Category: video

Jack Teagarden Documentary

The documentary has been on YouTube since late 2021, and recounts the story of one the most universally revered and beloved jazz musicians, Jack Teagarden. Importantly, this documentary work on Big Tea — now so easily and freely available — would absolutely not exist without the work of the late Joe Showler*, the Canadian record collector who exhaustively documented nearly every day of Teagarden’s career.

Related links here at Commander Trombone:

**In the middle 90s, when I was working on a master’s thesis paper on Jack Teagarden, Joe Showler was of extremely kind (and indispensable) help.

Dizzy and the Group on Jazz 625, 1966

Dizzy Gillespie’s 1966 group, featuring James Moody (saxes, flute), Kenny Barron (piano), Christopher Wesley White (bass), and Rudy Collins (drums), on the BBC’s Jazz 625 program. The show was hosted by Humphrey Lyttelton. The previous year, the same group played the 3/27/65 Charlie Parker Memorial concert at Carnegie Hall. Here as there, Diz and the band are in great form.

A few years earlier, Dizzy ran for president of the United States — you’ll see an audience member with one of the Dizzy Gillespie for President balloons.