Wes Montgomery held his guitar differently

[monk]

Get your local library to find a copy of the CC biography. At $120, it's too expensive to buy but it is worth reading just to clear up some of the apochryphal articles that have been written about CC over the years.

Goins, Wayne E. and McKinney, Craig (2005) A Biography of Charlie Christian, Jazz Guitar's King of Swing ISBN 0-88946-426-X

[MarkRhodes]

Perhaps Weidlich's photograph has sound. But to draw these conclusions from a photograph as well as those that follow on pages 90-92 is ridiculous.

You act as if Weidlich never heard Charlie Christian play or hadn't spent a long time figuring out *how* Charlie played the lines that he played. (Others had worked at this too, of course.) I find it odd that anyone would question the blues influence in Charlie's playing, or suggest that pictures taken of him playing live reveal nothing useful about how he held and played the guitar. Hell, this whole thread started because of pictures of Wes showing him holding his guitar "differently".

As for Weidlich, his "personal perspective on Charlie's playing style" is offered as just that. If you have something to say about his *claim* that tilting the guitar results in "less friction in releasing the strings due to change in angle," I'd like to hear it.

[hot ford coupe]

To tell you the truth, because the guitar does not have a standard way of being taught like a lot of much older instruments, (violin, trumpet, trombone) , teachers never standardized how to hold the instrument in the first place. I was talking to a friend yesterday about guitar position. He's had classical training. His teacher taught him classical position and to contact the guitar only at the edges so as not to impede the vibrations. Other style players hold the instrument in the way their style developed. Also, depending on the style of music, the bodies over the last 150 years have gotten larger and some even thinner so the way it was held changed to accomodate the new sizes. Nowadays especially in the rock arena, guitar positions changed because guitar hero worship. Some guy stood up and held his instrument somewhere around his knees, spread his feet way apart and boom, that's where they all hold it now. What's right and what's wrong depends on whether or not the player is getting what he wants out of the guitar.

[monk]

You act as if Weidlich never heard Charlie Christian play or hadn't spent a long time figuring out *how* Charlie played the lines that he played. (Others had worked at this too, of course.) I find it odd that anyone would question the blues influence in Charlie's playing, or suggest that pictures taken of him playing live reveal nothing useful about how he held and played the guitar. Hell, this whole thread started because of pictures of Wes showing him holding his guitar "differently".

As for Weidlich, his "personal perspective on Charlie's playing style" is offered as just that. If you have something to say about his *claim* that tilting the guitar results in "less friction in releasing the strings due to change in angle," I'd like to hear it.

Look at the picture on page 89 of the book, read the third paragraph and the caption under the photo and tell me that it proves that CC was fingerpicking a country blues or that he was even on break. He could just as easily be playing rhythm with his thumb accompanying the band.

I've never stated that CC wasn't influenced by the blues, only that there is no proof that he was ever a country blues fingerpicker and it's fatuous of Weidlich to make such a claim from looking at a photograph. Other than Django, the most audible influence in Christian's playing is Lester Young.