Charlie Christian

Biography

Charlie Christian was an American jazz guitarist from Oklahoma City whose work with *Benny Goodman* between 1939 and 1941 established the amplified guitar as a solo voice in jazz. His fluid, saxophone like lines also fed directly into the after hours experiments at Minton's Playhouse that produced bebop. He died of tuberculosis in 1942, aged twenty five, leaving a small body of recordings that changed guitar playing permanently.