`He Does These Things in a Gloved Way'

By now, the sun is setting and street lights are coming on as I’m driving home from work. This, for me, is the perfect time for music. I’m in no hurry and I’m obliged only to drive with care. The cumulative weariness of the day is lulling and I am, briefly, alone. Early in the week I listened to the recordings Pablo Casals made almost 70 years ago of Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites. Now it’s The Complete Capitol Fifties Jack Teagarden Sessions, a four-disc set from Mosaic Records

Auden once described poetry as “memorable speech,” a phrase which suggests the ingratiating quality of Teagarden’s trombone and voice. He “talks” with both instruments without raising the volume. The artifice of casual hipness is utterly convincing. Teagarden’s voice is not conventionally pretty or refined. It’s the voice of a tired American working stiff of uncertain race, with perfect pitch, an infallible rhythmic sense and a gift for intimating a bottomless reservoir of emotions, from exaltation to despair. In “Big T,” his profile of Teagarden, Whitney Balliett writes:

“His singing, a distillation of his playing, formed a kind of aureole around it. He had a light baritone, which moved easily behind the beat. The rare consonants he used sounded like vowels, and his vowels were all puréed. His vocals were lullabies – lay-me-down-to-sleep patches of sound.”

To view a video of Teagarden performing “Stars Fell on Alabama” (music by Frank Perkins, lyrics by Mitchell Parish) go here. For another, of Teagarden and Louis Armstrong having a wonderful time with Hoagy Carmichael’s “Rocking Chair,” go here.

Some of the cuts on the Mosaic collection are over-produced and strictly commercial, but none is tedious and all are worth hearing. A series of pop spirituals – “Ezekiel Saw the Wheel,” “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho” and such – are accompanied by a cornball vocal group, The Five Keys, but Teagarden lends a blues tint to almost every number. He’s having a good time but melancholy peeks through the well-oiled technical mastery (check out his vocal on that warhorse “St. James Infirmary”). Teagarden was born in 1905, in Vernon, Texas (also the birthplace of Roy Orbison), and was a professional musician as a teenager. He was hard-drinking, beloved and hapless. He married four times. By the time he recorded the Capitol sessions, he was ill and on a forced march through middle age. Not long before Teagarden’s death – alone, in a New Orleans hotel -- Balliett wrote in The New Yorker:

“A tall, handsomely constructed man, Teagarden has a square, rocky, Indian face (he is of Germanic descent), topped by black, patent-leather hair, and a casual, smiling demeanor. (Once, asked why he slept so much, replied that, like most Southerners, he was a slow sleeper.) His trombone style is chiefly marked by a nasal, bright-gray tone and an apparent insouciance which conceals iron principles. It is a unique style, which has not changed, except for steady but microscopic refinements, for nearly three decades. Indeed, it is impossible to think of a poor Teagarden vocal or solo…His reluctance to rant and weep in public made Teagarden one of the few genuinely cool jazz musicians. When he leaves the middle range, uses a vibrato, alters his volume, or fashions a coda, he does these things in a gloved way. The results are painless, graceful, and never slick.”

No one deployed adjectives to better effect than Balliett, and “gloved” is a precise characterization of any artist given to strategies of understatement and misdirection. One thinks of Chekhov, but the writer I’ve always linked to Teagarden is Sherwood Anderson, who shares his unhurried pace. Both suggest molasses in January, and share a country boy/city slicker split in their sensibilities, but Teagarden is the deeper artist. Here’s Balliett again, on Teagarden’s singing, which I rank second only Armstrong’s for pure pleasure:

“Teagarden’s superlative singing is a direct extension of this coolness. Although his baritone voice, which has deepened considerably in the past ten years, is strikingly close to his trombone, it is smoother and almost completely legato in style. Indeed, Teagarden’s slurred, rubbing delivery of lyrics suggests that he is trying to abolish consonants in favor of a new, vowels-only language. At the same time, his singing has both the unobtrusive amiability of a Bing Crosby and a singular behind-the-beat jazz intensity. He neither moans nor shouts; instead, he undersings, flattering the ear and forcing one to listen.”

Again, lessons for any artist. Richard Sudhalter, author of the invaluable Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, wrote the notes for the Mosaic release. He quotes Don Goldie, a trumpeter who played with Teagarden from 1959 to 1963:

“It may be odd to say it this way, but I always got the feeling that a lot of happiness was locked away inside Jack, really padlocked, and never came out. Not that he had a chip on his shoulder – far from it. Nothing like it. He never said an unkind word in my presence about anyone. Just this feeling of sadness. It was always there.”

But the happiness did come out, though not unmixed with quiet sorrow. Listen to the jokey joyousness of “Fare Thee Well to Harlem” and “Aunt Hagar’s Childrens Blues.” For me, the buried treasure in the 75-song Capitol collection is “While We’re Young,” one of Alec Wilder’s finest compositions. As arranged by Sid Fellar and performed by Teagarden and the band, the piece takes on the small-scale splendor of chamber music. My only disappointment is Teagarden failure to sing William Engvick’s lyrics, which I’ll include here for their beauty and for their resonance with Teagarden’s life and work, and ours:

“Songs were made to sing
while we’re young.
Ev’ry day is spring
while young.

“None can refuse,
time flies so fast,
too dear to lose
and too sweet to last.

“Though it may be
just for today
share our love we must
while we may.

“So blue the skies,
all sweet surprise
shines before our eyes
while we’re young.”