February 26 2003

Full Circle
By Hua Hsu

THERE'S AN UNCOMFORTABLY funny moment in Doug Pray's worshipful 2001 DJ documentary Scratch that sums up just how rough the past few years have been on the guitar. Pray, anxious to tout the truth and science of turntablism, turns his camera-eye toward a glibly condescending guitar salesperson complaining about the legions of fickle, feckless youth trading in their axes for turntables. In defense of the guitar, the salesperson relies on stern, canonical logic (true virtuosity, better solos, "record players" aren't "instruments") before lunging for the kill: turntables require electricity to work, while acoustic guitars still function during blackouts.

The guitar has taken its lumps in recent years, first as the old-fashioned, quaintish foil for the fast-selling turntable, then as something to be redeemed by Swedish and New York throwbacks with debatable imagination. But recent releases by Charlie Christian, John Fahey, and Anthony Child and Andrew Read examine the embattled instrument's past and future and remind us that even though anyone can play the guitar, everyone doesn't have to play it the same way.

Released late last year, The Genius of the Electric Guitar (Columbia/Legacy), is a four-disc anthology of notable recordings and rarities from mysterious 1930s and '40s guitarist Charlie Christian. While in elementary school, Christian built and played his own cigar-box "guitars." By the time he was a teenager, word had spread throughout his native Oklahoma of his splendid playing. In 1939 legendary Columbia Records producer and talent scout John Hammond flew the young Christian out to California to audition with Benny Goodman, and Christian proved himself worthy of the bandleader's respect. By year's end, Christian had become a national sensation.

Christian's solos on Genius are tight, crisp, and lyrical, almost unremarkable until one considers what came before and after them. Christian played with the requisite swing demanded by the times, but his singing, graceful style legitimized the electric guitar as a jazz instrument and presaged the shape of things to come once bop arrived in earnest. Though these giant leaps seem intuitive, even obvious, in retrospect, the joyous verve with which he attacks "Rose Room" still sounds remarkable. Sadly, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis only three years later, and his death, in 1942, marked the end of a feverish, two-year race into history.

Whereas Christian's strings sound bright and brisk, British avant-gardists Anthony Child and Andrew Read revel in the spaces between on Guitar Treatments (K20/Fat Cat). Despite their highfalutin approach – the division of labor had Read manning guitar and Child acting as "treater" with his delays and pedals – these compositions scavenge for all of the sounds you can get out of a guitar without actually playing it, and they're damn pretty.

The tracks – untitled and numbered as "Treatments" – are slow and meticulous in the best way, feeling out ambient emotions and hums without lapsing into bored lethargy and without ever sounding like an actual guitar. The second and third treatments drone on with massive heft, and though it seems to take forever for Read to complete his phrase in "Treatment 2," it hits with the type of crushing, awesome beauty one expects in a spiritual epiphany. "Treatment 5" mashes Read's six-string into a haunting, accordionlike swirl, which is a lot better than it sounds.

Though acoustic guitarist John Fahey falls between Christian and Guitar Treatments chronologically, his latest album, Red Cross (Revenant), has more to say about the future than the past in which it so beautifully basks. Like Sun Ra, Fahey is one of those mystic, larger-than-life figures whose grand hopes for humanity and sound made him a weirdo to some, a prophet to others. He referenced the blues, Indian ragas, folk, and psychedelia in his unique, eerie picking style, and he came up with a free-ranging, song-of-myself philosophy to match. His playing, like his erratic personality, careened from soft and plaintive to frenzied and exploratory, but it never lost touch with the larger questions of nation and culture that dogged his life. After spending much of the past decade in illness and obscurity, Fahey expired two years ago just as his much-loved label, Revenant, was readying Red Cross for release.