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PROGRAM NOTES
- Hotter Than That, (Lil Hardin) Louis Armstrong Hot Fives, Lonnie Johnson guitar, 1927 (Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz CBS 1973)
- Mahogany Hall Stomp (Spencer Williams) (excerpted), Louis Armstrong & Orchestra, Lonnie Johnson guitar, 1929, Parlophone R571
- All Star Strut, (R. Mergentroid) Metronome All Star Nine, Charlie Christian amplified guitar, NYC, Columbia Records, 1940
- Gone With What Wind, (C. Basie, B. Goodman) Benny Goodman Sextet, Charlie Christian amplified guitar, NYC, 1940
- I Got Rhythm, (I + G Gershwin) Charlie Christian Quintet, Charlie Christian amplified guitar, Minneapolis, 1940
- Tea For Two, (I. Caesar, V. Youmans) Charlie Christian Quintet, Charlie Christian amplified guitar, Minneapolis, 1940
- Benny’s Bugle (B. Goodman) Benny Goodman & his Sextet, Charlie Christian amplified guitar, Columbia, NYC, 1940
- Royal Garden Blues, (C. Williams, S. Williams) Benny Goodman & his Sextet, Charlie Christian amplified guitar, Columbia, NYC, 1940
- Gilly (B. Goodman) Benny Goodman & his Sextet, Charlie Christian amplified guitar, Columbia NYC, 1940
- Blues Sequence / Breakfast Feud (B. Goodman) Benny Goodman & his Sextet Charlie Christian amplified guitar Columbia NYC, 1940
- I Found A New Baby (Jack. Palmer, Spencer. WIlliams) Benny Goodman & his Sextet Charlie Christian amplified guitar Columbia NYC, 1941
- Solo Flight (Charlie. Christian, James Mundy, Benny Goodman) Benny Goodman & his Orchestra, Charlie Christian amplified guitar Columbia NYC, 1941
In today’s VINYL VIBRATIONS podcast, I tour some early vinyl records that showcase guitarist great Charlie Christian. These performances of Charlie Christian are found on Vinyl LP Record compilations of his recordings between 1939 and 1941. Often you will hear remarks from today’s jazz, pop, blues, even rock guitarists ….like Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton ….that their BIGGEST INFLUENCES came from two or three early guitarists — DJANGO REINHARDT, LONNIE JOHNSON and CHARLIE CHRISTIAN. You will hear this many times.
The former, DJANGO REINHARDT, the BELGIAN jazz guitarist, is well known for his EUROPEAN style of jazz, the so-called “HOT JAZZ” or “GYPSY JAZZ” or “ROMANI” style of music, that has become a living musical tradition within FRENCH GYPSY CULTURE. DJANGO’s “GYPSY JAZZ” style is widely emulated by today’s jazz guitarists. DJANGO lived 43 years, between 1910 and 1953, and some of his most popular ORIGINAL compositions, such as MINOR SWING, DAPHNE, BELLEVILLE, DJANGOLOGY, SWING 42 and NUAGES…are jazz standards today. DJANGO REINHARDT is widely recorded, with SIX recordings during his lifetime, and a total of 23 recordings all together, many of which are compilations of his works. So DJANGO as a cultural influence, is a fascinating subject in and of itself, and will be the subject of an upcoming VINYL VIBRATIONS podcast!
LONNIE JOHNSON, ANOTHER Jazz and blues guitarist, is credited with PIONEERING the ROLE of jazz guitar …..and for being perhaps the FIRST recorded case of playing single-note guitar solos. He had an extensive discography and lived to be 71, so Lonnie Johnson is well recognized, having being extensively recorded AND after having a long-standing career, performing as late as 1966, or at age 67 years.
But WHAT ABOUT THIS THIRD INFLUENTIAL GUITARIST …the AMERICAN guitarist CHARLIE CHRISTIAN…NAMED SO OFTEN…..OF WHOM WE KNOW SO LITTLE ??? CHARLIE CHRISTIAN. Who is that??? What are his songs? What was his guitar style? How can CHRISTIAN be cited so often as a strong influence, when there are relatively few recordings to play? IS CHARLIE CHRISTIAN LOST IN JAZZ MUSIC HISTORY?
I am going to bring to light some of this lesser known work of Charlie Christian, and feature some of the first recorded examples of his jazz guitar. More importantly, jazz guitar where the instrument is amplified and the guitarist is playing a lead role. This is truly unusual, in retrospective. Today, I feature the young guitarist genius born in Texas and raised in Oklahoma, named Charlie Christian.
