ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEWS & UPDATES

A transciption of Charlie Christian’s eight-bar solo break on  “I’m Confessin’”  has been added to the Transcriptions Section along with Comments & Analyses.   This is from a studio session on December 20, 1939 and the only known take of this tune.

Go to  “I’m Confessin’”  transcription page

Or go to  Transcriptions  main page
 

Galaxy Music Ltd (The Netherlands) CD aircheck compilation:

Charly Christian and The Benny Goodman Sextet

Galaxy 3899442

Contains 16 tracks (one with the full orchestra) of broadcasts in chronological order and, except for the packaging, is identical to a 1993 CD reissue on Archives of Jazz 380123 2.

Go to  Albums Index  and scroll down to Galaxy 3899442

(This CD is listed on several on-line sites misleadingly entitled “At The Rose Room New York 1939” — it’s not a recommended release — the fidelity is not at all good and there are very loud pops on three tracks)

Also added were discographical data on a double-CD issued by Frémeaux & Associés (France) containing only three tracks with Charlie Christian on board with the sextet.  Details have been entered in the Solography and Discography sections:  Benny Goodman—The Quintessence, catalog number FA 244.
 

Updated the Links page:

Go to  Links
 

Last month, Shinko Music Entertainment published a book featuring Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt:

Jazz Guitar Book, Vol. 16

ISBN 978-4-401-63169-8, 130 pages, 7x10 inches, soft cover.
Published quarterly (more or less) for 2,100 ¥ (appoximately $20.00).
Standard music notation with tablature, solo analyses (all in Japanese).

The Charlie Christian section has two complete solo transcriptions and thirteen extracted phrases.

Transcription titles are identified in the Bibliographies section.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York) recently published a book by Dunstan Prial entitled
The Producer:  John Hammond  and The Soul  of American Music.

It's a biography of John Hammond; 347 pages which includes about a dozen pages on Charlie Christian and several mentions of CC throughout the book.  [ISBN 0-374-11304-1]
 

Coming up next month:

The 2007 Charlie Christian International Jazz Festival

      May 31 (Thursday) through June 10 (Sunday), 2007

                        in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Dedication ceremony of the renaming of Byers Avenue to Charlie Christian Avenue
                                 will be on June 5th at 3:00 pm

              produced by:  Charlie Christian Productions

    for additional information call BLAC Inc (405) 524-3800
 

Updated the Links page:

Go to  Links
 

Here are two recent Charlie Christian releases from Europe:
 

On 5 December 2006, a street in the Bricktown section of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was renamed:

“Charlie Christian Avenue”

Previously it was the part of Byers Avenue that was north of Interstate 40 and the North Canadian River which separated the two disconnected sections of Byers;  between Lincoln Blvd and Geary Ave, running from Reno Ave to 2nd St.
Next to where Charles’ Douglass High School once stood.

For more information go to  The Oklahoman
 

Transciptions of Charlie Christian’s 32-bar solos on  “The Sheik of Araby”  which were recorded at The Cocoanut Grove nightclub from broadcasts on 12 & 26 April 1940 have been added along with Comments & Analyses.

Go to  “The Sheik of Araby”  12 April 1940  transcription page

Go to  “The Sheik of Araby”  26 April 1940  transcription page

Or go to  Transcriptions  main page
 

Transciptions of Charlie Christian’s intros, verses, solos, and fours from the master and alternate takes (three pages of each) of  “The Sheik of Araby”  which were recorded in Hollywood on 3 April 1940 have been added to the Transcriptions Section along with Comments & Analyses.
          —  16-bar verse intro
          —  32-bar solo
          —  two 4-bar solos (trading fours on final chorus)

Go to  “The Sheik of Araby”  Master Take A  transcription page

Go to  “The Sheik of Araby”  Alternate Take B  transcription page

Or go to  Transcriptions  main page
 

Transciptions of Charlie Christian’s solos on the master and alternate takes of  “I Surrender, Dear”  which was recorded in Hollywood on 10 April 1940 have been added to the Transcriptions Section along with Comments & Analyses.

