A Tribute To Jack Teagarden

("....born in Vernon, Texas, raised in Tennessee....")

Introduction

This site is my personal tribute to Jack Teagarden, one of the finest trombone players jazz has produced. A superb technician with a wonderful imagination and above all, a tone that is always instantly recognisable, which is the hallmark of the jazz greats. I have attempted to give a detailed biography together with a selected discography of currently available CDs, together with a listing of Jack's appearances on film and video and some guides on suggested reading. As ever, any listing of musical preferences must be subjective but I hope that readers will use it as a guide and gain some value from it. I was lucky enough to see and hear Jack when he was playing at his best. I treasure the memories.

When Woody Herman, a young aspiring musician first heard Jack on a Red Nichols record, he said  "And I could never get over it.  It just gave me the feeling that this man had never made a mistake in his whole life and didn't plan on making any.....I realized then what a great feeling of relaxation and assurance it gives your audience if you're that kind of player"


I can do no better than to quote from The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz which says (page 1192) "Teagarden is considered by many critics to be the finest of all jazz trombonists, but his style was so personal that he had few followers, and founded no school. Significantly, he grew up in rough southwestern towns containing large black populations, and was far more familiar than most early white jazz players with black spirituals, work songs, and the blues, having experienced them first-hand from earliest childhood. As a consequence he was one of the first white jazz musicians to master the blues, and probably the first to make use of blue notes."

© Michael Palmer 1997-2003

Australia

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