HIGH TONE STUDIES

FOR TROMBONE

BY

Cherry Classics Music www.CherryClassics.com

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Weldon Leo (Jack) Teagarden, musician, known also as Jackson T., Mr. T, and Big Gate, was born in Vernon, Texas, on August 20, 1905, to Charles and Helen (Geinger) Teagarden. His father, an amateur comet player, worked in the oilfields, and his mother was a local piano instructor and church organist. All four Teagarden children became prominent musicians.

Jack was given piano lessons when he reached the age of five. He took up the baritone horn for a time but switched to trombone when he was seven. He and his mother played duets (trombone and piano) as background to the silent films at a Vemon theater. In 1918, after his father’s death, the family moved to Chappell, Nebraska, where he and his mother again worked in the local theater. The following year the family moved to Oklahoma City.

At sixteen Teagarden first played the trombone professionally, at a concert near San Antonio as a member of Cotton Bailey’s dance and jazz band. Later the same year (1921) Teagarden joined ’s Bad Boys in . Visiting band leader heard the group there and offered Teagarden a position in his New York orchestra. For several years, however, Jack continued to play with local groups.

About 1923 he briefly attempted to enter the oilfield business in Wichita Falls but soon gave up the venture and returned to music. Teagarden made his first trip to New York in 1926 as a performer on the eastern tour of Doc Ross’s Jazz Bandits. The next year he went to New York on his own. He originally planned to join Whiteman’s ensemble but happened to hear ’s band first. After two months with the Tommy Gott Orchestra Teagarden secured a position in Pollack’s organization, where he beat for the seat of first trombone. He made his first record- ing in 1927 as a member of the Kentucky Grasshoppers, an offshoot of Pollack’s group. Teagarden later recorded with many of America’s jazz greats including , , and . He performed with , Bix Bei- derbecke, Paul Whiteman, , Bob Crosby, , Peck Kel- ley, and others.

He was considered by many to be the greatest jazz trombonist of his era, but his style was so unusual that others did not follow his example. In 1933, after a brief stint in Mal Hallett’s band, he signed on with Paul Whiteman’s orchestra for five years. In 1939 Teagarden formed his own band; it was musically innovative but not financially successful and was disbanded in 1947. He teamed up with Louis Armstrong’s All- Stars for some classic recordings in the late 1940's and formed the Jack Teagarden All Stars band in 1951. The All Stars toured Europe and Asia in 1957-59 as part of a government-sponsored goodwill tour.

Jack Teagarden’s playing style was lyrical and seemingly effortless. He did not follow the traditional Dixieland “tailgate” treatment of his instrument. Upper register solos, the lack of a strict solo beat, and the use of lip trills were some of his characteristics. Having grown up in an area with a large black population, Teagarden developed an early appreciation of black music, especially the blues and gospel. He was one of the first jazz musicians to incorporate “blue notes” into his playing. He was also among the first white jazz musicians to record with black players.

Teagarden was also an excellent singer and developed a respected blues vocal style. In addition, he was an inventor, redesigning mouthpieces, mutes, and watervalves and invented a new musical slide rule. He also started using Pond’s Cold Cream and Pam Cooking lubricant on his trombone. something many trombonists emulated.

Teagarden appeared in the movies Birth of the Blues (1941), The Glass Wall (1953), and Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959). He was an admired recording artist, featured on RCA Victor, Columbia, Decca, Capitol, and MGM 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 perfomer 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.”

Teagarden was married first to Ora Binyon in San Angelo, Texas, in 1923; they had two sons before they were divorced. In the 1930s he was married to and divorced from, successively, Clare Manzi of New York City and Edna “Billie” Coats. Teagarden married Adeline Barriere Gault in September 1942; they had three children of their own and one foster child.

Early in 1964 Teagarden cut short a performance in because of ill health. He briefly visited a hospital then was found dead in his room at the Prince Monti Motel in New Orleans on January 15. The cause of death was bronchial pneumonia, which had followed a liver ailment. He was buried in Los Angeles.

Downloaded from www.CherryClassics.com Please respect the rights of our composers & arrangers HIGH TONE PRINCIPLES The studies in this book are designed to assist in the 3. For high tone frequencies, the opening between the extension of a performer's range. Note that they are all lips must be made smaller and ihe vibrating portion of the lips should ·be thinned by compression. progressively arranged on each page. Each group of studies 4. In playing high tones, the air stream must be pro­ must be- mastered in a logical fashion before proceeding to pelled with greater speed and compression. · It must be the next group. The following suggestions will aid materially remembered that quantity of breath determines volume and in deriving the greatest possible benefits in each practice does not materially assist in the p~aying of high tones. session: 5. The tongue should be arched within the mouth more and more as the higher tones are approached. Whistle a low tone - now whistle an upward slur and observe the 1. Do not force or strain at any time. Rest frequently. manner in which the middle of the tongue arches toward the 2. Just as an athlete warms up before a contest, so roof of the mouth. For the low tones, the tongue is flat in must a brau player prepare the lip muscles for each playing the mouth, while for the high tones, the tongue is in the posi­ session. The studies on this page should be played each tion for pronouncing the syllable "tee". day before any of the following page units of study are aHempted.

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2 Ex. 1 -7- High Tone Preparatory Studies

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Numbers over notes designate proper trombone positions.

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Ex. 8 - 14- Studies for high G# and A 3 8 Also ava ---- ::::... ::::... 2' t " I e I " I e I " I " I r r " II f-==--==- =---==- -===--==- =---==- =-- ===-- ::::...

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Ex. 15-28- Studies for high A and 8~

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Moderato Studies for high A and Bb 5 · i·~u t n ff fE []). If E1 ftfli1 - I

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6 Ex. 29- ~5- Studies for high B and C

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8 Ex. 46-51- Studies for high D and ph-:-asing Not too fast

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