Go to  “I Surrender, Dear”  Master Take B  transcription page

Go to  “I Surrender, Dear”  Alternate Take A  transcription page

Or go to  Transcriptions  main page
 

Comments & Analysis have been added to the “Honeysuckle Rose (Up on Teddy’s Hill)” seven-page transcription.
Tablature has been changed to reflect CC’s actual fingering.

Go to  “Honeysuckle Rose ”  May 1941  transcription pages

Or go to  Transcriptions  main page
 

For this year’s anniversary Clive Downs has contributed three recent publications to the Bibliography section:

• New items in Clive Downs’ Biographical (section 1) Bibliography
  —  Goins & McKinney (2005) – “A Biography of Charlie Christian:
        Jazz Guitar’s King of Swing”
        440-page hardcover book
          (see March 7, 2005 below)
• New items in Clive Downs’ Musical Analysis (section 3) Bibliography
  —  Ayeroff (2005) – “Swing to Bop:
        The Music of Charlie Christian, Pioneer of the Electric Guiar”
        237-page softcover book
        with 2-CD demo
          (see November 26, 2005 below)
  —  Dochtermann (2005) – “The Charlie Christian Method”
        44-page softcover book with CD demo

Go to  Solos Bibliography
 

A reminder regarding next week:

The 2006 Charlie Christian International Jazz Festival

        June 6 (Tuesday) through June 11 (Sunday), 2006

             at Bricktown in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

              produced by:  Charlie Christian Productions

      for more information call BLAC Inc (405) 524-3800
 

The 4-CD box set Charlie Christian:  The Genius of the Electric Guitar (Columbia/Legacy C4K 65564) originally released in 2002 has been selected by Christopher Porterfield as one of the “7 GREATEST JAZZ CDS” — in the 15 May issue of Time magazine.

An exerpt from page 66:

“In the years B.C. (Before Christian), the jazz guitar was mostly a rhythm instrument.  In his hands, it emerged as a brilliantly lyrical solo voice, one that echoes in virtually every electric guitarist who has followed.   Christian’s death from tuberculosis at 25 made him one of jazz’s greatest might-have-beens.  This four-disc package—largely his 1939-41 appearances as a precocious star of Benny Goodman’s combos—proves that he was one of jazz’s greatest, period.”

A new session with Charlie Christian on rhythm guitar has been added to this site.  Charles recorded four tunes for the Columbia label on 16 January 1941 with vocal group The Charioteers.   Walter Page (bass) and Jo Jones (drums) were also enlisted for the session.   James Sherman, one of The Charioteers, is on piano.

Scott Wenzel, producer for Mosaic Records, discovered the session documented in the Columbia ledgers at Sony.

Go to  Solography  and scroll down to January 16, 1941
 

A transciption of Charlie Christian’s intro & solo on  “Honeysuckle Rose”  broadcast from the Catalina Casino in June of 1940 has been added to the Transcriptions Section along with Comments & Analysis.

The three other takes of  “Honeysuckle Rose”  with the sextet & orchesta get Comments & Analysis and CC tablature.

Go to  “Honeysuckle Rose”  22 November 1939  transcription page

Go to  “Honeysuckle Rose”  24 December 1939  transcription page

Go to  “Honeysuckle Rose”  22 June 1940  transcription page

Go to  “Honeysuckle Rose”  19 November 1940  transcription page

Or go to  Transcriptions  main page
 

The Annual Charlie Christian International Jazz Festival

                               June 8 - 11, 2006

                Bricktown - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

              produced by:  Charlie Christian Productions

     for more information call BLAC INC (405) 524-3800
 

Both takes of  “Profoundly Blue”  get the Comments & Analysis and CC tablature treatment this time.
Four-bar chord intros and three-chorus blues solos by Charles on each take.

