Charlie Christian: Bonham’s Electric Revolutionary

Today is the birthday of Charlie Christian. He would be 111 today.

Charlie Christian plugged in a guitar and jazz never sounded the same again. He grew up in Bonham, Texas, chasing his father’s street-corner band for spare change. Charlie Christian’s Bonham, Texas upbringing taught him rhythm before he owned a real instrument. Then he moved to Oklahoma City and built his own electric guitar rig from spare parts. But nobody in New York believed a guitar could lead a jazz band, not yet.

He Turned a Rhythm Instrument Into a Voice

Producer John Hammond heard him and forced Benny Goodman to listen at a Los Angeles nightclub in 1939. Goodman, annoyed, let the young Texan sit in anyway. Christian then played a chorus of “Rose Room” that stretched past 40 minutes. The crowd would not let him stop, and neither would history. Suddenly the electric guitar sounded like a saxophone with a Texas drawl, sharp and singing. His solos with Goodman’s sextet moved like a lit fuse racing toward a spark. Young musicians in Harlem, including a saxophonist named Charlie Parker, studied his late-night jam sessions at Minton’s Playhouse. Those sessions helped incubate bebop before the style had a name. His playing shares a lineage with fellow Texas jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman, another restless innovator.

Tuberculosis ended his life in 1942, after only 25 years. Still, his handful of recorded solos rewired an entire instrument’s purpose. Because of Charlie Christian, guitarists stopped keeping time and started telling stories. Learn more about his short, blazing career via Charlie Christian. His Bonham porch and Goodman’s stage sit closer together than anyone expected.