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The Trombone |
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poraries who remember him, was the harbinger of the modem era of the trombone. He was Jimmy Harrison, bora in Louisville and raised in Detroit, dead at the age of 30 in 1931. Harrison lent the instrument a warm, glowing sound, with a vibrato of unprecedented finesse; his range was extraordinary and it was said that at times he was mistaken for a second cometist.
Kaiser Marshall recalled, in Hear Me Talkirf to Ya} that Jimmy Harrison was a good friend of another trombonist with whom there was a frequent interchange of ideas, and that sometimes there would be jam sessions at Marshall's house with Coleman Hawkins on tenor sax, Kaiser on a rubber pad that he used as a substitute for drums, and Hawkins and the two trombonists taking turns at the piano. The second trombonist, a big, easy-going youngster who had arrived in 1927 after working around the Middle West, was Jack Teagarden.
In any genealogical tree of the jazz trombone family, Tea-garden would have to be listed as a blood brother of Jimmy Harrison, for his style had much more in common with Jimmy's than with that of "MifF Mole or any of the white trombonists from whom he might normally have been expected to derive his influence. Though he has never been heard to deliver, machine-gun style, a bombardment of sixteenth notes in the manner associated with such modernists as Jimmy Cleveland, Teagarden is credited unanimously by fellow musicians with an extraordinary technique and staying power, a tone that is unmistakably his own, and a style that varies from the earthiest of blues— generally considered his forte—to such technically challenging items as Lover, which he plays allegro risoluto without ever running out of breath or ideas.
J. C. Higginbotham was the supreme example of the trombone as shock treatment in big band jazz. His forceful gutbucket style, with its powerful tone and attack, were best known as a feature of the Luis Russell band in 1928-31 and later in the '30s with Fletcher Henderson, Lucky Millinder and Louis Armstrong. Working in a small group with Red Allen, Higginbotham retained his popularity with both fans and musicians through the early '40s, when he won several polls, He has been in comparative obscurity for the past decade. |
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