Or go to  Transcriptions  main page
 

Nocturne (France) has released a 2-CD, long-book compilation from some of the same people that brought you the Masters of Jazz (Media 7) series:

Charlie Christian

BD Jazz  JZBD022

Mel Bay Publications has just published an excellent book of solo transcriptions and analyses by Stan Ayeroff.   There are 39 transcriptions of solos that Charlie Christian recorded with the Goodman sextet, at the “Spirituals to Swing” concert, the “Profoundly Blue” session for Blue Note, and jam sessions at the Harlem Breakfast Club, Minton’s, and Monroe’s.

Transcriptions:
Ad-Lib Blues, Good Morning Blues, Guy’s Got to Go, Honeysuckle Rose I, Honeysuckle Rose II, Honeysuckle Rose III, I Got Rhythm, I Never Knew, I’m Confessin, I Found a New Baby I, I Found a New Baby II, Ida Sweet as Apple Cider, Jamming in Four, Lips Flips, Oh Lady Be Good (complete 3 choruses + bridge), On the Alamo, Paging the Devil, Poor Butterfly, Profoundly Blue I, Profoundly Blue II, Riffin’ Around (!), Rose Room I, Rose Room II, Rose Room III, Royal Garden Blues I, Royal Garden Blues II, Royal Garden Blues III, Swing to Bop, The Sheik of Araby I, The Sheik of Araby II, The Sheik of Araby III, Tea for Two, These Foolish Things I, These Foolish Things II, These Foolish Things III, Untitled Tune I, Untitled Tune II, Up on Teddy’s Hill, Way Down Yonder in New Orleans.

This is the second book on Charlie Christian that Ayeroff has written.  The first had 20 transcriptions, 14 of which are also included in the new book.  The transcriptions in both books are very similar but not identical.

Go to  Solos Bibliography
scroll down to Ayeroff (2005)
for list of transcriptions (section 1)
for description of each transcription (section 2)

Swing to Bop: The Music of Charlie Christian

by Stan Ayeroff

ISBN 0-7866-7319-2, 240 pages, 9x12 inches, standard music notation, playing instructions with some fretboard diagram grids, detailed solo analysis, transcriptions with left-hand finger indicators.

Two demo CDs are included with slow and fast versions of each transcription recorded by the author.

Additional information is at Mel Bay Publications.

Best price available is at Guitar Gallery Music.

The tracks in the Proper box set mentioned below (October 28) have now been entered in the Solography and Discography sections.  The 44-page illustrated booklet contains a short biography and commentary on the tunes by Joop Visser and a complete discography.  However, “I Found a New Baby” is listed as the master take (1) on disc 2, track 14 but is actually the alternate take (2) and “Soft Winds” on disc 3, track 8 is in fact “AC-DC Current” from a week earlier (Visser also mentions it as “Soft Winds” in the notes).

Go to  Albums Index  and scroll down to ProperBox 98
 

Proper Music (UK) will release a 4-CD box set compilation on
October 31:

Charlie Christian:  The Original Guitar Genius

ProperBox 98

Contains 84 tracks with studio recordings from Columbia, Blue Note, and one from RCA on the first two discs and live sessions on the third and fourth discs.

The discographical information in the booklet was taken from my site.  Full details will be entered in the Solography and Discography sections as soon as I can verify the takes.  [done—see Nov 17 entry above]

Proper Music provides a discography and track listing:  ProperBox 98

Thanks to musicologist Fer Urbina for alerting me to this item      

Centerstream has just published a solo analysis book:

The Guitar Chord Shapes of Charlie Christian

by Joseph Weidlich

ISBN 1-57424-149-4, 96 pages, 9x12 inches, standard music notation, some tablature, chord diagram grids, solo analyses.
A 93-track, computer-generated, demo CD is included.

Joe Weidlich:  “The purpose of this book is to present some of the common licks often used by Charlie Christian in the basic chord shapes of F, D and A…”

No actual solos transciptions are notated — only 1- to 4-bar unidentified phrases, each with a short analysis.

Centerstream Publications is distributed by Hal Leonard.

