After Hours (CD)

Although he was not the first to make use of the electric guitar, Dallas, TX-born Charlie Christian's dazzling single-note style unshackled the instrument from the rhythm section, and his feats of melodic daring blazed early trails into bebop. In his short life he managed to dramatically alter the course of jazz and popular music. He's best known for his work Benny Goodman and his solo sides, but in the early 1930s he worked with a variety of "territory" bands, where he formulated his revolutionary approach. A victim of his own chaotic lifestyle, Christian passed away in 1942 at the age of 25.

• Category:  Music  »  Jazz  »  Guitar
• Format: CD   Learn more about the CD format using Tower WIKI.
• Release Date: May 9, 2000
• Label: Original Jazz Classics
• UPC: 025218193221
• WAPI (Tower ID): 106645025
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• Tower.com Sales Rank: #29795 in Music (See Top 100 Music Bestsellers)
• #2074 in Jazz (See Top 100 Jazz Bestsellers)
• #160 in Guitar (See Top 100 Guitar Bestsellers)

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Full performer name: Charlie Christian/Dizzy Gillespie.

Personnel includes: Charlie Christian (guitar); Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet); Rudy Williams (alto saxophone); Don Byas, Kermit Scott (tenor saxophone); Joe Guy, Hot Lips Page, Victor Coulson (trumpet); Thelonious Monk, Al Tinney, Ken Kersey (piano); Nick Fenton, Ed Paul (bass); Kenny Clarke, Tom Miller (drums).

Recorded live at Minton's Playhouse and Clark Monroe's Uptown House, New York, New York in May 1941. Originally released on Esoteric (548). Includes liner notes by Leonard Feather.

Digitally remastered by Kirk Felton (2000, Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, California).

AFTER HOURS is an excellent live document of the early roots of bebop, capturing this exciting music in the process of being built by its pioneering architects. Recorded live in New York City at jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House in 1941, these tapes feature young modernists Charlie Christian, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, and Don Byas as they pushed the structural materials of swing toward something new and intense.

Beyond the historical significance of these sessions, however, the music is simply fabulous. There are revisions of "Stardust" and "Stompin' at the Savoy, " but the tunes are mainly blues-based improvisations, with plenty of syncopated play and stretched-out soloing from all involved. Christian's guitar takes center stage--his fluid, fleet-fingered style and mellow amplified tone have become such a stock part of jazz guitar, it is hard to remember that he almost single-handedly wrote the book. Though Gillespie gets double-billing on this set, he only appears on four of the nine tunes, but one can hear early hints of the advanced technical style that would explode in his work with Charlie Parker in the later '40s. This music is truly classic.

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