Buried in an unmarked grave, guitarist Charlie Christian helped break the color barrier in the music industry in the 1930s and 40s along with the likes of Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson as a member of the Benny Goodman Sextet.
Yet despite his ability to cross the forbidden barrier in the recording industry, he could not do in death what he had done in life. For decades, his body remained in an unmarked grave in Gates Hill Cemetery in Bonham, Texas.
But historian Tom Scott discovered this tragic oversight, and set out to make things right.
You see, Charlie Christian was no mere guitar player, but rather the man that many historians consider the ultimate pioneer of the electrified instrument. He is the first electric guitar player who won any sense of recognition.
Perhaps author Ralph Ellison said it best. “With Christian, jazz found its guitar voice.”
Arguably, Christian was to the guitar what Louis Armstrong was to the trumpet and Coleman Hawkins was to the tenor sax.
“Christian, the first major exponent of the electric guitar, was an innovator in single string solos,” said Garydon Rhodes, a filmmaker who produced the PBS documentary “Solo Flight,” which chronicled Christian’s life. “He was one of the great sculptors of jazz. In his short life, he elevated the electric guitar to a frontline instrument, charting the course from which modern music is still flowing.”
“He rose like a phoenix out of the ashes of trite guitar styles to change music forever. Much of his career was spent working with interracial groups at a time when there was great racial oppression,” added Rhodes.
The Bonham native was born in “Tank Town” in 1916. Christian moved to Oklahoma City in early childhood. There, his blind father earned money for the family on street corners.
When he was still in his teens, he crafted his first guitar out of cigar boxes, learning the “Jellyroll Blues,” from an uncle.
When he was still in high school, his father died. Forced to abandon his education to earn a living, Christian pursued the only trade he knew – music.
In the early 1930s, Oklahoma City’s Second Street section featured a jazz scene that could rival Kansas City, the acknowledged birthplace of swing. It was here that Christian would cut his teeth.
“There were other guys we used to play with, but none of them could touch him,” said one early collaborator. “He had a lot of originality.”
Playing in dives such as Slaughter’s Hall and Ruby’s Grill, Christian honed his craft in the juke joints that littered Second Street in those days, sending the driving sound of swing into the early morning hours.
Band leader Jay McShann recalled an early encounter with Christian.
“I happened to work with Charlie way back in 1936,” McShann, who also gave bebop innovator and legendary saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker his start. “He had come to Dallas to play at the Texas Centennial. He was playing the bass fiddle at the time, and he could play that thing. He could whip it every bit as well as “Slam” Stuart and other guys who were known for their bass fiddle playing.”
Working with the likes of Alfonzo Trent, Christian caught the ear of record producer John Hammond, who was also acting as a booking agent for Benny Goodman. The Sextet organized by the near-mythic Goodman would be the first jazz band to break the color barrier with any success. It was more than a risky venture, and death threats followed the mixed ensemble of legendary performers. When on the road, the black members of the group were often forced to either sleep on the bus or worse, even worse. Contrary to much of what we read today, racism and segregation was not confined to the south during the 1930s.
Christian’s playing quickly won praise. Three times, from 1939 until 41, he was named Down Beat Magazine’s “Guitarist of the Year.” Goodman had this to say.
“I think Charlie is one of the most terrific musicians to have been produced in recent years,” Goodman said about him in 1939. Despite the praise, Goodman allowed his friend to sink into oblivion when he contracted tuberculosis. In early 1942, he checked into a New York City sanitarium. A few weeks later he was dead.
His lifeless body was shipped back home to Bonham, where it was buried without ceremony or fanfare. Not even Goodman attended the funeral, or bothered to make certain he was given a tombstone.
Despite Christian’s accomplishments, for the next 50 years, his resting place drifted into oblivion. Decades passed before the oppression of racism lifted enough for the man to finally get his due. Finally in April of 1994, a gravestone and Texas Historical Marker as Christian’s lone daughter, Billie Jean Johnson, along with friends and admirers, looked on, thanks in no small part to Scott.
Still, there is much sadness in Christian’s story. Despite all he accomplished and the legacy he left, he died after only 26 years on this earth.
Amazing.
Perhaps Ellison put it best when he wrote that Christian “burned out like a guitar in a tenement fire.”