Teddy Weatherford
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Teddy Weatherford (11 October 1903 – 25 April 1945) was a jazz pianist, an accomplished stride pianist.
Weatherford was born in Pocahontas, Virginia and was raised in neighboring Bluefield, West Virginia. From 1915 through 1920 he lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he learned to play jazz piano. He then moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he worked with such bands as that of Erskine Tate[1] through the 1920s and with such jazz notables as Louis Armstrong and Johnny Dodds and impressed the young Earl Hines.
Weatherford then traveled, first to Amsterdam, then around Asia playing professionally. In the early 1930s he led a band at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. He joined Cricket Smith's band in Jakarta, Indonesia. Weatherford took over leadership of Smith's band in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1937.
During World War II, he led a band in Calcutta,[2] where he made radio broadcasts for the U. S. Armed Forces Radio Service. Performers with Weatherford's band included Bridget Althea Moe, Jimmy Witherspoon, Roy Butler and Gery Scott. Teddy Weatherford died of cholera in Calcutta, aged 41.
References
- ^ "AllMusic biography of Teddy Weatherford" http://www.allmusic.com/artist/teddy-weatherford-p273507/biography
- ^ Brendan I. Koerner, Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier's Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World War II, at 158 (The Penguin Press 2008).
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
- Stride pianists
- Swing pianists
- African-American musicians
- American jazz pianists
- Deaths from cholera
- People from Tazewell County, Virginia
- People from Bluefield, West Virginia
- 1903 births
- 1945 deaths
- Infectious disease deaths in India
- Musicians from Virginia
- 20th-century pianists
- 20th-century American musicians