50 great moments in jazz: Charlie Christian

The pioneering guitarist dazzled contemporaries and put the now ubiquitous sound of the electric guitar on the mapSaxophonist Ornette Coleman's arrival in the late 1950s stunned the jazz world, and the biggest shock was his demolition of the chord-progression railroad, on which improvised melody was supposed to run. Coleman's early bands used only melody instruments (sax, trumpet, double-bass) and drums, and the musicians interacted in a kind of spontaneous free-counterpoint, underpinned by a fl...

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