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Originally Posted by benjammin420
for sure, he has a great energy, just an endless stream of creativity. From what Ive read he was one of the originators of be-bop (or at least is credited with the name)
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Not sure where the name came from---some say it derived from a phrase Christian habitually used when scat-singing; some say it derived from Kenny Clarke's drumming style (see below), though I don't really know just who actually started calling the new music style that.
I do know that Charlie Christian is considered one of the style's progenitors---he was one of the regulars at Minton's on 52nd Street in the early 1940s (before his shocking early death of TB), regulars who pretty much forged the style in the first place, regulars that usually included drummer Kenny Clarke (who's credited with creating the bebop drumming style of shifting the beat to the ride cymbal and away from the bass drum), bassist Milt Hinton, pianist Thelonious Monk, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and saxophonists Charlie Parker and Lester Young, among others. There's a story that Minton's proprietor thought so highly of Christian as a musician and a person that he bought a large amplifier and kept it at the place so Christian wouldn't have to lug his own heavy amp to the club any longer, when he came after his regular jobs with Benny Goodman.
A lot of the early boppers came around 52nd Street after finishing their gigs with swing bands (as did Christian; as did Lester Young after his gigs with Count Basie; as did Dizzy Gillespie and Milt Hinton after their gigs with Cab Calloway; as did some members of Woody Herman's and Claude Thornhill's bands), and some of them had been around jazz for years, including Coleman Hawkins. (He may actually have organised the first known explicitly bebop recording session---his own 1939 recording of "Body and Soul" is considered a direct curlicue to bop---but don't quote me on that.) Duke Ellington was known to like and encourage the style, while Louis Armstrong---somewhat shockingly, considering he was never known to have held any ill feeling toward any style of jazz previously---was quoted as calling bebop "the modern malice."
On the other hand, Charlie Parker shied away from referring to the music as bebop or bop---it's said he thought the terms actually demeaned the music!