Today’s Music: Charlie Christian

Jazz electric guitar genius Charlie Christian was born today in 1916.  In his short life (he died at the age of 25 in 1942), he helped make the guitar a lead instrument through his use of a Gibson ES-150 with a single pickup and his fluid, melodic runs (played on heavy-gauge strings high off the neck) that set the pattern for future improvisations by generations of other musicians.  There is no one playing electric guitar in any genre today who does not owe a heavy debt to brilliant progenitors like Charlie Christian for paving the way, whether they realize the debt or not.