Ep. #03 | Charlie Christian if he had lived a year longer!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2024
- In this episode we try to get a glimpse as to what Charlie Christian might have sounded like if he had lived just a year or two longer! Charlie Christian passed away at 25 of tuberculosis, right when he and other young jazz musicians such as Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, were experimenting and creating what would become a new language for jazz, what would eventually be called bebop. It's impossible not to wonder how Charlie Christian, who at such a young age had already revolutionized the role of guitar in jazz, would have evolved and what he would have sounded like if he had lived just a little bit longer!
Watch episodes 01 and 02 here:
Ep #01 • Ep. #01 | Cool Charlie...
Ep #02 • Ep. #02 | Tritone Subs
Charlie Christian's original solo on Swing to Bop:
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Jordan Officer is a jazz, blues, country guitar player, singer, producer, educator, touring and recording artist from Montreal. In these video podcasts he will be looking at guitar technique, language, ideas for improvising, gear, talking to some of his favourite guitar players, talking about his influences, and more. New videos will be dropping every two weeks starting Feb 2022 so stay tuned.
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This is gold. The straightforward explanations (bebop) and the fantastic playing. So good, so generous. Thank you.
Thanks so much!
Jordan, love your playing with Suzy!
My ears and knowledge aren’t developed enough to really appreciate this demonstration. I wish I could hear it with a backing track.
Exactly what I was just going to say👍
Beautiful! You're a great guitarist in your own right, and I love this idea! Thank you!
Top draw! At the very least I dig it the most!
Cool! Thanks :)
CC’s exciting playing owes a lot too, to his right hand , his attack.
I read recently that Eddie Durham (wonderful too in Hitting the Bottle) gave him a few tips when he wanted to take on guitar, having only played piano before.
He said to him “don’t ever play upstrokes”. You need a very quick wrist for that.
I have seen photos where his right hand wrist appears very flexed, like the manouche players with their unique right hand picking approach.
For sure his picking and the fact that he apparently only used downstrokes is a big part of his tone and how he swings. There's really nothing better than downstrokes for evenness of attack. Obviously speed is the only issue. I'll be doing an episode on picking at one point and will definitely get into that. Thanks for the comment!
@@JordanOfficerStudio Have you already done the episode about picking?
Du matériel absolument incroyable. Hang on, Jordan! Ces vidéos méritent d’avoir des centaines de milliers de vues. Ca viendra!! Continue ce super boulot!!
Merci!!
C'est vrai!
Jordan...this is a great idea for an album...or at the very least a guitar seminar...
Thanks a lot, it's definitely a great way to generate new ideas!
❤,so helpful
Very interesting. I just stumbled across your stuff. My $.02 is that it would be helpful for you to play the reference chord, for example the E7, before you play the altered line so we can have it in our ear and appreciate the context of the line. Just a suggestion... Cheers!
Great video! I was also wondering what brand of guitar this is? I was interested in looking for something new and wanted to know! Thanks
Nice to see you back here Jordan. Keep it up, very interesting stuff indeed!
Thanks for watching!
Je n’ai absolument rien compris puisque je ne connais rien à la musique, mais de t’entendre jouer c’est magique.
Cool merci pour ton commentaire :)
Fabuleux!!!!!
Merci!!!
Really interesting and inspiring !
Dude great video! Man what a beautiful guitar killer. I have a CC pickup in a tele
Cool, thanks a lot!
Jordan, thank you so much for your email answer ! You are fully right: later, these extra notes are mostly thought vertically, as opposed to Charlie's thinking, which is obviously horizontal, at least as far as the natural 7 is concerned. One funny coincidence is that Barney Kessel said me exactly the same thing during a very short interview on telephone "Charlie did not knew about modes". So definitely you and Barney have allowed me to be conscious that since the beginning I spontaneously hear - in any context - these notes both vertically and horizontally at the same time !
It seems that you don't have the book: Charlie Christian, Solo Flight, The Seminal Electric Guitarist, Second Edition, which contains the manuscript I brought to the author Peter Broadbent. I would be happy to send it to you with a dedication.
Another funny coincidence: I did not made other interviews, except a last one, Remo Palmieri, you mentioned in your email: Remo told me that for example his extensive use of the chromatisms inside the tritone was not consciously extrapolated from Charlie's playing, as his own quite unique focus was the horns.
Lastly, the question you ask: "if he had lived longer" is central in my musical voyage since the beginning and it brought me to a strangely unexplored jazz concept that I would be happy to share with you if we keep contact.
Hello Albert. I would love to keep in touch and thanks a lot for the offer. Je t'écris en message privé. Bonne fin de journée!!
Hi Jordan, this posting decides me definitely to contact you. Since 15 years I regard you as one of the very rare jazz guitarists who swing as heavy as Charlie.
You probably already know about me, as I participated to the second edition of Charlie’s memorial book, and brought the famous "for Mary Lou" unachieved composition manuscript which is included (by the way I recorded one extrapolated first try of this unreleased tune, and I dream you would participate to a real creation of it). I also interviewed many years ago Jerry Jerome, Nick Fatool, Mary Osborne, Lionel Hampton, Georgie Auld, Leslie Sheffields daughter, and Jerry Newhouse who did the Minneapolis recordings. These interviews are partly reported in the book. My purpose was just to enter the most deeply as possible in Charlie’s mind, not to copy him, but to integrate myself the most convincing findings of his playing. This led me to choose Major Thirds Tuning on 7 strings to master the intervals much more easily in any region of the neck, and to try some unexplored ideas that are not the subject of this message.
