"Charlie, I really think, is one of the most terrific musicians who's been produced in years."
-- Benny Goodman, introducing Charlie Christian
"You continue to play the guitar the way it should be played and you'll make the rest of the world like it."
-- Charlie Christian
He was born in the middle of a 1916 Texas summer in a clapboard rent house in Tanktown, a South Bonham, Texas, area. Dr. A.H. McRuffin watched Charles Christian take his first few gasps of air, as Hattie Nichols watched after helping his mother, Willie Mae, give birth.
Christian's father, Clarence, waited tables at the Alexander Hotel and led a small orchestra that played cotillions and parties around Bonham. Willie Mae sang in the Bradford Chapel Methodist Church choir.
When interviewed by Garydon Rhodes for his documentary "Solo Flight," Nichols, who died last December, recalled that, "She (Willie Mae) was a lovely singer," and that "Clarence Christian played a big bass guitar."
Two years after Charlie was born, Clarence lost his sight after being ill for some time. The family moved to Oklahoma City. It was there, some years later, that Charlie got his start in the Deep Deuce section along Second Street in Oklahoma City, in joints like Ruby's Grill, Slaughter's Hall and The Hole. Family legend has it that his first start was at 14, when he appeared with the Don Redmond Orchestra - his brother Edward played piano for the group.
Besides honing his craft, He toured with Alphonso Trent and Anne Mae Winburn, and other groups around the Midwest - around Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri, primarily. During that time, he began toying with using an amplifier to make his guitar better heard over the orchestras he played with.
According to Walter Carter with Gibson, Christian played two different models - the ES150 and the ES250, both named so because the guitar and amplifier came together for $150 and $250, respectively. The ES150 was the first electric guitar Gibson produced, Carter said.
"We hadn't sold too many of them until Charlie started playing them," he said, adding that although Christian never did an endorsement guitar like Les Paul did, there are still aficionados that insist on using the Charlie Christian guitar.
"His work on the electric guitar helped us (at Gibson) probably more than anyone else," Carter said. Christian also popularized the first version of the electric guitar pickup Gibson made, he said. "Although we had begun to make improvements on it shortly before he died, there are a lot of musicians out there still who want that pickup."
In 1939, Mary Lou Williams, another popular jazz artist, heard his performances and suggested him to John Hammond, the New York promoter who was booking for Benny Goodman.
Hammond was also intrigued by Christian's craft, and set up an audition with Goodman in Los Angeles, where Goodman's orchestra was playing. For reasons debated by some, Christian apparently failed that first audition in Goodman's eyes. However, several members of Goodman's band were impressed, and sneaked Christian onstage during their performance.
Goodman tested Christian with the song "Rose Room" thinking that Christian wouldn't know the band's arrangement. Legend has it that Goodman was so captivated with Christian's abilities with that song that the band played the song for more than 40 minutes while Christian showed off his talents.
Christian was then a member of the Goodman Sextet - but more importantly, he was well on his way to carving out a solid place in the foundations of American musical history. Over the next 18 months, Christian performed with Goodman and recorded what was to be his legacy - a stack of singles that set the jazz world on its ear and provided young guitarists everywhere with an idol, a mean feat considering that Christian's recording career lasted less than two years.
In those two years, he also played with some of the other greats of the jazz world; from Thelonious Monk to Dizzy Gillespie, and helped shape what would be called "bebop" music. With Goodman, he recorded several jazz gems with tunes like "Flying Home," "Seven Come Eleven," "Air Mail Special," and "Solo Flight."
But it wasn't just a musical contribution that Christian made - it was a social one as well. In a 1939 article in Downbeat Magazine, Goodman said that he wanted "the best band possible to assemble" adding that he chose black performers like Christian and Fletcher Henderson because "they are the best on their respective instruments." The article, which said that Goodman should be "congratulated for his courage" actually quoted other bandleaders who seconded Goodman's hiring practices. It was desegregated hiring in an age where blacks were still riding in the back of the bus, drinking from different water fountains, and going through separate entrances in buildings.
Plagued with tuberculosis nearly all his life, Christian had to leave Goodman's band and was admitted to Bellview Hospital in New York City in the summer of 1941. Very ill, a month later he was transferred to Seaview Sanatorium, but died on March 2, 1942, a few months short of his 26th birthday.
Funeral services were first held in Oklahoma City, then at the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Bonham. He was buried in an unmarked grave at Gates Hill Cemetery, not far from Tanktown. His grave remained unmarked until 1994, when a group of family and well wishers, as well as members of the Fannin County Historical Museum and the Texas Historical Commission placed both a headstone and an historical marker in a place three people remember Christian as being buried. The home he was born in is still standing in Bonham as well - although sadly neglected in recent years.
Christian continues to influence artists. T-Bone Walker, Chuck Berry and B.B. King count themselves as disciples, and he has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Jazz Hall of Fame.
"After I heard him, I could forget about everybody else," a guitarist told Ken Burns in his documentary on jazz. "Charlie Christian was it."
Tom Scott of the Fannin County Historical Museum and Peter Broadbent, British biographer, contributed research material for this story.