Les Paul was a self-taught engineer who designed and
modified his own electric guitars and who also put together the
first 8-track recording studio. He helped Christian out in New
York and at one time gave him a guitar, and in New York Christian
quickly got a job with Benny Goodman, and he also joined Thelonious Monk and
the others to lay the foundations for
bebop.
Variations of this story took place in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where
Christian met and encouraged the teenage Barney Kessel (probably in 1940), and
in Bismarck, North
Dakota, where Christian inspired the teenage Mary Osborne (probably
before 1939). By 1945 all four
of these guitarists had made the big time in New York or LA, and by
then T-Bone Walker, who had known Christian in Oklahoma, was pioneering a jazzy kind of electric blues,
mostly in Chicago and LA.
Now, the point is that these five guitarists all came from the
middle of nowhere: Waukesha (WS), Oklahoma City (OK), Muskogee
(OK), Minot (ND), and the environs of Dallas (TX). They were all
more Western than Southern, and their musical environment was countryish. All of them had careers in the boonies before they
reached the big city, and all of them were at the top of their trade
by the time they reached New York. New York was marketing a music
tradition which had matured elsewhere.
This tradition included elements of pop, jazz, blues, and
country-western (with the emphasis on the "western"), and it would
develop into be-bop, but it wasn't "eclectic" -- it just hadn't been
disambiguated yet. Les Paul ended up as a countryish pop
singer, Christian and Osborne as proto-bop jazz musicians, Barney
Kessel as a studio musician and one of the founders of lounge jazz, and
T-Bone Walker as a jazzy electric bluesman, but they could all
do all that stuff.
Maybe this has something to do with the Louisiana Purchase, with
New Orleans the hub of a Mississippi River musical
universe. Or maybe it's a relic of the frontier and the Old West -- Oklahoma had been
Indian Territory until 1907, and Deadwood was a rough town where
Christian played a lot. (Ralph Ellison argued for the
Westernness of jazz, though I don't have anything by him at hand
right now). It's an understatement to say that this part of the US
is no longer regarded as a hotbed of musical creativity, but during
the first half of the nineteenth century big-time jazz men came from
all over the area -- Kansas City, St. Louis, Minneapolis (Lester Young)
and even Davenport, Iowa (Bix Beiderbecke).
New York was where the money was, and New York's catchment was
ultimately the whole world. In
New York the North Dakotans met some actual New Yorkers (e.g., Bud Powell and
Thelonius Monk) but mostly they met migrants. Benny Goodman
himself came from Chicago, and his parents had originally
had come from Hungary. (A side note: 1940 Goodman commissioned a
clarinet piece by the Hungarian
composer Bela Bartok, now a refugee. Bebop hada real connection to
the avant garde classical music of the time --
Dexter Gordon
specifically mentioned Bartok. According to Bartok's
niece Eva Toth (Bartok and his World, ed. Lati, p. 245), Bartok
in faroff Hungary had teased his mother in 1926 by playing "Negro
music" for her. Of all the great XXc composers, Bartok was the one
most interested in alternative musics, and if he'd lived longer
after he came to New York I suspect he would have ended up spending
some time on the scene).
The musical world in which Bismarck, N.D. was able to support two
cutting-edge musicians was fragile and transient. The radio and the
phonograph brought sophisticated music everywhere, but were not yet
so powerful that they replaced the live musicians entirely. But the
musicians eventually all went to New York, returning home only on
tours, and as time went on the recorded-music biz matured to the
point that it ended up replacing the real thing. Styles changed,
too. For example, when I was growing up, Benny Goodman was my
parents' music, and I wouldn't listen to it. I first found out about
Barney Kessel only recently, on the record he made with Julie
London, and until not too long ago I would never have listened to
that kind of 1955 pre-Elvis lounge music either. Elvis blew a lot of better
musicians out of the water: in the words of the
T-Bone Walker bio, "Rock's rise had made Walker's classy style
an anachronism". But at least their music is still there to listen to
now.
