources:
Laurie E. Jasinski in Laurie E. Jasinski, Gary Hartman, Casey Monahan, and Ann T. Smith, eds. The Handbook of Texas Music. Second Edition. Denton, TX: Texas State Historical Association, 2012.
David Oliphant. Jazz Mavericks of the Lone Star State. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.
Dave Oliphant. Texan Jazz. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.
