The Life and Music of Jack Teagarden

Digby Fairweather will give a talk on the jazz career of trombonist Jack Teagarden.

Jack Teagarden (1905-1964) was born into a musical family —both parents and all his siblings played a variety of instruments. At only age 8 he played for silent movies alongside his mother, and joined his first band at 11 years old. His subsequent rise in the jazz world was a smooth as could be expected in the turbulent ‘twenties and ‘thirties.

His first professional gig, aged only 16, was with pianist Peck Kelley’s Bad Boys, before he graduated, in 1928, to drummer Ben Pollack’s Californians with whom he made over 300 recordings in five years.

In the late 1920s, as well as with his own bands, he recorded with musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Bix Beiderbecke, Red Nichols, Jimmy McPartland, Mezz Mezzrow, Glenn Miller, Eddie Condon, and Fats Waller, both as a trombonist and…