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Jack Teagarden
∗

Catherine Schmidt-Jones

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Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Abstract
A short biography of the great jazz trombonist Jack Teagarden.

Jack Teagarden was a trombone player, singer, and band leader whose career spanned from the 1920's
territory and New York jazz scenes to shortly before his death in 1964. Teagarden was not a successful band
leader, which may explain why he is not as widely known as some other jazz trombonists, but his unusual
singing style inuenced several other important jazz singers, and he is widely regarded as the one of the
greatest, and possibly the greatest, trombonist in the history of jazz.
Teagarden was born in 1905 in Vernon, Texas. Born Weldon Lee Teagarden or Weldon John Teagarden
(more sources say Weldon Lee, but John makes more sense considering his nickname), Jack's earliest perfor-
mances were working with his mother Helen, who played ragtime piano, in theaters. His siblings also became
professional musicians: his younger sister Norma played piano, his younger brother Charlie, trumpet, and
his brother Clois (Cub), drums.
Jack Teagarden began playing piano at age ve, took up baritone at age seven or eight, and had settled on
trombone by age ten. Some sources claim his unusual style of trombone playing stemmed from the fact that
he began playing before he was big enough to play in the farther positions. He moved to Chappell, Nebraska,
with his family in 1918, but by 1921 was back in Texas playing with Peck Kelley's Bad Boys. Through the
early and mid 1920's, he played with several other territory bands, including Doc Ross's Jazz Bandits, and
the Orginal Southern Trumpeters. My sources disagree concerning which band brought Teagarden to New
York, and with whom he made his earliest recording, but there is agreement that he arrived in New York in
1927 and was playing with Ben Pollack's orchestra by 1928.
Although Teagarden enjoyed a long career, it was at this point that he had the greatest eect on the
history of jazz. The reaction to his unique style of trombone-playing appears to have been both immediate
and widespread. Historians and critics widely agree: No one disputes Jack Teagarden's place in the trombone
pantheon(Morgenstern, 2004, p.292). Teagarden is considered by many critics to be the nest of all jazz
trombonists....(Kernfeld, 1988) Teagarden single-handedly created a whole new way of playing the trombone
 a parallel to Earl Hines and the piano comes to mind  and did so as early as the mid-twenties and evidently
largely out of his own youthful creative resources.(Schuller, 1989, p.590)
His unusual approach to trombone playing had both a technical and a stylistic component. His technical
approach in particular was quite unorthodox. A short digression into the mechanics of trombone playing will
explain why. The trombone slide has seven positions where traditionally notated (chromatic scale) pitches
can be played. Each position causes the instrument to be a slightly dierent length, and the instrument can
play a (dierent) harmonic series at each length.

∗ Version 1.3: Feb 22, 2006 9:28 am +0000

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Figure 1

As is apparent from the gure, the notes in any harmonic series are much closer together in the upper
part of the series. This has a practical eect on trombone playing: in the lower register of the instrument,
there are fewer notes in any given position, and often only one position in which a note can be played. In
the upper register, notes in any position are closer together, and many notes can be played in more than
one position. New Orleans-style trombonists tended to play in the lower range of the instrument, where it
is simply impossible to change notes as quickly as a trumpet or clarinet does; entire arms can't move as fast
as a single nger. So the traditional trombone stylists specialized in playing simpler accompaniment parts
featuring cute special eects like glissandos. Jack Teagarden apparently did not like this tailgate style of
trombone-playing. Instead, he played higher in the instrument's range, using mostly the rst and second
positions, and rarely moving beyond fourth position. Using alternate positions and an embouchure that
was apparently extremely exible (meaning he could change the pitch of a note using only small changes in
his lips, mouth, and face muscles), Teagarden could play in the way that appealed to him. It apparently also
greatly appealed to other musicians as soon as they heard it, but it relied so heavily on using unusual slide
positions and on his ability to bend notes with his unusually exible embouchure, that his style is generally
considered to be literally inimitable.
Teagarden's style is also often described using words such as lyrical, vocal, legato, relaxed, uent and
smooth. The two premier trombonists on the New York scene when Teagarden arrived had also already
rejected tailgate style playing, and there is disagreement about how much Mi Mole and Jimmy Harrison
inuenced Teagarden. But Teagarden appears to have arrived in New York with a clear idea of how he

