The Sheik of Araby  —  3 April 1940  (master take A)

        First Page:              Intro

        Second Page:      Solo

        Third Page:            Fours

C&A:

Charlie Christian takes a very good, albeit fairly standard, solo on this master take of The Sheik of Araby – except for the extraordinary measures 9 through13.  On the two-bar B♭ harmony (mm 9-10) CC follows a B♭ line with a B♭dim7 leading to the F7;  in the following three measures (mm 11-13), over the F7 chord, he plays two descending and four ascending augmented figures moving at whole-tone intervals.

The quarter-note triplets on bar 16 are also used on bar 4 of the alternate take – it may be those triplets in the intro are still floating around in his head.  There’s a blues B♭ line, ♭7th (A♭) & 6th (G), at mm 19-20 over the F7.  Measures 21 & 22 contain a tricky sequence where Charles first accents the down-beat and then the up-beat over the F7 and anticipates the D7 on the last two beats.  And note the ♯5 in bar 30.  Very good work – forget the highly unusual flub in bar 24 where he fingers the note C but misses it with the pick.

On the out chorus, Charles plays B♭s on alternating strings on his first ‘fours’ line;  descending then ascending figures on his second.