Early Electric Guitar Recordings

[The Grand Wazoo]

I was listening to some old Clarence 'Gatemouth' Brown tracks (late '40's)the other day & since then, I've been thinking about very early recordings of the electric guitar.

I wonder what other folks have in the way of this sort of stuff? I'd be interested to hear.

I'm not sure what my oldest recordings would be - I'll have to do a little rootling around.
Charlie Christian? Lonnie Johnson? T-Bone Walker?


I understand the earliest recordings that were made were by George Barnes -who recorded 'Sweetheart Land' and It's a 'Low-Down Dirty Shame' in 1938.

[Stratmangler]

Hi Chris

You'd need to look in the direction of "Hawaiian Style" guitarists around about 1933. One of the first guitars with a pickup on was the Rickenbacker "Frying Pan", which was designed for lap playing.

You're looking a couple of years later for ES (Electric Spanish) style guitars.

Chris

[The Grand Wazoo]

Were they recorded though, Chris?
George Barnes reckoned he was playing them in 1931 & the Electro String Instrument Corp were manufacturing them then.

[Stratmangler]

Were they recorded though, Chris?

I believe so.
I lifted the following from Wikipedia

The first recordings using the electric guitar were by Hawaiian style players, including Andy Iona in 1933. Bob Dunn of Milton Brown's Musical Brownies introduced the electric Hawaiian guitar to Western Swing with his January 1935 Decca recordings, departing almost entirely from Hawaiian musical influence and heading towards Jazz and Blues. Alvino Rey was an artist who took this instrument to a wide audience in a large orchestral setting and later developed the pedal steel guitar for Gibson. An early proponent of the electric Spanish guitar was jazz guitarist George Barnes who used the instrument in two songs recorded in Chicago on March 1, 1938, Sweetheart Land and It's a Low-Down Dirty Shame. Some incorrectly attribute the first recording to Eddie Durham, but his recording with the Kansas City Five was 15 days later.[4] Durham introduced the instrument to a young Charlie Christian, who made the instrument famous in his brief life and would be a major influence on jazz guitarists for decades thereafter.

The first recording of an electric Spanish guitar, west of the Mississippi was in Dallas, in September 1935, during a session with Roy Newman and His Boys, an early Western swing dance band. Their guitarist, Jim Boyd, used his electrically amplified guitar during the recording of three songs, "Hot Dog Stomp" (DAL 178-Vo 03371), "Shine On, Harvest Moon" (DAL 180-Vo 03272), and "Corrine, Corrina" (DAL 181-Vo/OK 03117).[5][6][7] An even earlier Chicago recording of an electrically amplified guitar—albeit an amplified lap steel guitar—was during a series of session by Milton Brown and His Brownies (another early Western swing band) that took place January 27-28, 1935, wherein Bob Dunn played his amplified Hawaiian guitar.

I've currently got Charlie Christian playing with The Benny Goodman Sextet from 1939, courtesy of Spotify. And it's rather good.

Chris

[The Grand Wazoo]

Oh, OK - cheers for that.
I never looked at Wikipedia!

So what's your oldest track?

[Stratmangler]

Spotify also has recordings by Andy Iona - I don't think they'll be the very first though.
However, this site may be of interest http://www.archive.org/details/AndyI...ttyRedHibiscus

Chris

[Stratmangler]

Oh, OK - cheers for that.
I never looked at Wikipedia!

So what's your oldest track?

Dunno.
I've got the Blues Collection series of CD's, so there's got to be some old electric guitar stuff with those discs.

Chris

[John]

Les Paul made the first electric guitar He was also responsible for multi tracking
The Charlie Christian stuff is wonderful a real shame he was not around for longer and in Django latter years he played electric guitar of course the pursuit hated it but Django really liked American jazz and wanted to develop this into his own music

[John]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Paul

[John]

Check out solo flight