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Re: Charlie christian I kind of think of him as his own thing. Like Monk. He’d have undoubtedly been considered part of the bop movement and his ghostly presence is felt in the early (late 40s) bop recording because many of them featured guitar, including Tiny Grimes and Barney Kessel who played in the Charlie Christian mould albeit in their own distinctive ways.
However second generation bebop kind of went through a bottleneck. Everyone learned Bird specifically, so his approach became the template. Interestingly the older guitar players had more of a shapes approach - I’m thinking of Herb Ellis, Oscar Moore etc. But pretty much all the 50s and 60s players went into the II V lines thing in a big way, which is not generally how Charlie Christian approached things harmonically.
You hear Barney becoming more boppy as he develops.
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12-13-2025 07:26 AM
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i like the observations connecting tunes like blue and boogie or diggin diz to CCs style. also check out CCs influence on early rock n roll and players like chuck berry. but i dont think bird would have sounded much different without CC.
maybe CC might have become the th monk of guitar, had he lived.
i think the hotbeds for bebop were the bigbands of the 40s like earl hines or billy eckstine. later dizzys band. imagine all those horn players like fats or dex feeding off each other. you dont have that with guitarists. later you had the du sable highschool and captain dyett. also most horn players play functional piano so there is a preference there as well.
side note: musicians who played a litttle guitar on the side were maybe more inclined to work with guitarists. elvin jones comes to mind. milt jackson played as well, quite close to wes' style actually. sam jones played cello, and i guess he could also play some guitar. wes played not only 6-string electric bass but double bass as well. no wonder they became friends.
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Also harmonically the suspension of the V chord as Barry would have called it.
Originally Posted by brent.h
The older players went direct to V, the boppers used II-7 and IV more to ornament the V.
That, and setting up chord II-7 with the VI7b9 are two big harmonic aspects of bebop as opposed to swing that derived from Bird’s improvisational approach.
So in prewar music you hear things like Honeysuckle played on C7 for four bars. It’s one way to get into the style more.
You could say II V is a bebop thing. Obviously you have some II Vs in music before that, but it’s not nearly so common.
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CC sounds a lot like Western Swing Guitar, to my ears. I don't know the earliest Western Swing guitar recordings.
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Western swing guitar sounds like CC Originally Posted by GuyBoden
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he plays upside down like uffe steen. amazing.
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Maybe, but were others not playing with a similar feel/sound in the 1930's, even the same guitar. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Muryel Campbell (Zeke) listen to his 1930's Solo at 2:17min
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You want to check out Bob Wills “Best of the Tiffany Transcriptions” it’s longer takes for radio play, and since they aren’t trying for a hit, they stretch out. Originally Posted by brent.h
They even do some jazz tunes.
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This is so interesting, and I hadn't realized it was about Charlie Christian from the title.
Coincidentally about a month ago I found an old USB drive that I haven't seen in years. It has a number of folders labelled Charlie Christian arranged into various volumes and each has about a dozen tunes in it, all small group recordings. They are MP3 and have signs of digital decay, glitches and such here and there. No idea where I got it, it must've been quite a while ago, but now I'm boppin' along the road to and from work listening to it.
I also dug out a book I got back in the 1980s, with about 20 transcriptions of his solos from various sources, and several pages of background, information, etc., including a brief bio, an explanation of playing off of chord shapes and playing through changes.
As this thread attests, there is a wealth of information online nowadays about CC, but that old book had some of things now being dissected and it was enough to get me into learning some of his lines when I first started on jazz guitar back in the 1980s. I recall a few chord shape based lines creeping into my playing back then, one in particular that I can still play after all these years is more or less an outline of a minor 6th chord shape. From the 1990s, I took a decades long hiatus from guitar and explored world music, but returned to jazz guitar about 10 years ago, which is probably when I got the MP3 files.
This discussion highlighted some very interesting ideas, of the "what if" kind. I always thought that it was the horn players who invented what came to be known as bebop, but to think that they may have been trying to emulate Charlie Christian is fascinating. I am not interested in the details of that debate, thank you, but the very notion made me think about something I realized about playing guitar when I took it up again in my mid-fifties.
