Charlie Christian died in 1942 at just 25, yet in roughly three years of national fame he invented the concept of the lead electric guitar, helped lay the groundwork for bebop, and influenced Miles Davis, Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, and even Black Sabbath's first song. Born in 1916 in Bonham, Texas, and raised in Oklahoma City, he tap danced on the street to support his family after a fever left his musician father blind, inherited his father's guitar at 12, and refused to play trumpet in high school for fear it would ruin his lip and his baseball prospects.

This deep dive traces his secret tutoring by local guitarist "Bigfoot" Ralph Hamilton on three foundational tunes, the after-hours ambush in Deep Deuce that stunned his bandleader brother Edward, his adoption of the Gibson ES-150 and its sustaining bar pickup, and the 1939  ...