Teddy Powell

Teddy Powell briefly guided one of jazz’s leading big bands during 1939. An outfit stocked with elite players delivered a triumphant six-week engagement at New York’s Famous Door, prompting Powell to boast that he had matched in weeks what Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey required years to achieve. Road tours quickly exposed the group’s limited public profile, however, drawing sparse audiences, draining finances, and prompting star sidemen to seek steadier paychecks elsewhere; the brief ascendancy collapsed almost at once.

Powell had taken up violin at age eight, switched to banjo at fourteen, and fronted his own ensemble the next year. Local stints alongside Lou Singer and Ray West in 1927 preceded a long association with Abe Lyman’s Orchestra that lasted until 1934. He continued handling Lyman’s business affairs and radio-band bookings through 1938. Late that year Powell assembled his own orchestra. Despite the earlier road setbacks, the Teddy Powell Orchestra persisted as a second-tier attraction for several seasons.

A catastrophic blaze at New Jersey’s Rustic Cabin in October 1941 destroyed every instrument, yet Powell sustained the continually changing lineup until 1944, though the band ceased recording after 1942. Earlier lineups produced swinging sides for Decca and Bluebird. Clarinetist Gus Bivona, pianist Tony Aless, clarinetist Irving Fazola, tenor-saxophonist Charlie Ventura, and trumpeter Pete Candoli were among the musicians who passed through the ranks.

Once the orchestra dissolved, Powell focused on composing and arranging. He penned several hits, among them “Bewildered” and “If My Heart Could Only Talk,” and fronted sporadic big bands in Connecticut and Miami. From 1957 onward he devoted himself chiefly to his music-publishing company.