(Ed Note: This time out we’re honoring Teddy Wilson, one of the most distinguished pianists in the business. Wilson’s 50-year recording career found him in the studio with the cream of the jazz world. The two releases this time out feature Wilson wih rhythm (Solo Art SACD-128) and with a small Goodman-styled group (Jazzology JCD-337).) Teddy Wilson is a man for whom words like elegant, classic and urbane are reserved. His piano style is distinctive, yet it is an amalgamation of several of the great players on the scene when he started out. He serves as a bridge between the pianists of the swing era and the bebop pianists who followed; he understood and respected later forms of jazz without really absorbing them into his playing. He remained one of the great swing players throughout his career.
Wilson was born in Austin, TX i 1912, the younger son of James and Pearl Wilson. They were both schoolteachers and members of the rising black middle class of that era. They left Texas in 1918 for better jobs at the prestigious Tuskegee College in Talladega, AL, one of the pioneer black universities. James Wilson was head of the English department while his wife taught high school.
Teddy was started on the piano shortly after they settled in Alabama, but the lessons didn’t stick. He tried the violinbut found he couldn’t play it in tune. He discovered a kid down the block who could play the piano and he liked his style- armed with a chord book and a lot of time, he developed his piano style.
Despite his interest in music, he was aimed toward a trade, as was common in those days. He graduated from high school trained to be a printer, but at the time the trade unions weren’t receptive to black journeymen, so he went on to Talladega College, majoring in music theory. His father died suddenly in 1926, and his mother took the boys to Detroit for summer vacation the following years. Teddy got an earful of music on his visit; the town was jumping, with name bands at the Greystone Ballroom, including the very popular McKinney’s Cotton Pickers. He and his brother Gus, a trombonist and arranger, made the rounds of all the nightclubs and ballrooms, making many acquaintances that would be useful later.
Teddy decided to leave school in 1929- it broke his mother’s heart, but when he told her that he could make $50 a week in Detroit she let him go; his father hadn’t made that much as Chairman of the English Department. He always spoke well of his college training, however, indicating he had received an excellent grounding that helped him in his later career.
After working several months playing local club dates, Teddy and Gus headed to Cincinnati to join the Speed Webb Orchestra. Webb, an Indiana-born bandleader, worked the Ohio-Indiana territory and had gained fame from a movie appearance with Ethel Waters. It was a strong band, with subsequently-famous musicians like Roy and Joe Eldridge, Vic Dickenson and Ted Buckner.
He left Webb in 1930 to join the Toledo-based Milt Senior band. Senior, who had been a featured alto player in McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, needed a piano player as his pianist, Art Tatum, landed a job playing on WLW radio and would be unable to tour with the band. Wilson got a strong dose of Tatum’s piano during this period and he absorbed as much of Tatum’s style as he could. The two became fast friends, making the rounds of all the taverns and house parties with pianos, playing marathon jam sessions. The logical destination for a musician playing the Ohio-Michigan territory was Chicago, and Teddy left the Senior band when a Chicago booking fell through after six weeks. Wilson caught on quickly in Chicago, working with Clarence Moore, who led the band that filled in at the Grand Terrace when Earl Hines was on tour, Jimmie Noone, and Eddie Mallory. When Louis Armstrong returned to Chicago in 1933 armed with a Victor recording contract, a band was put together for him to lead, under the direction of Mike McKendrick. They toured for three months and made several recording sessions. Teddy remembered it as an awful band, full of good players but not particularly organized, as they were basically there to accompany Armstrong.
Benny Carter had heard Wilson in Detroit when he was arranging for McKinney’s and when had the chance to organize a big band in 1933, he and his backer drove to Chicago to get Teddy for the new band. The sides, issued under the Chocolate Dandies name, were revolutionary, some of the first sides to point the way toward the piano style prevalent in the bop era. Wilson had arrived at a synthesis of his three favorite pianists- Tatum, Hines and Waller.
