Norma Teagarden
Norma Louise Teagarden ( born April 28, 1911 in Vernon, Texas; † 5 June 1996) was an American jazz pianist.
Life and work
Norma Teagarden was born in a small village on the border of Texas to Oklahoma. She came from a musical family where everyone played an instrument and the mother of Helen Teagarden gave music lessons to the children. One of her brothers was the trombonist Jack Teagarden ( her other brothers were the trumpeter Charlie and the drummer Clois " Cub " Teagarden ). Norma Teagarden learned next to the piano playing the violin at first. After the death of his father due to the flu they moved in 1918 to relatives in Chappell, Nebraska. To 1926, she began playing professionally in Oklahoma City. After high school, she toured in 1928 with a band in New Mexico Territory, where it five years, among other things played at local dances such as the Lions Clubs. She then founded his own bands in Oklahoma and played with her brothers in New York and Chicago. In 1942, she moved to Los Angeles, where she led her own band and worked with Ivy Anderson. Late in 1943, she joined the big band of her brother Jack Teagarden and went with him to 1947 on tour, when he dissolved the band to connect to Louis Armstrong. In Long Beach ( California ) she founded her own jazz combo and began to give lessons. In 1949 she became a member of the band of Ada Leonard. Then she played in California with the bands of Ben Pollack, Matty Matlock, Ted Vesley, Pete Daily and Ray Verduc before she played from 1952 to 1955 again with her brother in Los Angeles.
In 1955 she married the businessman John Friedlander and left the band. 1957 the couple moved to San Francisco, where she sang in the New Orleans jazz revival scene played with Turk Murphy, Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Condon, Jimmy McPartland, Edmond Hall, Leonard Feather, Dick Cary, Carl Kress, Kenny Davern and Walter Page. In 1963, she played with her mother Helen ( with which they otherwise occurred frequently and with her a piano school operation) and her brothers Charlie and Jack at the Monterey Jazz Festival; This appearance has been well documented with photographs. In the 1970s, she was constantly invited to the Sacramento Jazz Festival and in 1983 she became the " Empress " of the 10.Dixieland Jazz Festival in Sacramento. Norma Teagarden was active until shortly before her death from cancer - she played regularly on Wednesday evenings in the Washington Square Bar and Grill, North Beach, San Francisco. Since the 1940s, i.a. increased on with her brother and also be heard in the " Town Hall Concerts" by Eddie Condon (1944). Under his own name she took on in the Netherlands and in 1977 at the Bix Beiderbecke Festival.
In 1980 she received the Award of Merit from San Francisco. In 1973 she received an honorary doctorate from the London Institute for Applied Research.