Jazz trombone player Slide Hampton came to public attention at the tail end of the jazz era. He formed his own octet in 1960. Shortly afterward, the recording industry and clubs lost interest in larger ensembles in general and wind instruments in particular. After a stay in Europe, Hampton returned and established a pathbreaking jazz trombone ensemble called World of Trombones.
It should not surprise anyone that Hampton found his own way out of the trombone’s eclipse. He’s about the only well-known trombonist who has played with the slide in his left hand.
The public may not pay as much attention to jazz anymore, but Hampton’s talent, drive, and imaginative business sense have kept him at the forefront of it. He is one of the leading jazz trombonists of his generation. Continue reading →
Jack Teagarden, Victor studio, New York, ca. May 1947
Until Jack Teagarden burst on the jazz scene, the trombone took a back seat to the principal melody instruments. His mother had given him a solid background in music. He could improvise but also read complicated arrangements.
At the beginning of the jazz era, Kid Ory’s tailgate style defined the trombone’s role. It was a guttural sound in the trombone’s middle to low register, with frequent glissandos. Ory elevated jazz trombone from a simple bass instrument by improvising fills to compliment the more melodically dominant cornet and clarinet.
Teagarden, on the other hand, completely redefined the trombone’s role in jazz. He had a technique vastly superior to Ory’s. In his hands, the trombone became a solo instrument on par with all the other instruments. He played extended solos using the upper register and lip trills.
Only Miff Mole and Jimmy Harrison had attempted anything similar before Teagarden began to make records in New York in 1927. And unlike most jazz instrumentalists, Teagarden was also a gifted singer.
Jack Teagarden’s childhood
Jack Teagarden was born Weldon Leo Teagarden on August 20, 1905 in Vernon, Texas. His father Charles worked in the oilfields. When he was home, he played cornet locally. His mother Helen taught piano, played church organ, and accompanied silent films in theaters. After Charles died, Helen moved the family first to Chappell, Nebraska and then to Oklahoma City.
All four Teagarden children became professional musicians. Throughout his life, Jack frequently collaborated with his brothers Charlie (trumpet) and Clois (drums) and with his sister Norma (piano). His mother occasionally joined him, too.
Weldon started piano lessons with his mother when he was 5. He learned euphonium before he started on trombone. Sources disagree on how old he was when that occurred. According to Jim Cullum, Charles and Helen Teagarden didn’t have enough money to buy a Christmas tree in 1913, so they decorated a coat rack.
As they put the presents under it, young Weldon heard them and apparently thought he’d see Santa Claus. And when the time came to open presents, he saw his first trombone. He never had formal lessons on trombone. As he experimented, he had no one to tell him, “you can’t do that on trombone.” Beginning while the family still lived in Vernon, Weldon joined his mother with his trombone to play in theaters.
Years later, Norma recalled their mother:
She taught us all how to read music and started us on instruments. We all played together and never thought about doing anything else. . . Jack would have mother come on stage at the Hollywood Bowl and Monterey Jazz Festival. She would play her two piano rags, and everyone would stand up and cheer! She always brought the house down. She was short and dumpy and wore those foot-saver shoes— a grey-haired little old lady, who got a standing ovation.
Early professional career
Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden, between 1938 and 1948
Teagarden played professionally from age 14. A year or two later, drummer Cotton Bailey suggested that Weldon was not a suitable name for a musician and started calling him Jack.
Jack got his first big break in a strange way. He carried his trombone, wrapped in newspaper, into a club where Peck Kelly was rehearsing his band and asked for an audition. The smirks of Kelly’s sidemen quickly disappeared when they heard his astounding technique and inventiveness. He was 16 when he joined Peck’s Bad Boys.
He remained with Kelly until 1923. Then he joined Doc Ross’ Jazz Bandits for a couple of years. He moved to New York in 1927 where he made his first recordings with Johnny Johnson’s Staler Pennsylvanians. They made little impression, but by February 1928, he had become a sensation as a jazz trombonist. His two recorded versions of “She’s a Great, Great Girl” displayed a virtuosity no one had ever heard before on trombone.
When Teagarden joined the Ben Pollack Orchestra in 1928, his innovative playing quickly displaced Pollack’s lead trombonist Glen Miller. He remained with Pollack for five years, during which time he recorded extensively with other bands.
Pollack’s band fell apart when the sidemen thought he was mismanaging it and over-promoting his girlfriend’s singing. By that time, Teagarden had already left and joined Paul Whiteman. He had a lesser role with Whiteman than with Pollack. That left him free to play with other groups and make more recordings.