The guitar is in a way a minimalist instrument, 3 octaves and only a few fingers to use. CC got it all started on an instrument with 14 frets, using a pick. It's truly incredible what others have done since then, lush chordal arrangements playing fingerstyle that remind me of a piano, and playing lines at breakneck speed reminiscent of horn players. But I realized right off that, as a casual lover of jazz who wanted to play a bit of this amazing music with others in a live setting, that my aged out-of-practice hands could never play in those maximalist ways as an amateur casual player, at least not in the short time I have.
So I latched onto more minimalist players like Jim Hall and Bill Frisell, who make the most of those guitaristic limitations, embracing rather than trying to transcend them, seeing the guitar for what it is, rather than a kind of defective piano or horn, allowing its limitations to breed their creativity. And now this discussion has brought all that back into focus for me.
I guess each of us have something that piques our interest in playing music, that ignites a kind of innate spark within us, and I have to say that listening to those old CC recordings still tweaks my heart strings more than most of what I've been listening to. To me, that's jazz. I'll continue to absorb myself in those CC sounds echoing from the past, and hope that I can at least on occasion eke out something that vaguely resembles his artistry.
One last thought. The above CC book references some of the recordings from which the transcriptions were made, and some of them are titled jam sessions. I'm not a historian, but I like to think that jazz as improvisational music was forged at least in part in those after hours informal jam sessions, where work-a-day musicians could stretch out far beyond the confines of the tunes they played for pay to entertain an audience in more formal settings. One can almost hear the liberated exuberance in CCs playing on those cuts. I don't know, but I like to think that playing in a casual, informal, spontaneous jam session remains an important feature of learning to play this wondrous music we all love.
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A friend (a much better player than me) had the same book, probably in the 1990's, he had learned some of Charlie Christian's solo techniques and introduced me to Charlie Christian's music with the "Swing to Bop" cd. Originally Posted by JazzPadd
I also dug out a book I got back in the 1980s, with about 20 transcriptions of his solos from various sources, and several pages of background, information, etc., including a brief bio, an explanation of playing off of chord shapes and playing through changes.
All good stuff.
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One man's opinion, and I think his perspective overlooks a lot, maybe because he's an academic from the UK and wasn't on the scene.
I grew up just outside NYC, and in the 80's on, I was able to hear several of the guitar greats- Jim Hall/Red Mitchell at the Vanguard. Joe Pass solo. Tal Farlow (who was only mentioned in passing) in small groups in Trenton. Harry Leahy, who taught so many great players. Peter Bernstein was just starting out in the loft scene. The author dismisses Tristano, but there was a scene there, too, with guitarists like Peter Priscoe. Josh Breakstone played with Warne Marsh. Bucky Pizzarelli (not mentioned at all) was, indeed, a studio guy, but he played jazz gigs all the time. Then there was guitar night at Gulliver's.
I could go on, but my point is, there was a big jazz guitar scene here in NY/NJ that had nothing to do with fusion, rock, or George Benson & smooth jazz. If anything, guitar jazz existed as it's own entity, when in jazz overall the guitar is more of a supporting, rhythm section instrument (which is what made CC such a big deal).
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Because I'm just a tad obsessive--and have been guitar-obsessed for 60-some years--my guitar-music record collection is pretty comprehensive, and over the last 30 years I've particularly pursued the role of the guitar in swing and jazz. There are now quite a few anthologies that cover the period from the 1920s through the 1950s*, and what I hear in them is not so much a change in technical prowess as changes in the performing contexts. Forgive the teacherish tone of what follows--I come by it honestly and can't shake it even in retirement.
