Jazz Articles about Charlie Christian

like 14

Thirty Essential Transformative Guitarists

by Alan Bryson
September 9, 2026

"Best guitarist" lists are inherently subjective--often nonsensical. They rank the unrankable, folding popularity, technique, cultural impact, sales, and personal taste into a single hierarchy. This list takes a different approach, acknowledging thirty guitarists who transformed the instrument itself: they created new techniques, pioneered fresh concepts, expanded its sonic vocabulary, and changed how those who followed them played. Each left the guitar different from how they found it. Thirty names could easily be a hundred, so a word on a ...

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Ralph "Bigfoot" Hamilton: The Lost Legend Behind Two Guitar Pioneers

by Kyle Simpler
December 26, 2025

Nowadays, every move we make is recorded in some way, and wherever a person goes, whatever they do or say is often captured. Of course, this has not always been the case, and in fact, many details concerning historical events frequently rely on speculation based on the evidence at hand. This is undoubtedly the case with many blues and jazz musicians during the early twentieth century, such as Charlie Christian and T-Bone Walker, two of the most influential ...

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Charlie Christian: The Original Guitar Genius

by Chris May
March 21, 2007

Charlie ChristianThe Original Guitar GeniusProper Records2005 The New Orleans cornetist Buddy Bolden--active in the early 1900s--won his reputation as a founding father of jazz without leaving any recorded evidence of his talent. His epoch-shaping stature is based entirely on folklore, the testimony of a few contemporaries, and a handful of newspaper clippings. The Texas-born, Oklahoma-raised guitarist Charlie Christian (1916-42) shares something of Bolden's semi-mythic aura. Like Bolden, Christian ...

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Chasin' Charlie's Ghost: Modern Guitar

by Chris M. Slawecki
October 4, 2006

Charlie Christian may or may not have been the first musician to master the electric guitar, but one thing is certain: the first guitarist who plugged in, whoever it was, forever changed the course of modern music. Guitar styles through the decades since passed seem to have multiplied until they outnumber guitarists! But since there always seems to be room for more... Joyce Cooling Revolving Door NaradaJazz 2006 Gibson ...

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Charlie Christian: The Genius of the Electric Guitar

by Charlie B. Dahan
September 12, 2002

Never has a title of an album or anthology been more on the money than the new Charlie Christian boxset entitled “The Genius of Electric Guitar.” The more profound aspect of this collection is that when you are listening you are amazed that only two years existed between his discovery in Oklahoma by John Hammond and his death due to tuberculosis at the age of twenty-five. While Christian was not the first musician to play the electric ...

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Charlie Christian: The Genius Of The Electric Guitar

by Jim Santella
September 1, 2002

The Benny Goodman Sextet opened doors. When guitarist Charlie Christian would take a solo, he’d express the ideas that made jazz what it is. He and vibraphonist Lionel Hampton had a lot of solo space in those sessions. Their improvisation set standards. Take “Boy Meets Goy (Grand Slam),” for example. It’s a boogie-woogie in the swing style of “Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B.” Under Goodman’s leadership, the piece swings hard. Clear rhythmic processes and crisp inflection come as no ...

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Charlie Christian: When Lights Are Low

by Al Rearick
October 1, 2001

For everyone wondering if and when Sony will ever get around to upgrading the CDs of music by legendary guitar-player Charlie Christian, well...I guess we’ll have to keep waiting. In the meantime, though, the good folks at Catfish Records have beaten Sony to the punch with their great-sounding compilation of prime Christian, When Lights Are Low.

At first glance, it’s perplexing to figure out who this is marketed towards. Die-hards will want to wait for a more complete overview of ...