When his contract with Whiteman ended in 1938, Teagarden tried to form his own band. He struggled for seven years to succeed in an overly crowded field. He lacked the business and promotional skills to make it work. The big band era collapsed in 1946, bankrupting Teagarden.
A description of Teagarden’s phenomenal technique.
Teagarden’s technique and inventiveness amazed everyone who heard it. As jazz critic Martin Williams described it,
But perhaps the best introduction to Teagarden at his most brilliantly melodic Is a solo on Pennies from Heaven that he played with Louis Armstrong at a concert at New York’s Town Hall (RCA Victor, LPM 1443). The tune is one that we all know well (which is a help, of course, and one that Teagarden assumes), and, for his part of the performance, Jack gets just the first half of the length of tune, right after Armstrong’s vocal course. Therefore he has to take something shorter than the original, and make it complete in itself — yet not so final that what follows his solo will sound like padding. On the spot, Teagarden invents a beautiful, original melody, with some brief references to the familiar tune, but one that is very superior to it in almost every way. It is also unlike the original since it is complete in itself and not an uncompleted ‘half’ of something. It is a beautiful thing, and I think that anyone who responds to melody can listen to it and understand its beauty and its originality.
“It is for that kind of lyric and melodic beauty that we should listen to Jack Teagarden, because such are the standards he has set for himself.”
It is difficult to realize that Teagarden is, after all, largely a self-taught musician. His formal training has been acquired on the job. His creative instinct is unerring, rhythmically and harmonically, and is creatively superb.
Jack Teagarden and race relations
Growing up in Oklahoma, Jack Teagarden absorbed black hymn singing and blues. It appears that the people with the most opportunity to mix with people of other races didn’t share the prejudices of society as a whole.
With his childhood fascination with the blues, he became one of the first jazz musicians to introduce “blue notes.” Besides his technique, his melding of Dixieland and blues set Teagarden apart from everyone else.
When he arrived in New York, he befriended Fletcher Henderson and Fats Waller. Later, he recalled that they “took me places I don’t think any other white boy had ever been.” He often joined late-night jam sessions in Harlem’s black nightclubs.
He met Louis Armstrong in 1929 and the two promptly made a recording of Knockin’ the Jug together with other musicians, both white and black. They did so against the advice of their friends, who feared the collaboration could only damage both careers. It may be the first extant mixed-race recording.
After the failure of his own big band, Teagarden joined Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars as a featured soloist and became the first white musician to tour with an otherwise all-black band. The All-Stars toured Europe in 1949, performing 65 concerts in 35 days. In those days of segregation, trains, hotels, and restaurants often refused to serve them together.
Final years
Jack Teagarden from Billboard 1944 Music Yearbook
Teagarden again tried to form his own band in 1951, this time a sextet that concentrated on playing Dixieland and blues. In the late 1950s, his combo toured the Far East under the aegis of the US State Department. It visited 18 countries in 18 weeks. Among the highlights, the music-loving King of Cambodia jammed with the group on clarinet and presented a medal to Teagarden for meritorious service to the arts.
The weather and constant travel took its toll. He developed a hernia, but refused to cancel the tour for surgery. He played with it for six weeks and returned home very weak and sick.
The combo didn’t last long. Neither did another group he started in the 1960s. He continued his performing and recording career, however. His appearance at the Monterey Jazz Festival on September 20-21, 1963 was a sentimental highlight of his career. He had collaborated with his brother Charles on trumpet for years, but on his second set at the festival, his mother Helen and sister Norma joined them.
Years of heavy drinking had taken their toll. Four months later, he had to perform a set sitting down because he was too weak to stand. That night the first great jazz trombonist died of bronchial pneumonia at age 58.
Teagarden’s personality
Portrait of Jack Teagarden, Dick Carey, Louis Armstrong, Bobby Hackett, Peanuts Hucko, Bob Haggart, and Sid Catlett, Town Hall, New York, N.Y., ca. July 1947
Writers characterize him as easy-going, charming, and constantly smiling and his style as languid but sometimes full of loneliness and sorrow.
His relaxed disposition and languid phrasing, both as jazz trombonist and singer, might sound almost lazy, but they masked a hard-driving work ethic as displayed on the Asian tour.
He had perfect pitch, so anything out of tune bothered him greatly. He learned to tune pianos and retuned his group’s piano between sets. Given the mechanical precision required to tune pianos, it’s no surprise that he liked machinery almost as much as he liked playing trombone. He even made his own mouthpieces.