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wanted to sound, and although the three players do seem to have inuenced each other somewhat, they each
also retained their distinctive styles. Harrison also played in the upper register of the instrument, so that he
could play fast trumpet-style licks, but his playing is still rmly in the jazz brass tradition, with hard, clear
articulations. Mole also specialized in technically spectacular playing, with staccato phrasing, big leaps,
and surprising note choices. Teagarden's gently-articulated style gives the trombone a lyrical, almost vocal
quality (without having the extremely sweet ballad-type sound that, for example, Tommy Dorsey made
famous) and has in fact been compared to his own (Teagarden's) singing style. And although his playing
style was also technically brilliant, featuring dicult techniques such as lip trills, his laid-back, vocal style of
delivery  often described even as a lazy sound  eectively disguised his technical prociency (lazy and
lightning-quick(Shapiro, 1957, p.68)). One source reports that Tommy Dorsey specialized in sweet ballads
specically because he felt his jazz was inferior next to Jack Teagarden (Yanow, 2003, p.100) and that
Glenn Miller de-emphasized his own trombone playing (Yanow, 2003, p. 91) after a stint playing beside
Teagarden in Pollack's orchestra.
Although it was not as important an inuence as his trombone playing, Jack Teagarden's approach
to singing was also unique and inuential. Collier says he was the leading, and virtually the only, white
male singer in jazz.(Collier,1978, p.137) Yanow lists him with Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby (who was a
friend and was apparently inuenced by Teagarden's style) as the most important male vocalists of the early
1930's. (Yanow, 2003, p. 141) Schuller calls him a remarkable and wholy unique singer, undoubtedly the
best and only true jazz singer next to Billie Holiday, Cab Calloway, and Louis Armstrong (whom he, unlike
dozens of others did not imitate). (Schuller, 1989, p.591, italics Schuller's) This may be overstatement, but
it does underscore a fact that all sources seem to agree on; like his trombone style, his singing style seems to
have been both uniquely his own and authentic bluesy jazz. Both were deeply aected by a knowledge of and
ease with the blues that was available to few white players of the time. The Texas town in which Teagarden
grew up had a large black population, and he must have heard spirituals, work songs, and blues from a very
early age; in fact, revivals were commonly held within earshot of his home. It was this background that was
probably the greatest inuence on all of Teagarden's work, both vocal and instrumental, and his use of the
blues idiom was so convincing that Fletcher Henderson apparently suspected that Teagarden was colored
(Ward, p.163).
As mentioned above, by the summer of 1928, Teagarden was playing with Ben Pollack's orchestra,
and he stayed with Pollack, performing and recording, for nearly ve years. During this period, he was
involved in a large number of recordings, with Pollack's orchestra, with other groups, and leading his own
sessions. Teagarden particularly made some noteworthy contributions while working at this time with Eddie
Condon. Teagarden was one of the musicians on the rst interracial recording session, organized by Condon.
Teagarden's rst vocal recording was made with Condon, and also the rst recording featuring his use of a
water glass as a mute. Teagarden had a mechanical bent and a life-long interest in tinkering with things, and
he invented the water glass mute eect, in which the bell section of the trombone is removed and an empty
water glass placed over the end of the instrument tubing (of the mouthpiece section). The eect is a stied,
plaintive sound which makes the instrument sound even more like a blues singer. Another interesting aspect
of the recordings of this period is that they show very clearly that, unlikely many other jazz musicians of the
time, Teagarden was a true improviser, giving notably dierent solos on dierent takes of the same piece 
even when the recordings were made on the same day (Schuller, p. 599).
Teagarden left Pollack in 1933, and signed a ve-year contract with Paul Whiteman's orchestra. It was
a steady, well-paying job, for which Teagarden was apparently grateful; he seems to have been perpetually
unlucky with both women and money, and had already experienced some personal nancial problems. But
the Whiteman group was not particularly musically inspired. The Teagarden brothers (Jack and trumpeter
Charlie) are generally considered the only interesting jazzmen to have been part of it, and yet Jack also felt
a little out of the limelight. He did some playing and recording with other groups at this time, most notably
with his brother Charlie and saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer as the Three T's. But Whiteman's group
kept him a little too busy doing highly-arranged popular music, and he left when his contract was up.
This was the period when everybody who was anybody in jazz had their own band, so Jack Teagarden
decided to organize his rst band in 1939. Unfortunately, he had neither the dominant personality nor