The Carter band was ahead of its time and worked infrequently,
so Wilson jumped to a popular group fronted by Willie Bryant which was getting a lot of work in Harlem ballrooms and recording for RCA Victor; Carter himself wound up with Bryant before long. John Hammond was everywhere in the music business in the early 1930s, traveling around the country to scout talent, organizing recording sessions for the English Parlophone label, and writing about jazz for a number of publications. He found a spot at Brunswick Records for Teddy, and Wilson became one of the busiest guys in the recording studios.
Wilson began a series of records featuring a young vocalist Hammond had discovered, Billie Holiday, and the music that resulted was memorable. Wilson could choose the pick of the big band sidemen then in New York for his sessions, and he featured players like Roy Eldridge, Lester Young, Johnny Hodges, Buck Clayton and Benny Goodman on a series of sides that have remained in print almost from the day they were issued.
Another singer Wilson often accompanied in the studio was Mildred Bailey. In 1935 she invited Wilson to a house party and Goodman was there. A jam sesson ensued, and John Hammond, who was taking notes, was so impressed he arranged for Victor to record the Benny Goodman Trio immediately, adding Gene Krupa on drums.
The following year Goodman was appearing at the Congress Hotel in Chicago and played a Sunday afternoon concert with the trio, sponsored by the Hot Club of Chicago, then led by pioneer jazz writer Helen Oakley.The trio was such a success that it soon became a regular feature, expanded to a quartet when Lionel Hampton joined Goodman. Wilson toured with Goodman fulltime for three years.
Just as situation comedies generated spinoffs in the recent past, big bands generally spawned more big bands as key players developed a name and decided to leave. Harry James and Gene Krupa left Goodman and started their own big bands, and in 1939 Wilson left Goodman for his own big band. Like many talented sidemen, Wilson was unable to make a go of the big band, though it lasted about eighteen months and made a few recordings. Wilson also began teaching music about this time. He had two partners in a music school and even produced a series of recordings, the Teddy Wilson School for Pianists (reissued on Mosaic) to demonstrate various elements of jazz piano.
The big band broke up when Wilson had a chance to take a more economically-feasible small group into the Cafe Societies- Uptown and Downtown. He rotated between the two venues for six years, including great players like Bill Coleman, Edmond Hall, Remo Palmieri and Charlie Shavers in his group, which also recorded extensively.
Wilson returned to teaching in 1945, logging seven years on the faculty at Juilliard. One of his students, Dick Hyman, became one of the best-loved pianists on the contemporary traditional jazz scene. Wilson also began working in the radio studios, which began to open up for black musicians by the late 1940s. He put in a spell on the Seven Lively Arts, on a local New York station, then several years on staff at CBS, where he often had a sustaining program in the afternoon.
By the mid-50s, Wilson settled into a routine that he would continue for the rest of his life- he was on the road almost all the time, working with a trio or solo. He made a series of recordings for Columbia in the mid-50’s which will hopefully be reissued soon, and by the 1960s he’d expanded his scope to appear all over the world. He was part of the mother of all jazz tours, Benny Goodman’s 1962 State Department tour of Russia, and extended the tour with appearances in Poland and Yugoslavia.
He appeared with local bands or rhythm sections all over the world, developing a close relationship with the Dutch Swing College Band, with whom he made four tours.
Wilson’s discography for the 1970s includes recording sessions in Copenhagen, Tokyo, Munich, Nice, and London. He was truly an international jazz star.
He continued to work right up to the end, making appearances with Goodman, Hampton, Krupa, Benny Carter, Red Norvo and other all-star survivors of the Swing Era, and he also worked extensively with a trio including his sons-Theodore on bass and Steven on drums.
Teddy Wilson died July 31, 1986 at his home in New Britain CT. There have been few musicians who spent as long a time at the top of their game- Teddy was an all-star in the early 1930s with Armstrong and Carter, and he remained one of the best until the very end, and he had the accolades to prove it- honorary doctorates, certificates of appreciation, as well as a full schedule of well-paying dates as long as he was well enough to play them.