the older swing style, but he was an active figure at Minton's and contributed through his encouragement of Gillespie and Clarke to further their explorations. Eldridge and the other swing musicians who participated in the early cutting sessions at Minton's played an important role in the evolution of swing toward bebop by inspiring the next generation of musicians. A young Sonny Stitt witnessed the great battles between the master saxophonists of the day in the early 1940s:"Can you imagine Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Chu Berry, Don Byas, and Ben Webster on the same little jam session? They had a place called Minton's Playhouse in New York. It's kaput now. And these guys, man, nothing like it. And guess who won the fight? ... Don Byas walked off with everything". Byas was one of the first tenor saxophonists to assimilate bebop into his style, in contrast to Young, Hawkins, and Webster, who stayed close to their swing roots through the development of bebop. Herman Pritchard, who tended bar at Minton's "in the old days", would watch as Ben Webster and Lester Young would "fight on those saxophones ... like dogs in the road". Ralph Ellison believes that what was occurring at Minton's from 1941 to 1942 was a "continuing symposium of jazz, a summation of all the styles, personal and traditional, of jazz". Charlie Christian and the house band One of the pioneers of the new style, which would eventually become known as bebop, was the young electric guitarist from Benny Goodman's band, Charlie Christian. He played nightly at Minton's and was one of its stars. Christian was in his mid-twenties in 1941; his time at Minton's was significant, but brief; he would die the following March suffering from tuberculosis in a sanatorium. As evidenced by recordings made by Columbia University student Jerry Newman in 1941, Christian's playing was breaking new ground. Gunther Schuller's assessment of Christian's playing on those recordings is as follows:"His work here seems to me relentlessly creative, endlessly fertile, and is so in a way that marks a new stylistic departure. Indeed, it signals the birth of a new language in jazz, which even [Charlie] Parker did not have as clearly in focus at that time". Kenny Clarke and the band at Minton's would look forward with anticipation to Christian's arrival after finishing his set with Goodman. Christian was admired by his peers at Minton's, including Thelonious