When the guitar replaced the banjo in the dance-band rhythm section, its role was supportive and the peak exemplar was eventually Freddie Green--famously noticed if he dropped out. But in the small-group environment even an unamplified guitar could make itself heard, and players such as Alan Reuss, George Van Eps, and Al Casey certainly had something to say. And Django, of course. Then there were the duo recordings of Lang-Venuti (and Lang-Johnson and Lang-Kress) and Kress-McDonough. It was the combination of amplification and small groups that gave the guitar an expanded role, and bebop was what was happening when the electric guitar finally got fully up and running. First Eddie Durham and George Barnes, then CC, then Oscar Moore and Les Paul in trio formats that straddle the birth-of-bop period. But it's hard to speak the language of bebop when you can't make yourself heard. Nevertheless, CD 4 of the Hittin' on All Six set has examples of guitarists--Barney Kessel, Arvin Garrison, Mary Osborne, Chuck Wayne--navigating bop pretty well in the mid-to-late 1940s, and all but two examples are of small units.
* My collection includes Hittin' on All Six, Fifty Years of Jazz Guitar, Pioneers of Jazz Guitar (Yazoo), Swing to Bop Guitar (Hep Records), and others. Similar surveys cover western swing, gypsy jazz, and the small-group format of jump blues that was evolving right next to bebop was pretty guitar-friendly as well, partly thanks to amplification.Last edited by RLetson; 12-14-2025 at 05:01 PM.
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I think that's still true. I think a lot of that is due to how pianists, orchestral string and horn players, etc., start with a standardized comprehensive pedagogy from the first day they pick up an instrument. They begin learning to read music practically from the first note. Virtually every great jazz instrumentalist on piano, saxophone, trumpet, etc., started out learning the classical methods- not only the music itself but also the physical approach to their instrument to be able to play at ease and efficiently. Originally Posted by James W
Guitarists, on the other hand, tend to learn the basics maybe with guitar lessons but mostly on their own, maybe looking at books and misunderstanding what's in there because most of us can't read sheet music worth a damn. Guitar teachers tend not to have pedagogical training themselves, so they can't train their students in it. Many of us have terrible physical interaction with the instrument with ineffective posture, poor breathing, etc. At 66, I am just beginning to reckon with this due to the undeniable back and neck pain that developed over 45 years of bad habit.
Joe Pass, I have been noticing on videos, had a good physical interaction with the guitar. His early guitar education involved some standardized pedagogy (classical books like the Carcassi method, etc.). The freedom he had in his hands and arms when playing came from having a good relaxed stance with the guitar. And Joe may have been the most complete of us ever on the instrument from a technical perspective of playing jazz.
Jazz guitar pedagogy has developed a lot thanks to places like GIT and Berklee, among others. But we will never be able to exactly play like piano or horns; and horn players and pianists will never be able to exactly play like us. The instruments are just different. Jazz guitarists, throughout my studies of jazz, have suffered from this inferiority complex that we can't play chords like pianists and we can't play lines like saxophonists and therefore we are second tier jazz musicians. But when I talk to pianists about it, they are always interested by how a guitarist stacks notes in a chord compared to themselves and find that refreshing to hear. I've read online discussions by saxophonists looking to take guitar riffs and transpose them to the horn. Different doesn't have to mean inferior, but we have to learn how to be equals.
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This is tosh:
The sax players and trumpeters and pianists committed themselves to full-time jazz. The guitarists settled for studio work, and there was so much studio work available that they seldom felt the need to do anything else.
Many of the guitarists who played in studios also played gigs and made records. Many of the jazz musicians who played instruments other than the guitar also played in studios.