Coincidently released within days of a CC biography
(see 7 March 2005 entry below).

details forthcoming here in the Musical Analysis Bibliography

The two-chorus solo transcription of “Star Dust” from the Harlem Breakfast Club has been reviewed using 24-bit technology and revised.

Go to  Star Dust  transcription page

Or go to  Transcriptions  main page
 

Yet another pointless European CD compilation, The Best of Charlie Christian, was released a last month by Chestnut Music Traders Ltd.  Fourteen tracks from the Columbia studios (all masters), three jams (one incomplete), and two Vocalion master takes.
 

Maybe about a third of the tracks might be considered “the best of,” but the rest are questionable.  It includes two songs (Four Day Creep & Hard Time Blues) that have CC playing obbligati for 12 bars behind blues singer Ida Cox—hardly “the best of.”  Track 4 is an orchestral recording of Stompin’ at the Savoy that does not even include Charlie Christian—it’s erroniously listed as being recorded at Minton’s.  Two-thirds of Topsy is missing—only CC’s first solo is here.  Short liner notes;  neither recording dates nor matrices are provided.  Track sequencing appears to be random, as are the selections.  Definitely avoid this one.

Go to  Albums Index  and scroll down to Chestnut CN1003
 

20th Annual Charlie Christian International Jazz Festival

                               June 9 - 12, 2005

                Bricktown - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

              produced by:  Charlie Christian Productions

   for more information call BLAC, INC. (405) 524-3800
 

A “Chronology” page containing an outline of Charlie Christian’s life and some additional posthumous events (from his birth to the present) has been added to this site:

Go to  Chronology  page
 

Comments & Analysis and CC tablature have been added to the master take of “These Foolish Things” and new transcriptions of the alternate take and a breakdown are now up to complement the master.
Four-bar chord intros and eight-bar solos by CC (only the intro survived the breakdown).

Go to  “These Foolish Things”  (alternate take)  transcription page

Go to  “These Foolish Things”  (breakdown)  transcription page

Go to  “These Foolish Things”  (master take)  transcription page

Or go to  Transcriptions  main page
 

“Poor Butterfly” and “On the Alamo” both sit on A/B/A/C structures and on both Charlie Christian takes his 8-bar solo on the ‘A’ section.  Comments & Analysis and CC tablature have been added to both versions of “Poor Butterfly” and the sole take of “On the Alamo” transcriptions.

Go to  “On the Alamo”  transcription page

Go to  “Poor Butterfly”  (studio version)  transcription page

Go to  “Poor Butterfly”  (live version)  transcription page

Or go to  Transcriptions  main page
 

The final draft was completed a couple of weeks ago and is now at the publishing house.

A BIOGRAPHY OF CHARLIE CHRISTIAN:  JAZZ GUITAR’S KING OF SWING
by Wayne E. Goins & Craig R. McKinney

Seventeen chapters, 440 pages, indexed, with bibliography
forward by jazz author Lewis Porter
to be published by The Edwin Mellen Press
on 30 September 2005
ISBN:  0-7734-6091-8

Finally, after more than sixty years, a definitive publication on Charlie Christian will be in print.

Go to the  Edwin Mellen Press  website to see description, reviews, table of contents

(Disclosure:  this monumental and memorable project was undertaken in association with LeoValdes, your site host
—see October 22, 2004 below.)
 

The “Kansas City Six” played two blues at the “From Spirituals to Swing” concert of 1939.   Comments & Analysis and CC tablature have been added to both “Good Morning Blues” & “Paging the Devil”solo transcriptions.

Or go to  Transcriptions  main page
 

Comments & Analysis and CC tablature have been added to the “Haven’t Named It Yet” solo transcription.

Go to  “Haven’t Named It Yet”  transcription page

Or go to  Transcriptions  main page
 

Comments & Analysis and CC tablature have been added to the solo transcription of

“Stompin’ at the Savoy”   (June 1941 aircheck).

