clap hands, here comes charlie

Surely everybody knows that another musician has becoming legend: Les Paul. His death last week has prompted an entire litany of reviews, memorials and obituaries. He had a long and proud innings, being 94 when he died, so his fans (both professional and lay) have a lot of great stuff to remember him by. I never knew him, so I’d be disingenuous to say I’m sad. But I recognise the lacuna his passing leaves.

If I understand what I read correctly, Les Paul was instrumental in moving the guitar from the back row to the front of the band. One obituary suggested he’d invented the electric guitar, but in fact he’d created the solid electric guitar. Pre-Paul, the electric guitar was acoustic with an amplifier attached beneath the bridge. What he did was convert a plank of wood into musical notes and inspired countless youths to participate in turning the guitar into what is now probably the world’s most popular instrument. Yep – it’s all his fault.

A few years before Les, a great jazz musician took an electric guitar and sat in the front row with it, playing as if it was a melody instrument alongside the saxophone or trumpet. Others had experimented before him, but I think I’m right in saying that in the middle 1930s Charlie Christian was the first jazz guitarist to use his instrument other than for strumming or performing quick breaks in rare solos. He took the jazz world by the throat and moved even hardened professional cynics and virtuosi like Benny Goodman to suddenly sit up and take the jazz guitar seriously as a lead instrument.

Some of Christian’s best work was with the Goodman and Lionel Hampton bands. He drove many of the numbers as part of the rhythm section and then stepped forward to solo with as much creativity and flair as Goodman’s clarinet or Hampton’s vibraphone. Listen to “Seven Come Eleven” and “Honeysuckle Rose” (both 22 November 1939) and “Haven’t Named It Yet” or “”One Sweet Letter From You” from a month or two earlier.

My personal favourite, though, is his “Swing to Bop” (also known as Charlie’s Choice), an improvisation on Basie’s “Topsy,” recorded at Minton’s in May 1941. With the house trumpeter, Joe Guy, who for years I believed was Roy Eldridge performing under a pseudonym, Kenny Clarke (d) and not Thelonious Monk on piano as the album claimed but probably Kenny Kersey, this impromptu quintet jammed to provide a carriage for what is in my opinion the best guitar solo ever recorded. It swings with breath-taking confidence and Christian’s phrasing and flow of ideas stoked the energy until the number pulses and builds to a febrile crescendo of foot-tapping and be-bopping proportions. This is unalloyed swinging jazz with exposed-nerves excitement.

Why do I bring this up now? Both men were born in the same nascent era of jazz – Paul in 1915 and Christian a year later. Les Paul had a long and distinguished musical innings. Charlie Christian had a very short life – he died in 1942 of TB aged about 25 after a recording career of little more than about three years. Yet in their spheres, both had enormous influence. Les Paul’s legacy will be cause for celebration for many years to come; Charlie Christian’s is still recognised throughout the jazz fraternity.

I can’t resist asking myself what would have been if Charlie Christian hadn’t died so young. Kenny Clarke, the infamous be-bop drummer, said Christian would have been a real modern if he’d lived. He said those words long before the word ‘modern’ began to lose some its clarity. I suspect part of his meaning is lost in the passage of time.

But I wonder how many of today’s guitarists understand the debt they owe to Charlie Christian. Everyone seems to forget that Rock & Roll (the progenitor of today’s popular music) was a scion of jazz.