 This video is brought to you by Nebula, the streaming platform by and for creators. The video that you're about to watch is the first in a seven-episode series about the history of the electric guitar solo. Throughout the series, you're going to be hearing clips of many of the greatest and most important solos ever recorded. Unfortunately, here on YouTube, I'm going to need to cut a lot of those clips short. So if you want an extended cut of all of these videos where the solos actually get a chance to breathe, you can follow the series over on Nebula. If you sign up with the link in the description, you'll also be able to watch every episode of the series early and with no ads. Episode two is already up on Nebula right now. And until the end of this month, if you really want to help support Nebula and support me, you can sign up for a lifetime subscription. For a cost of $300, you can get Nebula for the rest of your life. One third of that money will go directly toward me and the rest will go toward developing cool new originals. And if you're already a Nebula subscriber, you can also make the jump to lifetime. I know this deal isn't affordable for everyone, but it's not actually about giving you the best price. If you're looking for the best price, the annual subscription is an incredible deal. What lifetime is about is giving you a chance to help fund a new slate of originals and support our platform in a cool and unique way. So if that sounds like something that you'd be interested in, please check it out with the link in the description. It's a unique opportunity and I personally just really appreciate anyone who's willing to help us like this. Alright, that's everything for now, so let's get on with the show. On a warm August morning in 1969, Jimi Hendrix took to the stage in front of an audience of tens of thousands. Ladies and gentlemen, the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was the last day of the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, a free festival that had spontaneously erupted into the defining moment of the 1960s counterculture. Many of the hippies who had flocked to Woodstock from across the country were already on their way back to reality, but some 30,000 had stuck around to see Hendrix's performance. Clad in an Imperian fringe jacket and carrying an Olympic white 1968 Stratocaster, Hendrix looked the part of an angel as he tore into an incendiary set of psychedelic blues. After finishing up a face-melting version of Voodoo Child's slight return, Hendrix lingered on a piece of feedback. Then he began to play the American National Anthem. Hendrix's interpretation of the Star-Spangled Banner was filled with bends and dive bombs. These chaotic noises painted a visceral picture of the Vietnam War that was raging across the ocean. In the rich tapestry that is rock history, there might be no image more iconic than Hendrix playing the Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock. In just a few brilliant minutes, Jimi Hendrix cemented the electric guitar solo as the beating heart of rock music. He channeled the spirit of generations of players before him and laid the blueprint for the generations to follow. And as long as Hendrix continues to blare out of stereo systems across the world, the electric guitar solo will continue to serve as a stalwart champion for rock and roll. From its origins in the Mississippi Delta all the way to its kaleidoscopic modern existence, the history of the electric guitar solo is so much more than just a tale of a musical trend. It's the embodiment of modern musical history. It's a story that spans generations and reaches across cultures. It's a story that's seen heroes crowned and empires crumble. It's a story that has shaken world history and shaped who we are today. And despite what some might say, the story of the electric guitar solo is one that is still being written to this very day. The origins of the electric guitar solo, like the origins of so much of modern music, stem from the muddy banks of the Mississippi Delta. Decades before the electric guitar was invented, brilliant blues musicians were creating the blueprint for electric solos. These players laid the groundwork while riding rails, guitars in hand, and hearts bared to the world. Many of their names have long since been lost to time, but to a man nearly every one of them was poor and marginalized. Most were black artists, only a generation removed from slavery and living in a Jim Crow South that was still rural and agrarian. But in the years following the First World War, wave after wave of technical change washed across America. For the first time ever, rural communities got to experience running water, telephones, and above all else, electricity. This exciting new technology manifested in surprising ways, and it wasn't long before electricity found its way into music. In Leonard Feather's Inside Jazz, guitarist Mary Osborne remembered the first time she ever heard an electric guitar in 1938. She was shocked and enthralled by the tone of the instrument, believing it to be a saxophone when she first heard it. When she realized that it was a guitar, her life was forever changed. The man playing that guitar was a baby-faced genius named Charlie Christian. Christian himself had only just picked up the electric guitar after hearing Count Basie's guitarist Eddie Durham play one in 1937. Astounded by the potential of the instrument, Christian bought himself a starburst finish Gibson ES150. The ES150 was one of a number of early electric guitars that were hitting the market at the time. These guitars were made possible thanks to an invention called the pickup. Pickups use coils wrapped around magnets to pick up the vibrations from guitar strings and convert them into electricity. The first models were based on Hawaiian guitars and lap steels using horseshoe-shaped pickups. The ES150 was a novelty for its bar pickup, which produced an instantly identifiable, steely but mellow tone. That tone became forever associated with Charlie Christian, so much so that the sunburst ES150 is still known as the Charlie Christian finish to this day. Christian used the ES150 to play