Go to  Stompin’ at the Savoy  transcription page

Or go to  Transcriptions  main page
 

Another strange CD compilation, Charlie Christian, was released a couple of months ago by Sony France on the “Guitar & Bass” series of their Sony Music Media label.  Sixteen tracks from the Columbia studios.  Some are masters and some are alternate takes plus one track from the 28 October 1940 rehearsal with Lester Young.  Most curious are the last two tracks:  a breakdown of “Gone with What Draft” is included along with a complete alternate take of the same tune with the same CC eight-bar “written” cadenza;  that’s followed by a fourteen minute track of a rehearsal of “Benny’s Bugle” with all the chatter and false starts.
 

The “Guitar & Bass” that appears on the image is actually on the plastic slip cover.  The short liner notes are in French and neither recording dates nor matrices are provided.

A listing of the tracks can be viewed in the Albums Index of the Discography section.

Go to  Albums Index  and scroll down to Sony Music Media SMM 517115 2
 

• New items in Clive Downs’ Biographical (section 1) Bibliography
  —  Broadbent (2003) – “Charlie Christian” – magazine article
  —  Christian (2005) – “Guitarmen, Wake Up and Pluck” – magazine reprint
  —  Goins (2004) – “Searching for Charlie Christian” – two-part magazine article
  —  Wheelwright (2003) – “I Found Charlie’s ES-150” – magazine article
  —  Woodard (2003) – “Charlie Christian” – magazine article
• New item in Clive Downs’ Discography (section 2) Bibliography
  —  Rust (1982) – “Jazz Records 1897-1942”
• New items in Clive Downs’ Musical Analysis (section 3) Bibliography
  —  Aledorf (2003) – “Charlie Christian:  A Step-by-Step Breakdown…” – Video DVD
  —  Fox (2002) – “The Magic Christian” – magazine article
  —  Hansen (1998) – “Tutorial, Solos, Licks” – website:  tutorial
  —  Valdes (2002) – “Charlie Christian Transcriptions” – website:  comments & analyses

• New items in Clive Downs’ Notated Solos Bibliography
  —  GuitarOne (2002) – Seven Come Eleven transcription
  —  GuitarOne (2004) – Flying Home transcription
  —  Hal Leonard (2003) – 8 partial or complete demonstrations on DVD
  —  Rossi (2003) – Rose Room transcription

Go to  Solos Bibliography
 

Comments & Analysis and CC tablature have been added to the solo transcription (six + three-choruses) of the renowned “Topsy” (aka “Swing to Bop”) — for the first time anywhere, the tab shows how Charlie Christian actually played it.

Or go to  Transcriptions  main page
 

A rather odd two-CD Charlie Christian compilation, AC / DC Current, was released this month by the Italian company Comet Records on their Universe (UV 129/2) label.   The 40 tracks were obviously taken from the 98 tracks in the 2002 Columbia/Legacy four-CD box set, The Genius of the Electric Guitar, but it’s hard to figure out the reasoning behind the selections.

The producers may have been trying to include only the master takes plus the Columbia studio jam but they left out a couple of masters and included several alternate takes.  Along with the master, four additional takes of “Gone with What Draft” are included—this is the tune that has the same CC eight-bar “written” cadenza on all takes.  The same holds for the alternate take of “A Smo-o-o-oth One”—almost identical short CC solos on both takes.  It would have been much better if those alternates had been excluded to make room for the five tracks from the Columbia studio rehearsal session with Lester Young.  The alternate take of “I Found a New Baby” is included instead of the master—no doubt because it’s erroneously labeled in the Columbia/Legacy set.

The packaging is kinda nifty though.   It’s like a small hard-cover book with a dozen pages listing the tunes, personnel,   dates, and locations and with six photos. The discs clip on to the inside front and back covers (there’s an additional photo behind each disc).  That’s much better than the Columbia/Legacy set which looks fine on the shelf but is impractically designed for handling and has a hard-to-read booklet.

A listing of the tracks can be viewed in the Albums Index of the Discography section.

