Sidebar 9

Charlie Christian was 20 years old when he joined the Benny Goodman band in 1939. He revolutionized the electric guitar. The guitar was considered a rhythm instrument until Charlie created an identity for the electric guitar as a solo instrument, playing horn-style, single-note passages in a radical departure from the existing chord/melody approach.

He changed forever the way the guitar was played, and then, suffering from tuberculosis, Charlie Christian died in 1943 at the age of 23.