The Impeccable Teddy Wilson

Steven A. Cerra
Monday, February 15, 2016
At time time of its publication in the January 22, 1959 edition of Down Beat magazine, Tom Scanlan, was 34 and  best known for his column Jazz Music, a weekly feature that he had contributed for six years to the Army Times, the international newspaper for the army. After three years in the army during World War II, he attended George Washington University where he received his master's degree in English literature in 1951. He had been associate editor of the Army Times for seven years. He plays guitar "as a hobby." 

Tom Scanlan’s interview with Teddy Wilson not only underscores Teddy’s importance in the pantheon of Jazz Piano Gods along with Earl “Fatha” Hines, James P. Johnson, Fats Waller and Art Tatum, but it also serves to highlight Teddy’s honesty and integrity both as a musician and as a person of character.

For example, Teddy doesn’t hesitate to politely dismiss vocalist Billie Holiday’s autobiography - Lady Sings The Blues - as little more than a charade, nor is he willing to overlook the technical limitations in the “current” crop of pianists.

Interestingly, pianist Bill Evans had not become an influential force in early 1959; Teddy makes no reference to him during the interview, although he would contribute a track to the double LP Tribute to Bill Evans that Palo Alto Records compiled the year after Bill’s death in 1980.

Teddy was also a keen observer of what made certain Jazz musicians so special as is attested to by his opinions about what made Art Tatum, Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman so great.

A quiet and humble man who rarely called attention to his own talents or contributions, this piece by Tom Scanlan is an important document about one of the greatest Jazz pianists in the history of the music.


In my opinion, Teddy’s only “failing” was that he made it all sound too easy.

“Hundreds of pianists have tried to create something new and worthwhile in jazz piano improvisation, but only a handful have succeeded. One who has is Teddy Wilson.

Surely, if a responsible list of the half-dozen or so most creative and most influential pianists in jazz history were to be made, Wilson would be included. He is one of the giants of jazz piano; the number of pianists he has influenced, directly or indirectly, is beyond estimation.


It often has been said that Wilson's distinctive and highly original manner of playing was influenced primarily by Earl Hines, but Wilson himself will disagree. "Art Tatum," Teddy said.

read more: http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com.br/2016/02/the-impeccable-teddy-wilson.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+JazzProfiles+(Jazz+Profiles)

100 Years Of Don Byas And Teddy Wilson

by PATRICK JARENWATTANANON

This fall marks the centennial birthday anniversaries of two all-time great improvisers, pianist Teddy Wilson and tenor saxophonist Don Byas. Born about a month apart in 1912, they're both revered by those who familiar with jazz prior to the LP era. They swung madly; they had sparkling rhythmic command; they prioritized melodic finesse and warmth.

They didn't collaborate a ton, but they certainly traveled in similar orbits. So I thought it worth considering them as peers. And like many fellow greats, they tend to crop up at many trend-setting junctures in history. Here are a few of them.

1912: Don Byas was born in Muskogee, Okla. Teddy Wilson was born in Austin, Texas (and grew up in Tuskegee, Ala.).

1933: Wilson moves to New York City, joining the Chocolate Dandies, a band led by pioneering saxophonist, trumpeter and composer-arranger Benny Carter. Previously, he had been working in Chicago, including with Louis Armstrong.

1935: Wilson joins clarinetist and big-bandleader Benny Goodman's small group. Goodman was a teen idol at the time, making this the first racially integrated touring band of prominence: Wilson and vibraphonist Lionel Hampton were black, and Goodman and drummer Gene Krupa were white.

1937: Byas moves to New York City. Within years, his first big break comes when he's hired to replace Lester Young in the Count Basie Orchestra.

1940: Wilson and Byas appear together on a Billie Holiday recording session on Sept. 12, resulting in four tunes. Wilson had already been working with Holiday for years, their careers blooming together.

Read more on: http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2012/11/26/165596190/100-years-of-don-byas-and-teddy-wilson

Teddy Wilson....

Theodore Shaw "Teddy" Wilson (November 24, 1912 – July 31, 1986) was a jazz pianist from the United States born in Austin, Texas. His sophisticated and elegant style graced the records of many of the biggest names in jazz, including Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. He is considered one of the most influential jazz pianists of all time.

Wilson studied piano and violin at Tuskegee Institute. After working in the Lawrence "Speed" Webb band, with Louis Armstrong and also "understudying" Earl Hines in Hines's Grand Terrace Cafe Orchestra, Wilson joined Benny Carter's Chocolate Dandies in 1933. In 1935 he joined the Benny Goodman Trio (which consisted of Goodman, Wilson and drummer Gene Krupa, later expanded to the Benny Goodman Quartet with the addition of Lionel Hampton). The trio performed during the big band's intermissions. By joining the trio, Wilson became the first black musician to perform in public with a previously all-white jazz group.

The noted jazz writer and producer John Hammond was instrumental in getting Wilson a contract with Brunswick, starting in 1935, to record hot swing arrangements of the popular songs of the day, with the growing jukebox trade in mind. He recorded fifty hit records with various singers such as Lena Horne and Helen Ward, including many of Billie Holiday's greatest successes. During these years he also took part in many highly regarded sessions with a wide range of important swing musicians, such as Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, Charlie Shavers, Red Norvo, Buck Clayton and Ben Webster.

Wilson formed his own short-lived big band in 1939, then led a sextet at Cafe Society from 1940 to 1944. He was dubbed the "Marxist Mozart" by Howard "Stretch" Johnson due to his support for left-wing causes – he performed in benefit concerts for The New Masses journal and for Russian War Relief, and chaired the Artists' Committee to elect Benjamin J. Davis.[1] In the 1950s he taught at the Juilliard School. Wilson can be seen appearing as himself in the motion picture The Benny Goodman Story (1955).

Wilson lived quietly in suburban Hillsdale, NJ in the 1960s and 1970s. He performed as a soloist, and with pick-up groups until the final years of his life. Teddy Wilson died on July 31, 1986.
http://www.wikipedia.com/

Wilson was the most important pianist of the swing period. His early recordings reveal a percussive style, with single-note lines and bold staccatos, that was indebted to Earl Hines; but by the time of his first performances with Goodman he had fashioned a distinctive legato idiom that served him for the rest of his career. Wilson's style was based on the use of conjunct 10ths in the left hand; by emphasizing the tenor voice and frequently omitting the root of the chord until the end of the phrase he created great harmonic refinement and contrapuntal interest.

For the right hand he adapted Hines' "trumpet" style, playing short melodic fragments in octaves, frequently separated by rests and varied with fleet, broken-chord passage work. He used the full range of the piano, often changing register or texture to underscore formal divisions. His poised, restrained manner and transparent textures are especially evident on his solo recordings from the late 1930s, which served as models for countless pianists in the late swing period. From 1940 Wilson's playing became somewhat florid, with frequent pentatonic passage work, but he retained his basic approach and prowess into the 1980s. http://www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_wilson_teddy.htm

Teddy Wilson - The Sheik of Araby