Jack Teagarden

Jack Teagarden ranks among jazz’s enduring masters, distinguished both as the leading trombonist before bebop—handling the slide with trumpet-like fluency—and as one of the idiom’s most compelling vocalists. Because of his exceptional musicianship, his younger sibling Charlie, himself a gifted trumpeter, remained comparatively overlooked. Teagarden began piano lessons at five under his mother Helen, a ragtime specialist, later moving to baritone horn before settling on trombone at age ten. He spent his early professional years traversing the Southwest with various territory ensembles, most memorably alongside the storied pianist Peck Kelley, then created a stir upon arriving in New York in 1928. His bold contributions to Ben Pollack’s orchestra prompted Glenn Miller to scale back his own playing, and throughout the late twenties and early Depression years “Mr. T.” appeared on countless sessions with ensembles led by Roger Wolfe Kahn, Eddie Condon, Red Nichols, and Louis Armstrong on “Knockin’ a Jug.” His interpretations of “Basin Street Blues” and “Beale Street Blues,” numbers that stayed central to his book for decades, quickly became benchmarks. Widely respected by Tommy Dorsey, Teagarden seemed poised for swing-era prominence yet made a costly decision. In late 1933, believing jazz held little commercial promise, he accepted a five-year contract with Paul Whiteman. Although Whiteman’s orchestra spotlighted him periodically and he briefly performed in 1936 with the small unit Three T’s alongside Charlie and Frankie Trumbauer, the agreement blocked any independent move that might have established him as a leading figure and forestalled his assembling what later became the Bob Crosby Orchestra.

Released from the contract in 1939, Teagarden promptly formed a big band that endured until 1946. By then, however, launching a fresh orchestra proved difficult amid intense competition; although strong musical passages surfaced, none of the sidemen achieved lasting recognition, the charts never developed a distinctive identity, and when the ensemble folded Teagarden confronted bankruptcy. Still a prominent name—he had appeared to advantage in the 1940 Bing Crosby film The Birth of the Blues—he benefited from loyal allies. Crosby assisted in resolving his financial difficulties, after which Teagarden served as a featured soloist in Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars from 1947 to 1951; their duets on “Rocking Chair” remain classics. Once he departed Armstrong’s group, he led a working sextet for the rest of his life, performing Dixieland with such accomplished colleagues as Charlie, trumpeters Jimmy McPartland, Don Goldie, and Max Kaminsky, and, during a 1957 European tour, pianist Earl Hines. He visited the Far East in 1958–1959, rejoined Eddie Condon for a 1961 television broadcast and recording date, and shared a memorable, fortunately captured reunion with Charlie, sister and pianist Norma, and his mother at the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival. Four months afterward he suffered a fatal heart attack, leaving a void that persists.