Teddy Weatherford

Theodore Weatherford (born October 11, 1903 in Pocahontas , West Virginia , †  April 25, 1945 in Calcutta ) was an American pianist of the swing of the stride piano style.

Teddy Weatherford was born in Pocahontas, Virginia and grew up in neighboring Bluefield, West Virginia . From 1915 to 1920 he lived in New Orleans , where he learned to play jazz piano. Then he moved to Chicago and worked there with the bands of Erskine Tate , Louis Armstrong and Johnny Dodds . He was a role model for the young Earl Hines .

Weatherford later emigrated from the United States, moving first to Amsterdam , then to Asia, where he worked as a pianist in Calcutta in 1926. In 1929 he played in Shanghai . In the early 1930s he led a band at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay . He also played in Cricket Smith's Band in Jakarta . In 1937 he took over the leadership of this band in Ceylon (today Sri Lanka ), in the same year recordings were made in Paris for the Swing label . At the beginning of the 1940s he had his own band in Calcutta, where he also made radio recordings for the Armed Forces Radio Service . Musicians such as Bridget Althea Moe , Jimmy Witherspoon , Roy Butler and Gery Scott played in his band . In 1942, eight titles were written in India for EMI / Columbia, four with bass / drum accompaniment and four with octets. Teddy Weatherford died of cholera at the age of only 41.

Lexigraphic entry

• Carlo Bohländer , Karl Heinz Holler: Reclams Jazzführer (= Reclams Universal Library. No. 10185). 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 1977, ISBN 3-15-010185-9 .