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From what Jimmy Bruno has said, studio work wasn’t a walk in the park. It was playing written arrangements, sheet music, and if you mess up a piece twice you were fired and replaced. Originally Posted by Litterick
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His timeline's out but I'd say that it's true for the '60s, particularly later in the decade. The number of straight ahead players recording consistently was pretty small. Miles asked Jim Hall to play on one of his albums around that period and Hall declined as he felt out of gigging and recording shape due to his involvement in so many TV sessions. Originally Posted by Litterick
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Straight-ahead jazz was out of fashion. The record companies commissioned few albums. Originally Posted by PMB
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The guitar as a percussive instrument, I love it, thanks! That's a great way of looking at it. Originally Posted by brent.h
My brother is a drummer / percussionist and we grew up playing together in bands. He's now studying Brazilian drumming and we still jam to this day whenever we get together. As an inspiration for playing jazz, I feel closest to Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and in addition to listening to the Charlie Christian USB archive while driving I also have another with an Art Blakey archive. When playing at local jam sessions, I intuitively lock in with the drummers, and sometimes start my ad-lib on a moderate to up swing tune with a short melodic figure varied rhythmically. Now I'd like to explore the energetic banjo style strumming you mentioned, there's times when a soloist is soaring that it might work well.
The guitar seems to be emerging from this lively discussion as an amazing beast indeed!
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I agree with all of this. Originally Posted by Cunamara
I think one of the reasons guitarists don't have a standardised pedagogy like violin, piano or horns do is that there are many more ways of playing a guitar than there are of those other instruments. This in itself makes teaching quite a bit more difficult because what works for one guitarist might not work for another. I am thinking in particular about picking hand technique here. But, like I say, we are coming around to this fact and hopefully these things will be more common knowledge for guitarists, and guitar teachers specifically.
It is true that we don't have the chordal possibilities of pianos and we find fast lines like saxophone more difficult, but I think the strengths of the guitar is that it combines aspects of other instruments into one instrument.
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Good post! Originally Posted by James W
Regarding the idea proposed by Cunamara that "an average pianist (or whatever) is way better than a really good guitarist", from a musical perspective, I don't see much sense in that. Anyone who is a really good musician on any intrument is going to "cut through" in some way and transmit that energy to the audience and have an impact. Good is good, average is average, whatever you're playing. JMO
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this is a fantastic video. there are just as many ways to play the piano.
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Originally Posted by JazzPadd
Arnt Arntzen, he's in The Louis Armstrong Eternity band that livestreams on RaioFreeBirdLand, so hours and hours of him playing in a group.
Here are some clips from SwingYouCats
A slow one
A fast one
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Those videos remind me that Bucky and John Pizzarelli both started on banjo, as did Frank Vignola. And Howard Alden first played tenor guitar and banjo. Carl Kress started on banjo and used a banjo-influenced all-fifths tuning on guitar (picked up and maintained by Marty Grosz). Something going on there?
Always loved Bucky's supporting playing, as here he is with Zoot.
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At the jams in a town where I live, half of the people are guitarists. Sometimes I feel like I am in all guitar band.
It is obviously partly because the guitar is popular in general and once amateurs want to start jazz they are often already in guitar
Also I noticed that for many non-jazz/non-musicain people 'the jazz guitar (archtop)' is one of the immediate recognizable symbols of jazz (nest to saxophone).
As for why it was not so much recognized in the earlier days. Probably it was kind of lost behind horns and piano till the amplification era began, and then it took time to develop and establish a voice strong enough to bring forward people like Metheny or McLaughlin or Scofield or Frisell etc. who are also important for non-guitar players of next generations.
I should admit most trumpet and sax players I know do not really know music of Wes or Jim Hall... at best they know the names and who these guys are, but not the music really. Maybe they could hear Jim Hall as a sideman.
And most of the know the music of Metheny and Sco, even copied something from them etc.
quite a few jazz people know Joe Pass, but this is mostly because of his special stand alone virtuoso image and also I think because of collaboration with Norman Getz where he appeared with Ella and Oscar Peterson.
Overall to me the jazz guitar is best in a small group (best probably bass + guitar + one soloist (or I could live without a soloist either... kidding))
Very intimate context even if one plays manouche.
And modern electric guitars with overdrive and all... it is a bit different instrument already, different context...
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I love these sorts of videos. As I said, I think it’s a shame we don’t have the same sort of discourse about the way the great guitarists played. We just kind of high handedly assume that we’ve fixed technique and any divergences from that are kind of wrong as opposed to part of the artists individuality. It’s boring Originally Posted by djg
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