So who is guitarist Charlie Christian?? It’s a fair question ….because Charlie Christian played professionally a very long time ago, and one would only hear this guitarist in the context of music from the AMERICAN SWING ERA. Christian was recorded in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He was captured in …at most…25-30 distinct songs, in which he is primarily captured as a sideman with his catalyst, band leader Benny Goodman. Christian lived to be only 25 years of age, having succumbed to the infectious disease tuberculosis, in Staten Island New York, in 1942.
What makes Charlie Christian so unusual is how much influence and groundbreaking guitar work he did achieve in just 8 to10 years of his adult lifetime.
This guitar work represents one of the FIRST recorded examples of SINGLE-NOTE AMPLIFIED GUITAR, WHERE THE GUITAR IS BEING PLAYED AS A LEAD INSTRUMENT IN A SEXTET or in a BIG BAND. This is very unusual, because of the nature of the jazz guitar.
Until the time of Charlie Christian, the jazz guitar was strictly an acoustic instrument, perhaps a classical guitar, with gut strings, playing a RHYTHM part in the band, with the pronounced strumming of chords in time or double time with the bass line. Often a banjo was used as the rhythm instrument, it was brighter in sound, and projected better than a guitar.
So, for the jazz guitar circa 1938, THAT WAS IT…just rhythm strumming. No pickups. No amplifiers, no instrument microphones and definitely no SOLO role for the guitarist. Pretty cozy, really, for the guitar work. No pressure at all…..
M1 LONNIE JOHNSON HOTTER THAN HOT in background…
TEN YEARS BEFORE CHARLIE CHRISTIAN, THERE IS ONE OTHER EXAMPLE OF LEAD GUITAR IN A JAZZ BAND , RECORDING STARTING IN 1925. —Lonnie Johnson.
- Hotter Than That, (Lil Hardin) Louis Armstrong Hot Fives, Lonnie Johnson guitar, 1927 (Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz CBS 1973)
LONNIE JOHNSON was born in 1899 in NEW ORLEANS. He was an American blues and jazz singer/guitarist and songwriter who pioneered the role of jazz guitar and is recognized as the first to play single-string guitar solos. Johnson’s discography is ENORMOUS with 192 songs recorded between 1925 and 1942, 65 of which are his original compositions. He recorded on OKEH (‘OKAY’), BLUEBIRD and DECCA labels. Johnson lived to be 71 and he performed, off and on, even later in life, and he performed as late as 1966 in Toronto.
Now let’s go back in time to 1927, in Chicago, Lonnie Johnson, from New Orleans, is just 28 years old, and here he is being recorded as a guest artist with Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, the song is “Hotter than That”. This is an experimental jazz improvisation, played in the New Orleans “DIXIE” style of Jazz. LONNIE JOHNSON is playing lead guitar side-by-side with a 26-year old Louis Armstrong, and Armstrong is doing his SCAT style of singing.
Louis Armstrong has to be credited with the innovation of emphasizing a solo guitarist, ……who would know that this would be the natural future state of jazz bands??? For this particular recording session, the Hot Fives became, in effect, the Hot Six, based on the addition of guitarist Lonnie Johnson. Thank you Louis Armstrong !!
note— LONNIE IS LEAD GTR AT 1:21-1:33 and 1:54-2:07
M2 Mahogany Hall Stomp (Spencer Williams) (excerpted), Louis Armstrong & Orchestra, Lonnie Johnson guitar, 1929, Parlophone R571 (78 RPM record0. Here is another example of Lonnie Johnson in Mahogany Hall Stomp (Spencer Williams), another DIXIE JAZZ style of music.
Lonnie Johnson is credited on this 78RPM album with being “GUITAR SOLOIST“. … this is thought to be a FIRST in CREDITS (GUITAR SOLOIST) in jazz guitar history.
Personnel included
- Louis Armstrong ~ Trumpet and Vocal
- Lonnie Johnson ~ Guitar
- J.C. Higginbotham ~ Trombone
- Albert Nicholas ~ Alto Saxophone
- Charlie Holmes ~ Alto Saxophone
- Teddy Hill ~ Tenor Saxophone
- Luis Russell ~ Piano
- Eddie Condon ~ Banjo
- Pops Foster ~ String Bass
- Paul Barbarin ~ Drum
M3 SOME TRACKS FEATURING CHARLIE CHRISTIAN ON SOLO GUITAR
Many of the tracks I will play today are from the compilation double album “Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian”. This is a 1972 LP 2-album set, collecting the few recordings that captured performances of this little-known artist. Most of the recorded works are of songs performed as SIDEMAN from sessions with Benny Goodman’s bands. The INNOVATION is that Benny Goodman, (like Louis Armstrong with guitarist Lonnie Johnson) saw the future of amplified guitar as a solo instrument.
