Buckner, Teddy

John Edward Buckner. "Teddy" Buckner, Trumpet

b. Sherman, TX, USA. 1909

d. Sept 22, 1994.

by arwulf arwulf

Trumpeter Teddy Buckner was a Louis Armstrong devotee whose passion for New Orleans styled jazz and swing took him around the world during a career that spanned more than six decades. He was distantly related to the St. Louis based Buckner family that produced pianist/organist Milt, trumpeter George, as well as saxophonist and Motown session man Ted Buckner. John Edward "Teddy" Buckner was born in Sherman, TX, north of Dallas, on July 16, 1909. Buckner spent five years as a child in Silver City, NM. An uncle taught him to handle drumsticks and play the ukulele; he also studied the trumpet with Harold Scott, a member of the brass section in the Louis Armstrong Orchestra. When he was 15 years old Buckner worked with bandleaders Buddy Garcia and "Big Six" Reeves, then headed for Los Angeles where his trumpet was heard in ensembles led by Sonny Clay, Curtis Mosby, Sylvester Scott, Speed Webb, and Edith Turnham.

When in 1934 trumpeter Buck Clayton assumed leadership of an orchestra formerly led by Earl Dancer, pianist Teddy Weatherford arranged for the 14-piece ensemble (which included Buckner) to sail for Shanghai, China for a lengthy residency at the Canidrome Ballroom. Within a year Buckner had returned to California and was working with Irwin C. Miller's Brownskin Models Revue (an organization fated to play a role in the career of R&B vocalist Larry Darnell) and pianist Lorenzo Flennoy. Buckner was hired by Lionel Hampton in 1936, gigged with Hamp's orchestra at the Paradise Club in Los Angeles and assumed leadership of the band while the vibraphonist devoted more of his time to working with Benny Goodman.

Teddy Buckner appeared in a number of motion pictures during the 1930s and '40s. Most famously he stood in for Louis Armstrong in Pennies from Heaven and appeared with Fats Waller in King of Burlesque (both films date from 1936). Before, during and after the Second World War he was a member of the Benny Carter Orchestra, sat in with Johnny Otis, fortified a band led by singing drummer Cee Pee Johnson, and gigged with the Solid Blenders Sextet. Buckner's intensive years with trombonist Kid Ory (1949-1954) initiated a return to old-fashioned jazz that would characterize the rest of his career. In 1954 he formed his own small Dixieland band, deliberately hiring some of the best traditional jazz and swing players in the world, including clarinetist Edmond Hall, drummer J.C. Heard, clarinetist Albert Nicholas, pianist Sammy Price, and trombonist Trummy Young. He also recorded with trombonist George Brunis in 1954 and was visible and audible during Jack Webb's film Pete Kelly's Blues the following year.

During one week in July 1958 Buckner performed with soprano saxophonist and clarinetist Sidney Bechet at the Salle Wagram in Paris, at the Festival de Jazz 1958 in Knokke-le-Zout, Belgium and at the Cannes Jazz Festival. For more than 25 years, Teddy Buckner's jazz band played to enthusiastic crowds at nightclubs including the 400 Club and the Beverly Caverns in Los Angeles and The Huddle in West Covina. He enjoyed a lengthy run of employment as leader of a Dixieland band at Disneyland from 1965-1981 and passed way in Los Angeles on September 22, 1994.

Teddy Buckner's obituary by Steve Voce :

Saturday, 15 October 1994

John Edward 'Teddy' Buckner, trumpeter: born Sherman, Texas 16 July 1909; died Los Angeles 22 September 1994.

'HE was capable of playing almost anything,' wrote Digby Fairweather of the trumpeter Teddy Buckner. When Buckner burst upon the traditional jazz scene in Los Angeles in 1949 he changed the rules.

His first job was with Speed Webb's band during the Twenties, but he soon moved to the West Coast. He already had such power and technique that he could more or less choose his jobs. His style was based firmly on that of Louis Armstrong and, unlike some of the more imaginative trumpeters like Red Allen or Rex Stewart, he never found it necessary to develop his playing away from Armstrong's.

In 1934 he was part of the ground-breaking band which the trumpeter Buck Clayton led to China for a year. At the time Buckner was a more advanced player than Clayton. When Clayton's job fell through and left the musicians stranded in Shanghai, Buckner was one of the few who had put by enough money for his return fare. In 1936 he worked as Armstrong's stand-in in the film Pennies From Heaven. That same year he took over the leadership of Lionel Hampton's band when Hampton left the West Coast. During the Forties he worked for many leaders including Fats Waller and Gerald Wilson before he rejoined Hampton's band where - in the middle of what was virtually a bebop band - he insisted on playing a feature in Armstrong's style. He also worked regularly with the smooth and highly skilled Benny Carter band.

In 1949, when work with Carter became thin, Buckner left and joined the New Orleans-styled band of the veteran trombonist Kid Ory. Buckner, a schooled big- band veteran, was a most unlikely candidate for the job with Ory, but Ory's clarinettist saw his possibilities and persuaded Ory to give the trumpeter a hearing. Stylistically the move was a retrograde step for the extrovert Buckner. It was the end of his big-band career but his years in Dixieland which followed made him a lot of money.

Ory's band was an institution; hallowed ground to traditionalist followers. Its style followed the gentle, relaxed New Orleans manner, or at least it did until Buckner erupted inside it. He brought the show-boating side of Louis Armstrong to the music and the original New Orleans style of the band was immediately coarsened and the delicate ensembles lost. But Ory was never one to turn away from an easy dollar and he rode the tide of swelling audiences with some satisfaction. However, Buckner made some splendid records with Ory and on Blues for Jimmy No One (1951) showed himself capable of controlled and deeply felt emotion in the vernacular.

When the clarinettist Joe Darensbourg left Ory to form his own band, Buckner went with him, and it was only a short time before Buckner too formed a group of his own, which Darensbourg joined.

In 1965 Buckner took on the grinding, but remunerative, work of leading the regular band at Disneyland and his flashy technique meant that he continued to be called on, as he had been from the Thirties onwards, to take parts in Hollywood films. His work was particularly notable in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955) and Louis Armstrong: Chicago Style (1975). Buckner led his bands on the West Coast through the Eighties with overweight and high blood pressure restricting his abilities to tour.

(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-teddy-buckner-1443091.html)