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the business smarts to be a good bandleader, and by the end of that year he was already $46,000 in debt.
Refusing to give up, he started a second band in early 1940, and this one he managed to keep going until
late 1946, in spite of losing far too many good musicians to the draft. Unfortunately, this band also cannot
really be considered a success. Desperate to keep aoat, the group played too many gigs at which they were
expected to have a sweet, popular sound. Cut o from the developing edge of jazz, it had no real inuence
and produced few recordings of note. Hit hard by both the war and the competition from bebop, several of
the more famous big bands called it quits in 1946, and so did Teagarden.
He headed back to New York, and by 1947 was playing with Louis Armstrong's All Stars, a smaller group
that is considered to have been a leader in the anti-bebop traditional jazz revival movement. The All Stars
did well, but Teagarden left in 1951, in order to once again put together his own band. This All Stars group,
a sextet along the same lines as Armstrong's All Stars, with various musicians including at times Earl Hines,
Teagarden's brother Charlie on trumpet and his sister Norma on piano, was also a success, touring both
Europe and Asia and playing traditional jazz in a way that made it sound fresh and creative.
Armstrong apparently considered Teagarden a friend, not a rival, and they continued to work together
from time to time. Known aectionately as Mr. T, Big T (to brother Charlie's Little T), Jackson,
Gate, and Big Gate (again, Charlie was Little Gate), Jack Teagarden was by all accounts a big, easy-
going, friendly man, well-liked throughout his career by his fellow musicians. At this point, he was also the
grand old man of the instrument, well-respected both by traditionalists and (unlike many other traditionalist
players) also by the more modern generation of trombonists. The reunion at the Monterey Jazz Festival,
with his brother Charlie, sister Norma, and even his mother, who played a few ragtime piano solos, is
considered to be a celebration of the life of a great jazz musician. He died only a few months later of
pneumonia, at the age of fty eight, in New Orleans.

1 Important Recordings and Discography

Jack Teagarden's most important recordings include the recording with Benny Goodman of Basin Street
Blues, with Teagarden on both trombone and vocals, which included extra lyrics written by himself and
Glenn Miller that later became a standard (and usually unattributed) part of the song lyrics. Teagarden's
recorded work as a trombone soloist is considered very consistently high quality, but the following are often
mentioned in particular: Knockin' a Jug (1929, with Louis Armstrong), She's a Great, Great Girl (with
Roger Wolfe Kahn), Makin' Friends and That's a Serious Thing (1928, with Eddie Condon), The Sheik
of Araby (1930, with Red Nichols), Beale Street Blues (1931, with Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang), Jack
Hits the Road (1940, with Bud Freeman), and St. James Inrmary (1947, with Louis Armstrong). His
recordings of I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues, Texas Tea Party, A Hundred Years from Today(all 1933),
Stars Fell on Alabama(1934), I Hope Gabriel Likes My Music (1936), and Nobody Knows the Trouble
I've Seen may be considered his best vocal oerings. I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues in particular became
a signature piece for him. Since much of Teagarden's best work was as a sideman rather than a leader, many
of his best recordings are included in collections of other artists' work, but the following are a good place to
start listening to his work:
The Indispensable Jack Teagarden (RCA) is the most comprehensive sampler of his high quality work

from 1928  1957, including good samplings of his work with Pollack, Whiteman, and Armstrong.
That's a Serious Thing (Bluebird) has fewer selections than Indispensable, but also chooses high quality

work representative of his entire career.

