The Best of Charlie Christian: A Step-by-Step Breakdown of the Styles and Techniques of the Father of Modern Jazz Guitar (Guitar Signature Licks) [Paperback]

Wolf Marshall (Author)

Book Description

Series: Guitar Signature Licks | Publication Date: July 1, 2002

Explore the riffs, solos and sounds of the original electric jazz guitar virtuoso with this comprehensive book/CD pack! Wolf Marshall uses excerpts from 15 of Christian's classics to demonstrate his groundbreaking techniques, including: Air Mail Special * Benny's Bugle * Good Enough to Keep (Air Mail Special) * Grand Slam * Honeysuckle Rose * I've Found a New Baby (I Found a New Baby) * Seven Come Eleven * Shivers * Solo Flight * Stardust * Wholly Cats * and more. Includes an introduction and foreword, and a Charlie Christian biography and axology.

Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation (July 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0634021826
• ISBN-13: 978-0634021824
• Product Dimensions: 12.2 x 8.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #800,185 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Transcriptions. Good Recording., February 21, 2006

By 

Bolzano Bourbaki - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Best of Charlie Christian: A Step-by-Step Breakdown of the Styles and Techniques of the Father of Modern Jazz Guitar (Guitar Signature Licks) (Paperback)

I have been buying a bunch of Jazz Guitar instructional material the past few months. After a long laps I'm finally starting to play a bit every day and moving forward again. Feels great. Getting back into the game the thing that really strikes me is how much eaiser it is to find good jazz instructional material than it use to be.

That sets me up for this review. These are great transcriptions (with tab) of some of the finest solos of the daddy of electric jazz guitar. I mean if you want to learn a bunch of Charlie Christian solos then this book is the place start. (I mean learning them by ear is better but you know... some of us have jobs and stuff...)

I've been a huge fan of Christians playing in the Benny Goodman sextet for, oh fifteen or sixteen years now. I've heard these solos literally hundreds of times. So I feel somewhat qualified to say that these transcriptions are dead on. Also it's nice to have the recordings Mr. Marshall put together to have everything all in one place where you can get at it easy.

Now there is very little analysis of the solos. So if you are just starting to learn to play jazz you are going to want some other books. Mike Stinel's book "Building a Jazz Vocabulary" is the book that helped me start to put things together all those years ago. There are lots of great books out there.

But this book would be great in conjunction with something like that. Of course all the usual comments apply. Learn one of charlie's licks. Play it in every position. Every Key. Figure out what it is you like about it and expand on the ideas. And so on, and so on.

The nice thing about doing that with a players actual licks instead of say just working through "The Be-Bop Bible" or something is that Charlie's licks are going to breath more. Be real pieces of music. It's much more inspiring than just working through "The Bible". (Though, you know, we should all do that too... Mix it up...)

One more thing about starting with Charlie that I think is great. He uses a lot of really simple ideas and makes them sound amazing. Like he will play a line that if you read it from "The Bible" you might think was kind of lame. Too simple you might think. But then you hear Charlie play it in context and it's great. It's real music. Then you start to understand how jazz cats use simple things make great music. It's not all as complicated as maybe you thought. (At least not always... You know, if you start by trying to cop Coltrane's licks it's going to get pretty complicated pretty fast, but I guess my comment is predicated on the assumption that maybe that's not the place for all of us to start day one...)

Finally, and I hope Mr Marshall would agree with this; If you are using this book to learn licks please make sure and get the original recordings too. Do your self the favor. The recordings that come with the book are very good for instructional purposes but there is no substitute for hearing Christian, Young, and Goodman just tear it up. Then Mr Marshall's recording is there to help you cue up the right measures and all.

Ok, well I'm done yapping. Good luck with the jazz.

--Rock

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Spot on transcriptions, March 1, 2009

By 

Timothy Byrne "tbyrnestl" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Best of Charlie Christian: A Step-by-Step Breakdown of the Styles and Techniques of the Father of Modern Jazz Guitar (Guitar Signature Licks) (Paperback)

The transcriptions are dead on, so the book is at the very least a great way to work your way towards absorbing Charlie Christian's sound.
The book also offers some commentaries on Christian's style, pointing out common licks and characteristic comping patterns. I think I'd like to see more of that though. I suspect a lot of people start out with this book for the same reason I did, figuring that as a beggining jazz guitarist learning from the first great contermporary jazz guitarist is a good idea. So it would help to have just a little more explanation of what's going on harmonically.
It is however completely usable as is, even for a beginner, provided that one does take the time to do a bit more analysis of the songs.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Enjoyment, November 11, 2008

By 

J. Feldman "swingguy" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Best of Charlie Christian: A Step-by-Step Breakdown of the Styles and Techniques of the Father of Modern Jazz Guitar (Guitar Signature Licks) (Paperback)

Wanted to hear Charlie Christian solos and am more than thrilled with this whole CD. Every song a classic. Sound quality is excellent. If you want to know what 'swing' is/was, you'll hear it here. It's also helping me understand Charlie's solos and why he was such an innovator. No wonder Goodman added him to the sextet. The music will make you dance.