Promotional still shot from the film Jazz On A Summer’s Day. He’d unfold this chest and set it up in front of the band on stage like a podium and it would have his suits and ties all hidden behind a panel.” Jack had it rigged out as a suitcase too, for his shirts and his suits, and his toiletries and his shoes. “My father played saxophone and clarinet with Teagarden’s band for awhile and told me Jack invented this special trunk to carry his horn, his music and his mutes and it was designed to double as his music stand on stage. On our radio show, Jack’s sister Norma recalls the special, high-powered fans he built for the bandstand before air conditioning, and the battery-driven headlamp Jack invented in the 40s, so he could read on the band bus at night.īandleader Jim Cullum tells this anecdote he heard from his father, Jim Cullum, Sr. He machined his own mouthpieces and was even a bit of an inventor. He’d pull apart the engine in the band bus just for the fun of it, and stay up all night putting it back together. Jack Teagarden loved machinery of all kinds-almost as much as he loved music. Late in life, when Jack flew in an airplane, musicians traveling with him reported he could pinpoint how many RPMs the engine made- and what key it was in. You might think these tales are a product of the boastful storytelling popular in his native state Texas, but many are verifiable. They say his ear was so good that at the age of five, he could call the overtones in a thunderclap.
He carried a tuning fork with him wherever he performed, and between sets he would tune up the piano on stage so it wouldn’t drive him crazy. The story goes that Jack Teagarden had absolutely perfect pitch and couldn’t stand to hear a piano out of tune. Peck is fifth from the left, Pee Wee Russell and Jack Teagarden are to the right of him.
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