APPENDIX:
The techies of the electric guitar were
Westerners too. The Dopyera brothers, Slovak immigrants who
invented the non-electric but amplified Dobro, worked out of LA. Adolph
Rickenbacker, a Swiss immigrant, developed the first electric guitar
in Santa Ana (CA), and Leo
Fender developed his in Fullerton (CA). The early electric guitars tended to
be associated with country music, and many of the early amplified
instruments were steel guitars (first developed even further west,
in
Hawaii).
|
LES PAUL
Les Paul Wiki
Les
Paul Story
Time Magazine Les Paul story
"By the early '30s he was making $1000 a week at the country stuff;
but in the bustling Chicago music scene there was so much more to
hear and play. 'In the morning I was hillbilly, and at night I was
playing jazz with Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins, Nat Cole and Art
Tatum.' He cut his first records in 1936, backing blues
singer-pianist Georgia White as she belted out Andy Razaf's raunchy
threat, 'If I can't sell it, I'll keep sittin' on it, before I give
it away.' "
Supposedly one of Les Paul's first multi-track recordings was
W. C. Fields'
"The Day I Drank a Glass of Water".
CHARLEY CHRISTIAN
Ralph Ellison's Living with Music (Modern Library, 2002)
includes "The Charlie Christian Story"; so does Ellison's Shadow
and Act. Ellison knew Christian and his family personally and
has a lot to say.
Charlie Christian anecdotes
Detailed 5 page Charlie Christian bio
Charlie Christian Wiki
Charlie Christian fansite
BARNEY KESSEL
Barney Kessel Stories
London Times on Kessel
Kessel as Leader
Barney Kessel Story
Barney_Kessel
Wiki
Barney Kessel Biography
Barney Kessel Stories: Kessel in Minot, N.D.
MARY
OSBORNE
Mary Osborne Story
"In
the late 1930’s she moved east to Pittsburgh and later to New York.
There her talents as a jazz player caught the ear of some of the
jazz greats like Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Tatum all
of whom used her as rhythm and solo guitarist in their bands. In the
period of 1945 – 1947 she made a number of recordings with several
important jazz figures; Mercer Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, Coleman
Hawkins, Stuff Smith and Meryl Booker."
T-BONE WALKER
T-Bone Walker
T-Bone Walker
MUSKOGEE / OKLAHOMA / THE WEST
Rexroth on the French-American West
French survivals on the upper Mississippi
Music of Oklahoma
Jazz in Muskogee
"This study determines why the relatively small town of Muskogee,
Oklahoma produced more jazz musicians per capita than any other town
of its size in the United States in the 20th century. It examines
the years 1795 to 1945, from the time of European settlement through
World War II. An account of the cultural history of Muskogee germane
to the development of jazz and the critical history and contemporary
perspective of the eight musicians are accompanied by unpublished
oral histories with five of the musicians: Aaron Bell, Barney Kessel,
Clarence Love, Jay McShann, and Claude Williams. Don Byas, and Joe
and Walter “Foots” Thomas are also discussed in the study."
DISCOGRAPHIES, DOWNLOADS AND CDS
Charlie Christian discography
Charlie Christian downloads from "Genius" Recommended:
"Solo flight", "Waitin' for Benny", "Blues in B"
Charlie Christian at Minton's
Les Paul
Review: The Very Best of Les Paul and Mary Ford is best as a
sampling of Paul's early, very crude production skills (e.g., taping
a guitar at half-speed and then playing it back at normal speed to
get a tinny double-time effect.) Musically, I'm sure that there's
better stuff elsewhere (for one example, on Swing to Bop Guitar
below).
"Julie is her name": Julie London with Barney Kessel
What I ended up getting was
The Julie London Ultimate Collection, which includes 6
Barney Kessel tracks and about 25 others. Great collection, and
London is a better singer than I had thought.
"Swing to Bop Guitar": includes three Mary Osborne pieces
Review: an indispensable record for someone interested in the
history. A lot of people besides Osborne.
Supposed Mary Osborne Download
Mary Osborne Discography: add
"Now and Then", 1982 on Stash records.
T-Bone Walker
GUITAR
History of amplified guitar
History of electric guitar
Story of Gibson Les Paul Guitar
Rickenbacker guitar
Electric Guitar Wiki