The extrapolated phrases you play here are delicious (as always).
So please consider the following remarks as anecdotic. On any dominant 7th chord, Charlie already used not only the 9th and the 13th but also all other notes:
- the flat 9th when the dominant chord resolves into the major chord
- the sharp 9th in the context of alternating major tonal chord and dominant chord
- the flat 6th either when he plays full tone, either in a resolutive context at slow tempo, inside the lick [6, b6, 3, 2], which later has been developed in the standard "altered lydian" be-bop lick [b7,2,4,6,b6],
- the flat 5th of course also when he plays full tone
- last but not the least, the natural 7th: since so many years, I dream to hear you integrate this Charlie’s finding into your swinging play (I listened extensively to any of your recordings but never heard you using it): Charlie’s lick is the descending chromatism, 9,b9,1, 7,4,b7,3, (5,6,b7). I am convinced the Charlie did not consider the natural 7 note as a passing note, but as a major element of what was called later the be-bop scale. Furthermore I think I have guessed how he found it. As you know, the rhythm section often plays V7 / II7 / - V7 / / / for two bars of a V7 chord. So the 7,4 bitonal duo has a perfume of this implied "dominant of the dominant" chord. Would you also think so ?
Hey thanks for your comment. I'm pretty sure I get all of what you mention. Bebop players would start playing actual altered chords, arpeggios, etc, with a real awareness that these are chords, and understand them vertically, with all the harmony and melodic material that fits with for ex an F7(#11), a F7alt or F7(b9,#9,b5,#5), etc. Earlier players in the swing era were definitely placing those tones over straighter, more traditional harmony. For ex, it was not uncommon for a swing era player to play a minor blues line (Bb minor pentatonic in the key of Bb major) over the V7 chord which give us a #5 and #9 over the F7 or else to play a IVm melody over a V7 chord which gives us a sus4 and b9, I also hear diminished melodies (Adim over F7 giving us a b9) or chromatic passing tones, and all kinds of other juxtapositions that were normal. These paved the way for the more developed harmonic approach to come, because all of these things were examples where something 'wrong' fit perfectly, and the tension or juxtaposition sounded perfectly right, but in the earlier examples, I hear these things as a linear, more horizontal approach. I don't think they were playing a Bbm line over an F7 thinking it was a F7(sus4,b9) or playing a blues line and imagining a F7(#5,#9) chord. Charlie Christian, in his solos, plays all of these notes, in all of these ways that other swing era musicians were playing, but also, he would play actual arpeggios of 9 and 13 chords, which to me seems more modern than what you would hear in a typical swing era player's language. You often hear Charlie playing the 3, 5, b7, 9, 13 in that sequence, a clear 13 chord arpeggio, or 3, b7, 9, 5 or descending 5, 9, b7, 5, 3, 2. That is more what I was talking about, where there is a clear intention to place those tones in an arpeggio or in the harmony of the chord. And I don't hear Charlie playing a clear arpeggio like that with altered notes, whereas bebop players would soon be doing that very clearly. And that is where I got this idea to generate CC altered lines by placing his vocabulary in different contexts, and I find they come out sounding really cool as altered lines, while still keeping his very iconic melodic style. I am also fascinated with the transition years between swing and bebop, when they were still figuring out these new ideas, I love the recording sessions with mixed groups, like the beautiful Dizzy version of All The Things You Are, with Clyde Hart on piano, Slam Stewart on bass, Charlie Parker and Dizzy, Remo Palmieri on guitar, Cozy Cole on drums, it's incredible and fascinating to hear. Also individual players who were somewhere in between the two, like Don Byas. Everything changed so fast too, it's incredible. And the first real altered sounds, that I hear as real altered harmony and not just juxtapositions of whole tone or diminished or minor or blues melodies, but actual vertical altered harmony, come from tritone sub melodies I think. You can hear it in compositions by Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell (Dance of the Infidels is a perfect example)... And I am sure Charlie Christian would have been doing that if he had lived just a little bit longer, everything was right on the cusp at that moment in time. I'd love to check out examples of all the things you mention, I always love an excuse to check out or rediscover some music, especially Charlie Christian's playing. Also you mention playing V7 / II7 / V7 / / / over 2 bars of V7 and for sure I hear him doing that as well. You also hear players play IIm VI7 IIm V7 over 2 bars of V for a similar effect, but that to me is a linear approach, as opposed to really conceiving of it as a maj 7 or sus4 over a dominant chord, or a b5 in the second example. In the 'bebop scale', the mixolydian with a nat 7 added, it is definitely a passing tone, a way to keep the important tones on the beat, same as the b6 in the major passing tone scale. When I learned of these scales, they were presented to me as 'passing tone scales', I didn't hear the name 'bebop scale' until later.. Super interesting stuff in any case. I would love to know more about the unrecorded manuscript, and having interviewed all those people is incredible. I'd have lots of questions!!! :) Please do keep in touch, and let me know if all of this makes sense! All the best.
Great video super interesting but pretty sure I could understand chinese before understanding what you explained. Keed uo the great work