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Texas Guitar Slingers of the 1950s

© Barney Quick

One figure looms large over the development of Texas-style electric blues guitar. It is not, as one might expect, someone from the Lone Star State’s earlier tradition of songsters, such as Mance Lipscomb or Texas Alexander. It was a Dallas-born and Oklahoma City-raised jazz player named Charlie Christian. His fluidity, bending of notes, use of ninths, thirteenths and flatted fifths, and fondness for riffs heralded a new era. Actually, Christian’s style drew more from the country sensibility so prevalent in the Southwest than it did from the songster tradition. He introduced a distinct kind of twang that would show up in the work of followers to this day. He was discovered by Columbia talent scout John Hammond while he was leading an Oklahoma City jump outfit in 1937. Hammond arranged for an audition with his brother-in-law, Benny Goodman, who hired him. When Christian arrived in New York to work with Goodman, he quickly discovered the after-hours hipster scene at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem. The recorded work from his jams there points the way to the bebop sound that would fully blossom by the mid-forties. Alas, Christian did not live to see that; he died of tuberculosis in 1942.

In his pre-Goodman days, Christian crossed paths with a dancer-banjoist-singer named Aaron “T-Bone” Walker. Walker had had some experience with Cab Calloway and was leading a band at a Fort Worth hotel. Christian’s influence on his musical approach was enormous. Walker moved to Los Angeles and continued to mostly sing in the bands of Big Jim Wynn and Les Hite, but he was refining his electric guitar technique. He joined the band of fellow Texan Milt Larkin for an extended engagement in Chicago and further developed his chops. (It is one of the great misfortunes of American music that Larkin’s band never recorded, for it also included sax greats Illinois Jacquet and Arnett Cobb.) Walker cut his first sides as a frontman for Rhumboogie in 1945. From there, he went to Black and White, where he worked with legendary arranger Ralph Bass. In 1947, he cut his greatest record, “Call It Stormy Monday.” From there he went to Imperial, and finished his career playing festivals.

Connie Curtis “Pee Wee” Crayton, originally from Rockdale, Texas, had moved to California to pursue shipyard work in the thirties. He met and became friends with Walker and learned a lot from him. Crayton’s style takes the Christian/Walker notion of twang yet a step further, bending entire chords repeatedly for intensified effect. After some session work with Ivory Joe Hunter and others, Crayton signed with Modern and let loose with such houserockers as “Texas Hop” and “Poppa Stoppa.” He also releases some fine ballads and slow blues. He fancied himself a ladies’ man and derived great satisfaction from the sizeable female portion of his audience. After a few years of obscurity, Crayton rallied his career with a performance with Johnny Otis at the 1970 Monterrey Jazz Festival.

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