THIS FIRST SONG, ALL STAR STRUT is performed by the Metronome All Star Nine, Charlie Christian amplified guitar, this was recorded in NYC in 1940. The Metronome All-Stars were a collection of jazz musicians assembled for studio recordings by Metronome Magazine. All Star Strut has the Dixie Jazz flavor to it. You can clearly hear Christian’s amplified guitar, the traditional rhythm strumming, it is in time with the bass line. The clarinet is first to solo then amazingly, the GUITAR is the second to solo. This is groundbreaking to employ the guitar at a peer level with the other band instruments — clarinet–trombone-piano -bass-trumpet-saxophone-and drums- Christian’s ONE guitar solo is clear and stands up well with these other instruments
Personnel
- recorded in New York, Feb 1940 with the Metronome All Star Nine:
▪ Benny Goodman — clarinet
▪ Charlie Christian — amplified guitar
▪ Harry James — trumpet
▪ don’t read
▪ Jack Teagarden — trombone
▪ Benny Carter — alto saxophone
▪ Eddie Miller — tenor saxophone
▪ Jess Stacy — piano
▪ Bob Haggart — bass
▪ Gene Krupa — drums
M4 GONE With WHAT Wind, (C. Basie, B. Goodman) featuring the Benny Goodman Sextet, Charlie Christian amplified guitar
Charlie Christian is 21 years old, and has the third lead solo, following the Benny Goodman clarinet (age 31) and Count Basie on piano (age 36) Christian plays his solo for 28 seconds, and is followed by Lionel Hampton, then age 32, on the Vibrophone. This is true Swing Era music. Perhaps the Song title …GONE with WHAT wind….exemplifies the nature of swing, which is emphasis on the first and third beat of a four beat pattern. GONE with WHAT wind, contracted with the later BOP style whack emphasized TWO and FOUR, such as …..salt PEANUTS salt PEANUTS.
Gone With What Wind, (C. Basie, B. Goodman) Benny Goodman Sextet, Charlie Christian amplified guitar, NYC, 1940
from the Benny Goodman Sextet …
Personnel included …
▪ Count Basie — piano
▪ Benny Goodman — clarinet
▪ Charlie Christian — amplified guitar
▪ Lionel Hampton — vibes
▪ don’t read the rest
▪ Artie Bernstein — bass
▪ Nick Fatool — drums
M5 I Got Rhythm, played by the Charlie Christian Quintet, with Christian on amplified guitar, Minneapolis, 1940
Now this is a stretch for recorded material, that is…..case in point on how little material there is from Charlie Christian. Christian is just 23 years old. The so-called “Charlie Christian Quintet” is being recorded privately at a club in Minneapolis, MN, early Mar 1940, on acetate discs, by a local disc jockey. The sound quality is not as good as a studio / professional recording. But there is a lot of solid Charlie Christian guitar work here. Being the lead of his own Quinte, Christian can mix in his guitar at any loudness he wants. In this case….LOUD !!!! Even his rhythm strumming is quite loud in the mix. This is a George Gershwin composition from 1930.
I Got Rhythm, performed by the Charlie Christian Quintet, Charlie Christian amplified guitar, Minneapolis, 1940
Personnel included (Charlie Christian Quintet):
▪ Charlie Christian — amplified guitar
▪ Jerry Jerome — tenor saxophone
▪ Frankie Hines — piano
▪ unknown — bass, drums
M6 Tea For Two, (music by Vincent Youmans) the song from the 1925 movie “NO NO NANETTE”, performed again by the Charlie Christian Quintet, Charlie Christian amplified guitar, Minneapolis, 1940,
This is another track that was recorded privately at a club in Minneapolis, MN, It is again a highly distorted track, but Charlie Christian shows his chops on this song. Toward the last few measures of this song, in the final guitar solo, are TWO of Charlie Christian’s lead guitar techniques were later reincarnated in the music of two very different and great guitarists — Buddy Guy, and Larry Coryell, respectively. Here is a sample of those two segments…..