a revolutionary, single-note style of solo, playing over chord changes and emulating the horns of the fledgling bebop movement. A glowing example of Christian's style is 1944's Solo Flight, recorded when he was a member of the celebrated Benny Goodman Orchestra. Solo Flight is a showpiece for Christian, built around a leisurely solo with a remarkably modern sound. Christian's playing was laid back and easy, his light guitar tone was immaculate. But Charlie Christian wasn't the only one experimenting with electric guitar solos at the time. The young genre of country music was starting to have its first dalliances with electric solos courtesy of a relatively unknown guitarist named Faye Smitty Smith. Smitty was a session musician who cut a record with Ernest Tubb in 1941 called Walking the Floor Over You. Smitty's solo cuts through the chugging honky-tonk of Tubb's music, using the electric guitar to create a perfect country twang. This marks one of the earliest recordings of an electric guitar solo, but Smitty doesn't get the honor of being the first put to wax. That honor likely goes to Leon McAuliffe of Bob Will's Texas Playboys, who played an electric guitar solo all the way back in 1935 on a song called Get With It. But for the origins of the rock guitar solo as we know it today, we need to return once again to the blues. George Barnes was a sideman who played with the Delta Blues Luminary Big Bill Boonsie. In 1938, Barnes played a solo on a song called It's a Down Low Dirty Shame. That song took the showy tricks of acoustic delta playing and transferred them to the electric guitar. The result is a piece that would set the stage for an all-new sort of electrified blues music. The electric blues that would set the world on the path toward rock and roll was born in Chicago. Chicago was a bustling metropolis, populated by a large black diaspora who had moved north as part of the Great Migration, in search of jobs and escape from the harsh realities of the Jim Crow South. One of the most important members of this diaspora was a man called Muddy Waters. Waters was born in rural Mississippi and grew up idolizing Delta Blues greats like Robert Johnson and Son House. In the 1940s, Muddy Waters moved to Chicago to pursue a career as a musician. He would open for Big Bill Boonsie, playing in front of raucous nightclub audiences. Waters found that his acoustic guitar couldn't cut through the din of these nightclubs, so he bought himself an electric in 1944. Music would never be the same. Waters took quickly to the electric guitar and started to develop a new style of solo for it. One of the first solos he ever recorded was 1948's I Can't Be Satisfied. I Can't Be Satisfied is a perfect example of the new sort of up-tempo Chicago blues that Waters was on the forefront of. Over the next few years, Waters would refine his soloing and start to grow an audience amongst a younger generation of guitarists. 1950's Rolling Stone features a sleazy solo that predicts the thick, heavy blues of Jimi Hendrix. While Waters was pushing blues solos forward, another country guitarist was taking the electric guitar to places nobody could have imagined. Junior Bernard played with a number of country groups across the 40s, including a famous stint with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. The Texas Playboys were known for their brash style, mixing jazz influences into country to push the genre past its limits. And Bernard was pushing past the limits of what could be done with the electric guitar. He was instrumental in developing many techniques that would come to shape the guitar solo, like hammer-ons, pull-offs, and string bends. But he also made an even more crucial discovery. Junior Bernard was one of the first to realize that if you cranked vacuum tube amplifiers up to maximum volume and played as loud as you could through them, the vacuum tubes would compress the signal so they didn't explode. The result was a new sort of gritty tone that came to be known as overdrive. Let them old Bernard blues this time. In fact, that's Junior Bernard playing it. I'll get it low, Junior, or else ride it high. By innovating overdrive, Bernard added one of the essential ingredients to a musical stew that was brewing across America. But tragically, he'd never get to see the fruits of his innovation. In 1951, just as the electric guitar was picking up steam, Junior Bernard died in a car accident. He was just 30 years old. But thanks in no small part to his innovations, it was clear that the electric guitar solo was here to stay. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, musicians in jazz, blues, and country embraced the rapid technological changes of a new world. In doing so, they kicked into motion a musical movement that would coalesce influences from all three and come to redefine popular music as we know it. If you enjoyed this video and you can't wait for the next episode, well, I've got good news for you. The next episode is already available on Nebula. Nebula is the streaming platform created by and for creators. It's a place for us to experiment free from the bounds of YouTube, and it's a platform that just genuinely believes in the potential of indie creators. Every episode of this series will be available first on Nebula, and those Nebula releases will also feature longer music clips so you can really soak in these historic guitar solos. Beyond that, there's just so much to love about Nebula. There's an incredible slate of originals, including my own polyphonic magazine where I interview smaller artists. And there's a rich selection of Nebula classes where you can learn things like video editing, music theory, or you can watch my class about musical and lyrical analysis. Nebula is a really awesome place full of really awesome people, and it's something that I'm proud to be a part of. So check it out with the link in the description and get an annual plan for 40% off, which means a little more than 250 a month. Or for a limited time, sign up for a lifetime subscription and help fund the creation of more incredible projects. Thank you so much for watching. I can't wait for you all to see the rest of this series.