Go to  Albums Index  and scroll down to Universe UV 129/2
 

THE DEFINITIVE WORK ON THE MUSIC AND LIFE OF CHARLIE CHRISTIAN TO BE PUBLISHED NEXT YEAR:

Wayne Goins, Director of Jazz at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, is co-authoring two definitive books on Charlie Christian.

Goins, along with his colleague and co-author Craig McKinney from Topeka, Kansas, will be releasing a lengthy biography;  Goins, along with his colleague and co-author Leo Valdes [your host] from El Paso, Texas, will be releasing a discography of the recordings and a chronology of the life of Charlie Christian.

Goins, McKinney and Valdes are collaborating on both volumes and have made numerous trips to Oklahoma City to get the record straight.  They have worked very closely with the Christian / Downey family, as well as other participants in the city who sat for interviews.  Anita Arnold, Director of the Black Liberated Arts Center in Oklahoma City, has been highly instrumental in gathering sources for the project and continues to be an integral part of the team.

We are all very excited about the ongoing project, which will present to the many Charlie Christian fans around the world a treasure trove of original and previously unreleased material on the incredible life and times of Charlie Christian, to be published by Mellen Press in 2005.  Included in these books will be never-before-published photos, original biographical material, an up-to-date chronology and discography, and exclusive interviews with Margretta Lorraine Downey, Billie Jean Christian, Clarence Christian, Leroy Parks, Herb Ellis, Abe Bolar, Leslie Sheffield, Henry Butler, and many others.

For a preview of things to come, you can read two extensive pieces that Dr. Goins has already written on Charlie Christian, featured in Jazz Improv Magazine (“Searching for Charlie Christian” –Vol. 4, Number 4, and “Searching for Charlie Christian, Part II” –Vol. 5, Number 1).
[see the 29 September 2004 entry below]
 

The second installment of   “Searching for Charlie Christian”  has just been published in the Autumn 2004 issue of
Jazz Improv Magazine  (Vol. 5, Number 1).   Part II is a feature article written by Dr. Wayne Goins further describing
the research done this year for a forthcoming book on Charles.
[see September 29, 2004, for a description of the first article]

It also has a short essay in memory of Billie Jean Johnson, Charlie Christian's only child.
[see July 21, 2004, below]

Highly recommended!

Available at bookstores for only $12.95 ($17.95 in Canada) for the magazine and a CD.
[I am not affiliated with the magazine]

Go to the  Jazz Improv  website to see the cover or

To order go to the  Jazz Improv Order Form
 

Here's a transciption of Charlie Christian’s solo on his own composition  “Flying Home” —from his first studio recording with the sextet, 65 years ago today.

Two events prompted me to place a “Flying Home” transcription on this site at this time:
—The passing of Illinois Jacquet a couple of months ago.
    (He was best known for his 1943 solo on this tune with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and remained so to this day.)
—And the publication of a tablature transcription of this 1939 master take in the July 2004 issue of Guitar One magazine.
    (Hal Leonard also published it in a book last year entitled Charlie Christian:  The Definitive Collection—both contain
    the theme, solo, chords, and riffs.)

Complete with comments, analysis, and tablature to reflect CC’s actual fingering.
There’s a link there to Garry Hansen’s site which contains a standard-fingering tab for comparison.
[see the March 7, 2002 entry below for a brief explanation as to the fingering]

Go to  Flying Home  transcription

Or go to  Transcriptions  main page
 

The Summer 2004 issue of  Jazz Improv Magazine  (Vol. 4, Number 4) features a nine-page article
by Dr. Wayne Goins entitled  “Searching for Charlie Christian.”

About half of the article recounts research done in Oklahoma City for a forthcoming book on Charles.
The other half is a CC biography expertly crafted from my Chronology (which is described on the home page of this site).
[If you read this article, please note that I first heard Charlie Christian when I was living in Greenville, South Carolina, not Greenville, Texas]

Highly recommended!

Available at bookstores for only $12.95 ($17.95 in Canada) for the magazine and a CD.
[I am not affiliated with the magazine]

Go to the  Jazz Improv  website to see the cover or

To order go to the  Jazz Improv Order Form