Born in Vernon, Texas, his brothers Charlie and Clois "Cub" and his sister Norma also became noted professional musicians. Teagarden's father was an amateur brass band trumpeter and started young Jack on baritone horn; by age seven he had switched to trombone. He first heard jazz music played by the Louisiana Five and decided to play in the new style.
Teagarden's trombone style was largely self-taught, and he developed many unusual alternative positions and novel special effects on the instrument. He is usually considered the most innovative jazz trombone stylist of the pre-bebop era, and did much to expand the role of the instrument beyond the old tailgate style role of the early New Orleans brass bands. Chief among his contributions to the language of jazz trombonists was his ability to interject the blues or merely a "blue feeling" into virtually any piece of music.
By 1920 Teagarden was playing professionally in San Antonio, including with the band of pianist Peck Kelley. In the mid 1920s he started traveling widely around the United States in a quick succession of different bands. In 1927, he went to New York City where he worked with several bands. By 1928 he played for the Ben Pollack band.
Within a year of the commencement of his recording career, he became a regular vocalist, first doing blues material ("Beale Street Blues", for example), and later doing popular songs. He is often mentioned as one of the best white male jazz vocalists of the era; his singing style is quite like his trombone playing, in terms of improvisation (in the same way that Louis Armstrong sang quite like he played trumpet). His singing is best remembered for duets with Louis Armstrong and Johnny Mercer.
In the late 1920s he recorded with such notable bandleaders and sidemen as Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Bix Beiderbecke, Red Nichols, Jimmy McPartland, Mezz Mezzrow, Glenn Miller, and Eddie Condon. Glenn Miller and Teagarden collaborated to provide lyrics and a verse to Spencer Williams' Basin Street Blues, which in that amended form became one of the numbers that Teagarden played until the end of his days.
In the early 1930s Teagarden was based in Chicago, for some time playing with the band of Wingy Manone. He played at the Century of Progress exposition in Chicago. Teagarden sought financial security during the Great Depression and signed an exclusive contract to play for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra from 1933 through 1938. The contract with Whiteman's band provided him with financial security but prevented him from playing an active part in the musical advances of the mid-thirties swing era.
Teagarden then started leading his own big band. Glenn Miller wrote the song "I Swung the Election" for him and his band in 1939.[2] In spite of Teagarden's best efforts, the band was not a commercial success, and he was brought to the brink of bankruptcy.
In 1946 Teagarden joined Louis Armstrong's All Stars. Armstrong and Teagarden's work together shows a wonderful rapport, in particular their duet on "Rockin' Chair". In late 1951 Teagarden left to again lead his own band, then co-led a band with Earl Hines, then again with a group under his own name with whom he toured Japan in 1958 and 1959.
Teagarden appeared in the movies Birth of the Blues (1941), The Strip (1951), The Glass Wall (1953), and Jazz on a Summer's Day (1960), the latter a documentary film of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. He was an admired recording artist, featured on RCA Victor, Columbia, Decca, Capitol, and MGM Records discs. As a jazz artist he won the 1944 Esquire magazine Gold Award, was highly rated in the Metronome polls of 1937-42 and 1945, and was selected for the Playboy magazine All Star Band, 1957-60.
Teagarden was the featured performer at the Newport Jazz Festival of 1957. Saturday Review wrote in 1964 that he "walked with artistic dignity all his life," and the same year Newsweek praised his "mature approach to trombone jazz."
Richard M. Sudhalter writes (in 'Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz', Oxford University Press, 1999): "The late trumpet player Don Goldie, who spent four years in Teagarden's band and had known him since childhood said that he 'always got a feeling that a lot of happiness was locked away inside Jack, really padlocked, and never came out..."
"Jack Teagarden died, alone, of a heart attack complicated by bronchial pneumonia in his room at the Prince Conti Hotel in the French Quarter of New Orleans on January 15, 1964. He was only 58. "I sometimes think people like Jack were just go-betweens," Bobby Hackett told a friend. "The Good Lord said, 'Now you go and show 'em what it is', and he did. I think everybody familiar with Jack Teagarden knows that he was something that happens just once. It won't happen again. Not that way..."
"...Connie Jones, the New Orleans cornetist working with Jack Teagarden at the time of the trombonist's death, was a pallbearer for the wake, held at a funeral parlor on leafy St. Charles Avenue: 'I remember seeing him there in a coffin, a travelling coffin. They were going to fly him to Los Angeles for burial right after that. The coffin was open and I remember thinking 'Boy he really looks uncomfortable in there'.
