Frank Teschemacher

Frank Teschemacher (* 13. March 1906 in Kansas City , † 1. March 1932 in Chicago ) was an American White Jazz - clarinetist played traditional jazz in the Chicago style. In addition to the clarinet, he played several other instruments (banjo, violin, saxophone, piano).

Life

Teschemacher grew up as the youngest of three children in the affluent Austin suburb of Chicago, where the family moved in 1912 (father was a railroad employee). He first took piano lessons, taught himself to play the banjo, and learned the violin before switching to alto saxophone at Austin High School. As a member of the " Austin High School Gang ", young musicians who came together along the lines of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings , he played in their Blue Friars Band (named after the speakeasy Friar’s Inn , where the Rhythm Kings played). Also present were Jimmy McPartland and his brother Dick, Bud Freeman , Dave Tough , Jim Lanigan and pianist Dave North . There Teschemacher switched to the clarinet, which Freeman brought him closer. In 1923 they played under the name Husk O'Hare's Wolverines and Teschemacher left school to devote himself entirely to his jazz career. He worked with numerous bands in dance halls and amusement parks (such as with Wingy Manone ) and took part in the famous recordings (for Okeh) of McKenzie and Condons Chicagoans in 1927. In 1928 he made his first recordings under his own name at Brunswick ( Frank Teschemacher's Chicagoans ). In the same year he married (the marriage was divorced again in 1930) and he went to New York City for six months , where he played in the bands of the Dorsey brothers, Ben Pollack , Red Nichols , Miff Mole and Don Redman played. From 1929 to 1930 he played again mostly in Chicago, where in the midst of the Depression he also played and arranged violin in Jan Garber's dance orchestra . In 1930 recordings were made with the successor orchestra of the Rhythm Kings (Frank Schoebel's Friar Society Orchestra), Ted Lewis and Wingy Manone's Club Royal Orchestra. In 1931 he worked in the Benny Meroff Orchestra, where he met the trumpeter Wild Bill Davison , with whom he founded his own big band the following year. On a wintry drive with Davison back from band rehearsals at 2 a.m., her car was rammed into the side of an unlit taxi. The car crashed into a tree and Davison and Teschemacher were thrown over the windshield. Teschemacher suffered a severe fractured skull and died a little later in hospital - 12 days before his 26th birthday. Davison got off lightly, but was so badly hit that he left Chicago shortly afterwards.

Stylistically, Teschemacher - together with Pee Wee Russell of the same age, whom he influenced in his development - is an example of the typical Chicago-style clarinet playing, which, compared to the New Orleans style, is characterized by a more free harmonics, erratic and irregular, from contemporaries The phrasing is sometimes referred to as “crazy” and is characterized by an idiosyncratic tone (with squeaky, croaking, often deliberately played below the correct pitch). Clear echoes of Teschemacher and Russell can still be heard in the play, especially of the young Benny Goodman, before the influence of Jimmie Noone comes to the fore. When listening to clarinetists and especially bass clarinetists from the hard bop and free jazz area, one can feel more or less clear reminiscences of the "impressionistic" Teschemaker-Russell style of playing, whereby the "cool" late work of Pee Wee Russell is probably a direct historical connection.

Web links

• Teschemacher at Redhotjazz by Mike Donovan

Individual evidence

1. ↑ sometimes also written Teschemaker