Tea for Two, performed by the Charlie Christian Quintet):
▪ Charlie Christian — amplified guitar
▪ Frankie Hines — piano
▪ Jerry Jerome — tenor saxophone
▪ unknown — bass, drums
M7 Benny’s Bugle (B. Goodman) Benny Goodman & his Sextet, Charlie Christian amplified guitar, Columbia, NYC, 1940
This is a REAL recording. Following the Cootie Williams bugle call on this quintessential SWING ERA song, Charlie Christian is the FIRST to SOLO on this track.
Benny’s Bugle….(B. Goodman) Personnel included:
Benny Goodman and His Sextet featuring
- Cootie Williams — trumpet
- Benny Goodman — clarinet
- Count Basie] — piano
- Charlie Christian — amplified guitar
- George Auld — tenor saxophone
- Artie Bernstein — bass
- Harry Jaeger — drums
M8 Royal Garden Blues, (Clarence Williams, Spencer Williams (no relation), 1919). Royal Garden Blues is a jazz standard from Swing Era music..
Performed by Benny Goodman & his Sextet, Charlie Christian amplified guitar, Columbia, NYC, 1940
Royal Garden Blues starts out with the muted trumpet, and Charlie Christian’s brief guitar solo is in two parts, mid song. The song is primarily a Benny Goodman showcase, with Charlie Christian having an easy, mis-song solo. You have to have songs like that.
Performers:
▪ Cootie Williams — trumpet
▪ Charlie Christian — amplified guitar
M9 Gilly, pronounced “JILL-Y”. Gilly (B. Goodman) Benny Goodman & his Sextet, Charlie Christian amplified guitar, Columbia NYC, 1940
We hear some innovative work on guitar and trumpet—-Charlie Christian’s lead guitar work on “Gilly” is unusual, his single-note lead guitar playing opens the song, followed by Cootie William’s toilet-plunger “wow” trumpet style. The guitar work includes bold open-string harmonics, a few fat-shaped chords, and there is also single-note harmony playing between clarinet and guitar. The interplay between piano, clarinet and guitar is fun to hear. Another Swing Era classic.
Notable performances in the Benny Goodman and His Sextet were
▪ Benny Goodman — clarinet
▪ Charlie Christian — amplified guitar
▪ Cootie Williams — trumpet with the WOW effect
M10 Blues Sequence /Breakfast Feud
This next song “BREAKFAST FEUD – BLUES SEQUENCE” is a series of jazz guitar solos from Benny Goodman’s song and features Charlie Christian in a big way, he is the dominant player, with a SMOKING HOT guitar part. This track was obtained from a compilation by the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz , and published as an LP BOX SET in 1973 by CBS. Breakfast Feud–Blues Sequence, B. Goodma recorded in 1940
- Benny Goodman — clarinet
- Charlie Christian — amplified guitar
- Cootie Williams — trumpet
M11 I Found A New Baby Benny Goodman & his Sextet
This is one of Charlie Christian’s later recordings, recorded in NYC in January, 1941 on Columbia.. An ultra-clean song in terms of each of the instrument lines, and relatively restrained sound level. Christian has the first mid-song, guitar solo, followed by piano, muted wow-trumpet of Cootie Williams, tenor sax by George Auld. A shortie at 2 minutes 55 seconds. Recorded in New York 15 Jan 1941.
I Found A New Baby (Jack Palmer, Spencer WIlliams)
Personnel from Benny Goodman and His Sextet included
- Benny Goodman — clarinet
- Cootie Williams — trumpet
- George Auld — tenor saxophone
- Count Basie — piano
- Charlie Christian — amplified guitar
M12 Solo Flight Background
Our final track in this podcast is the song Solo Flight one of the only songs credited to CHARLIE CHRISTIAN as composer. Many have suspected that more of the Benny Goodman hits were Charlie Christian composition, but this is speculation, and it was not reflected in the form of song credits, copyrights or royalties. SOLO FLIGHT is credited as a collaboration song…Charlie Christian, James Mundy, Benny Goodman. Charlie Christian begins to solo early in this song, and plays single note lead guitar on amplified guitar continuously to the end. The title is appropriate because he does fly solo for the entire 2 minutes and 45 seconds. By the time of this recording, March of 1941, Charlie Christian knew he had Tuberculosis. But Christian remained busy, not only with the national fame of the Benny Goodman Band and the Benny Goodman Sextet, but also he was busy with a night club in Harlem called “Minton’sPlayhouse”, where he was incubating the next wave of jazz music — BE-BOP music. In June 1941 he was admitted to Seaview Hospital, a sanitarium on Staten Island in New York City. Christian declined in health and died March 2, 1942. He was just…25 years old.