"'Not that he was that tall. Maybe five foot ten or so, at most. But he was kinda wide across the shoulders - and most of all he just gave you the impression he was a big man, in every way. In that coffin, - well, I can't really explain it, but he seemed to be scrunched up into a space that was too small to contain him'".
He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles, California.
The coda of Teagarden's recording career is the album Think Well of Me, recorded in January 1962 and made up of his singing and trombone playing, accompanied by strings, on compositions by his old musical associate Willard Robison: available on Verve CD 314 557 101-2.
[edit]Compositions
Jack Teagarden's compositions included "I've Got 'It'" with David Rose, "Shake Your Hips", "Big T Jump", "Swingin' on the Teagarden Gate", "Blues After Hours", "A Jam Session at Victor", "It's So Good", "Pickin' For Patsy" with Allan Reuss, "Texas Tea Party" with Benny Goodman, "I'm Gonna Stomp Mr. Henry Lee" with Eddie Condon, "Big T Blues", "Dirty Dog", "Makin' Friends" with Jimmy McPartland, "That's a Serious Thing", and "Jack-Armstrong Blues" with Louis Armstrong, recorded on December 7, 1944 with the V-Disc All-Stars and released as V-Disc 384A.
Beale Street Blues
Jack Teagarden Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
To the Mississippi
We'll take a boat to the land of dreams
Steam down the river, down to New Orleans
The band's there to meet us
Old friends there to greet us
Where all the proud and elite folks meet
Basin Street is the street
Where the best folks always meet
In New Orleans, land of dreams
You'll never know how nice it seems,
Or just how much it really means
Glad to be, oh yes-sirree
Where welcome's free and dear to me
Where I can lose, lose my Basin Street Blues
Basin Street, oh Basin Street
Is the street, mama
New Orleans, land of dreams
The song "Beale Street Blues" by Jack Teagarden and His Orchestra talks about a journey along the Mississippi river to New Orleans, where Basin Street is a place of heaven on earth, where the proud and elite folks always meet. The singer invites their audience to come along on a boat ride to experience the land of dreams, New Orleans. The narrative paints a picture of a world that is entirely different from the one we live in. It is filled with music, laughter, and celebration, where the people are friendly, and the welcome is free. The core essence of the lyrics is about the singer's longing to get rid of their Basin Street Blues, a metaphorical representation of their sadness. They are hopeful that New Orleans and Basin Street will bring them the much-needed relief from their sadness.
Line by Line Meaning
Won't you come along with me
Do you want to take a journey with me?
To the Mississippi
We'll be heading towards the Mississippi river.
We'll take a boat to the land of dreams
We'll travel across the river by boat to reach our destination, the land of dreams.
Steam down the river, down to New Orleans
We'll sail down the river, all the way to New Orleans using a steam-powered boat.
The band's there to meet us
Once we reach New Orleans, the band that we're going to meet will welcome us.
Old friends there to greet us
In New Orleans, we'll also meet our old friends.
Where all the proud and elite folks meet
New Orleans is a place where all proud and elite people come together.
Heaven on earth, they call it Basin Street
New Orleans' Basin Street is so beautiful and pleasant that it seems like heaven on earth.
Basin Street is the street
The particular street being referred to is Basin Street.
Where the best folks always meet
Basin Street is the place where the most elite people in New Orleans keep convening.
In New Orleans, land of dreams
New Orleans, the land of dreams, where anyone's ambitions can come true.
You'll never know how nice it seems,
You can never experience the feeling of being there, unless you visit and see it for yourself.
Or just how much it really means
It's difficult to explain how important the place is, unless you experience it yourself.
Glad to be, oh yes-sirree
I'm so happy to be there and experience everything that comes with it.
Where welcome's free and dear to me
I love being welcomed with open arms by everyone around in New Orleans.
Where I can lose, lose my Basin Street Blues
New Orleans' Basin Street is such a happy and vibrant place, that it completely takes away my worries and blues.
Basin Street, oh Basin Street
A reference to the beautiful Basin Street in New Orleans.
Is the street, mama
It's the street where it all happens and where fun and happiness are always in abundance.
New Orleans, land of dreams
The lovely New Orleans, a place that can help chase your dreams.
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management
Written by: Spencer Williams
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind