 
Chester Rosson (May 1997) One of the giants of the jazz piano, Teddy Wilson enjoyed a universal respect from his peers and lived to become an elder statesman of jazz. Wilson taught piano at the Juilliard School of Music from 1945 to 1952 and toured internationally with the best of his generation of musicians into the eighties. In a style most often described as "elegant" and "refined," Wilson created some of the absolute masterpieces of jazz, working with such greats as Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Lester Young, and Benny Carter. Texans cannot resist listing Teddy Wilson among their favorite sons, for he was born in Austin, although his mother and father (librarian and teacher, respectively) took him with them to Tuskegee, Alabama, when he was six. At Tuskegee Institute Teddy Wilson studied piano and violin and played clarinet and oboe in the band. Like so many other black musicians who left Texas when they came of age, Wilson, too, left Alabama at the age of 17 to pursue a career in the North. By 1929 Wilson was in Detroit, apprenticing with Speed Webb. By 1931 he had moved to Chicago, where he found work with the likes of Erskine Tate, Jimmie Noone, and Louis Armstrong. On a 1933 visit to Chicago, jazz fan and empresario John Hammond heard Wilson play and urged him to move to New York, to join Benny Carter's band. The legacy of these New York days live on in classic early recordings accompanying Billie Holiday. In 1936 Wilson began touring with Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa in the Benny Goodman Trio. Eager to try his hand at running his own big band, Wilson left Goodman in 1939 and struggled for a year before cutting back to a sextet. CBS studios recorded some of his most memorable sessions in the forties and fifties--both with the sextet and in the trio format. Critics also praise his 1956 recordings with Lester Young and his 1980 "Gentlemen of Swing" recording wtih Benny Carter as highlights of a long and vigorous career. |
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