Unfortunately, he had no business sense, couldn’t handle money well, and drank with as much gusto as he worked.
A great anecdote from Teagarden’s obituary
In his obituary of Teagarden, Tony Weitzel recalled going out drinking with him after one set.
Jack said,” Meet me after the last show in the cafe next door and we will go see the town.” So I sat around until Jack and the boys earned their money and along about 11:15 p.m. the tootler from Texas strode in.
We had one drink and Jack dumped that one down his throat before the bartender could reach for the soda. Jack said,” Let’s get out of here. I gotta keep moving.”
So we grabbed a taxi and rode over to a shoddy little cabaret. And Jack had another drink which he poured down pronto. Let’s go,” he urged. “I got to keep moving.”
Finally, in the sixth successive joint, I demurred. “What’s the big rush? The Scotch is the same in all these places.”
Jack sighed, “You don’t understand. I promised my wife a mink coat six months ago, before I hit the road. Tonight she blew into town and she is gonna haunt me until I come up with a mink!”
I said,” Jack, nobody could catch up to us now. We have been all over this silly town. Relax.”
So Jack sat back and ordered a second drink. And what do you know? He was just downing the dregs of it when the door of the dive opened and in burst a very cute little blond. Jack took one look and busted out the back door. The little blond trudged wearily over to the table and sat down.
I said, “Mrs. Teagarden?” She nodded. I asked, “Do you really want a fur coat that much?”
She stared and then she laughed bitterly. “I don’t want a coat,” she wailed. “I love that big lug and I just want him to save some of his money!”
Teagarden was married four times. Since Weitzel didn’t date this escapade, I can’t name the little blond.
Sources:
JackTeagarden.info includes four articles reprinted from elsewhere, lacking full bibliographic detail: from International Musician (January 1960), Connchord Magazine (1962?), obituary by Tony Weitzel in Chicago Daily News (January 17, 1964), The Handbook of Texas Online, and Miami Herald (date not given, but after 1997) Jack Teagarden: Profiles in Jazz / Scott Yanow, The Syncopated Times. May 1, 2017 Texas “Big T”: The music of Jack Teagarden / The Jim Cullum Riverwalk Jazz Collection
The Dorsey brothers, Jimmy and Tommy, could have jointly led the band that kicked off the swing era in jazz. Their breakup opened the door for Benny Goodman.
Both brothers led successful bands, but the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra dominated the era. It still survives as a ghost band. Ironically, some aspects of Dorsey’s success led directly to the end of the swing era and to the end of jazz as the embodiment of American popular music. Continue reading →
An advertising card from 1918, by which time the band had changed its spelling of jazz
A record of two songs by the Original Dixieland Jass band appeared in May 1917. It has gone down in history as the earliest jazz recording. Or was it?
In any case, it made a huge splash. Recordings of dozens of other pieces with either jazz in the title or the name of the group appeared before the end of the year.
The year 1917 marks a turning point not only in a particular art form, but in black music. Even though whites made the overwhelming majority of the earliest jazz recordings. Continue reading →
A trio of Duke Ellington’s musicians, Hurricane Ballroom, April 1943. Left to right: Tricky Sam Nanton, Harry Carney, Wallace Jones
The trombone was once regarded as the voice of God and long considered grand and noble, but the early 20th century saw development of different, more raucous trombone sounds.
Duke Ellington and his first great trombonist Joe “Tricky Sam” Nanton developed the “jungle sound.” In Nanton’s hands, the trombone learned to growl with a plunger and mute.
Ellington’s band had the reputation of having the “dirtiest” sound of any jazz band. Although many pioneers of jazz knew and loved “high class” music like opera, the early jazz audiences probably didn’t. While more “refined” audiences may have found the jungle sound repellant, jazz audiences loved it. Continue reading →
Music history has no shortage of musicians with no business sense.
In jazz, Jack Teagarden never led a successful band; he drank too much, was too generous with friends, and had no idea how to make contracts.
Fletcher Henderson failed so miserably financially that he had to sell all of his arrangements to Benny Goodman just to get money.
In contrast, Kid Ory, the legendary tailgate trombonist, displayed his business sense at the age of 8, the same time he started performing music. Continue reading →
Jazz trombone player Slide Hampton came to public attention at the tail end of the jazz era. He formed his own octet in 1960. Shortly afterward, the recording industry and clubs lost interest in larger ensembles in general and wind instruments in particular. After a stay in Europe, Hampton returned and established a pathbreaking jazz trombone ensemble called World of Trombones.