B.G. and Big Tea in NYC (GRP/ Decca) has both Goodman and Teagarden in every selection, sometimes

featured, sometimes in more of a side role, but always along with various other rst-rate artists. It is also
considered an important collection of Goodman's early work.
A Hundred Years From Today (Memphis Archives), which also includes Basin Street Blues and St.

James Inrmary, may be the best representation of his late work. It was recorded at the Monterey Festival.

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2 Bibliography
Chilton, John. Who's Who of Jazz: Storyville to Swing Street. Chilton Book Company. New York,
1972. This is an encyclopedia-style set of biographies. Each biography is short, but includes a very helpful
bibliography, in this case a list of several books about Jack Teagarden which would be very useful to someone
doing serious research on the subject.
Collier, JamesLincoln. The Making of Jazz: A Comprehensive History. Houghton Miin Company.
Boston, 1978. Collier's history is an overview, with a reasonable amount of technical information for the
casual reader and plenty of anecdotes and a (somewhat dated) discography, but a short bibliography and no
notes.
Erlewine, and Scott Bultman. All Music Guide. Miller Freeman Books. San Francisco, 1992. This is a
large and comprehensive discography of recordings available, with suggestions as to their relative importance,
in many genres, including jazz.
Kernfeld, Barry, ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. Macmillan Press Limited. New York, 1988.
A short biography gives the widely accepted facts. Jazz histories seem to rely heavily on the memories of
interviewees; certainly a very valuable resource, and one that should be pursued while they are still available
for interview, but the result seems to be widely varying "facts" from one source to another. My sources in
particular disagreed often on things like his middle name, childhood, and early career.
Morgenstern, Dan. Living With Jazz: A Reader edited by Sheldon Meyer. Pantheon Books. New York,
2004. This collection of Morgenstern's best writings on jazz is taken from a great variety of sources; the most
extensive writing about Teagarden here, for example, comes from the liner notes of Benny Goodman and
Jack Teagarden, but there are also numerous other mentions of Teagarden in reviews, proles and analyses.
Schoenberg, Loren. The NPR Curious Listener's Guide to Jazz. Grand Central Press. New York, 2002.
Oddly, this book does not have an extensive discography. Instead it focusses on reviewing a few important
CDs. It does have a useful bibliography however, and short biographies of the major musicians.
Schuller, Gunther. The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945. Oxford University Press, New
York, 1989. This authoritative, well-footnoted book gives many musical examples and explains technical
issues clearly. It was most useful in its understanding of what exactly made Teagarden's playing so unique
and interesting.
Shapiro, Nat, and Nat Hento, ed. The Jazz Makers. Rinehart and Company, Inc. New York, 1956.
This is a collection of chatty, anecdote-lled but well-footnoted biographies, including one of Jack Teagarden
by Charles Edward Smith.
Shaw, Arnold. The Jazz Age: Popular Music in the 1920's. Oxford University Press. New York, 1987.
This is an anecdote-driven popular history, but it is well-footnoted, which would be useful to someone trying
to track down inconsistencies between the various sources.
Ward, Georey C., and Ken Burns. Jazz: A History of America's Music. Alfred A. Knopf. New York,
2000. Also an anecdote-driven popular history (with some fun anecdotes), but not footnoted at all, and with
very little bibliography. Rather than a discography, an extensive set of recordings and video complements
the book.
Yanow, Scott. Jazz on Record: The First Sixty Years. Backbeat Books. San Francisco, 2003. This
comprehensive book is an overview of jazz history that includes a detailed discography for each period of
jazz history, with discussions of the important recordings alongside the relevant history.

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