[78-L] Teddy Grace - interesting piece"piiinched"from another group

[david.diehl at hensteeth.com]

This is all pretty much a rehash of McCain's liner notes for the 1993 Timeless CD
http://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Historical-Presents-Teddy-1937-1940/dp/B000025YNI
The rest has appeared on HEP
http://www.allmusic.com/album/turn-on-that-red-hot-heat-mw0000605621
 DJD

Visit the Blue Pages: the Encyclopedic Guide to 78 RPM Party Records
http://www.hensteeth.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Biel [mailto:mbiel at mbiel.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2013 05:43 PM
To: '78-L Mail List'
Subject: Re: [78-L] Teddy Grace - interesting piece "pinched" from another	group

WOW! I had never heard of her until I was doing my anti-Steinweissalbum cover research and came across her Decca listings in the catalogs. I had no idea about her until I was photographing albums in R&H andthere was her album, Decca 59, with her photo on the booklet -- thealbum cover was all art deco graphics. The cover and the booklet arenot on the web, but this is the photo that was used for the booklet. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5iY8q82MAvQ/Ucshk-mb1NI/AAAAAAAAG7o/xQIFer3oZO4/s320/Teddy+Grace.jpgThere are other photos in the blog with her bio. http://fromthevaults-boppinbob.blogspot.com/2013/06/teddy-grace-born-26-june-1905.htmlMike Biel mbiel at mbiel.com -------- Original Message --------Subject: Re: [78-L] Teddy Grace - interesting piece "pinched" fromanother groupFrom: Dan Van Landingham Date: Thu, August 22, 2013 5:38 pmTo: 78-L Mail List <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>In that batch of 78s I bought back in 1994 at the Sunset Automatic MusicCompany in Coos Bay,Oregon,I saw a couple of Teddy Grace recordingsissued on American Decca.I didn't know who she was.I was much morefamiliar with Al Bowlly,Ray Noble and Harry Roy,the latter I had on oneBritish Decca 78 I bought at a Salvation Army thrift store in CoosBay,Oregon for around $.20 back in 1969("Barrel House Boogie"/"Steppin'Out At Midnight(I think-the center of the record was worn out).It was agreat record-for a British band it really swung as opposed to LewStone's band.I had "Tiger Rag" which was corny but "Canadian Capers,thereverse was good.The Harry Roy side I wore out.I'd love to find more. ________________________________ From: Ron L'Herault To: '78-L Mail List' <78-l at klickitat.78online.com> Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2013 1:54 PMSubject: Re: [78-L] Teddy Grace - interesting piece "pinched" fromanother group That is a marvelous read. Time to revisit Teddy Grace!Ron L-----Original Message-----From: 78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com[mailto:78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com] On Behalf Of NigelBurlinsonSent: Thursday, August 22, 2013 4:36 PMTo: 78-l at klickitat.78online.comSubject: [78-L] Teddy Grace - interesting piece "pinched" from anothergroup'Teddy Grace Once lost, now found' The Oxford American Issue 58 Ninth Annual Southern Music Issue, 2007 Teddy Grace Once lost, now found. By Derek Jenkins Compensating for a lack of natural range with a buoyant yodel, she sangnotquite like a bird-more like a bird in flight and low to the ground,liltingand dipping and unpredictable, guided by an exhilarating force or chasedalong by unseen troubles. Cut loose from any bodily anchor, resonant andspectral, her agonizing shallows and abrupt swells haunted any listenerfortunate enough to stumble upon a loose 78 for almost half a century.Something not just in the words but in her phrasing signaled a worriedmind,hinted at a racially specific point of reference. She sounded black. Shemight well have been black. She went by Teddy Grace, and she became a byword among a certain stripeofjazz and blues enthusiast for being little more than a name under thetitle,and more often than not the name under the name under the title, spelledoutin that small type reserved for vocalists during the reign of theextravagantly arm-swinging bandleader. Her output was limited tofifty-threesides and spanned only a few years, but she recorded for Decca and withsomeof the premier artists of her era, including Dave Barbour, Bob Crosby,BillyKyle, Buster Bailey, and Jack Teagarden. Those relatively sparse,all-but-anonymous cuts, many your standard swing fare but some imbuedwith agenuine feeling for deep blues, kept the tiny gears of the recollectionmachine turning. For a long time, hers remained one more object lesson in how slipperyourpast really is, how different things had been before the advent of fullyintegrated media, how easily a singular talent could fall by thewayside,and to what extent even the most precious of human achievements could bereduced to mere remnants by cold and bloodless events. The music, soimmediate and lifelike but also disconnected and mysterious, took on allthesignificance of an apparition. Then somebody in the know, a kind of redemptive angel, laid eyes on heroneand only album, a collection of five 78s featuring ten of her bestrecordings, on the sleeve a capsule biography and an actual photograph.Teddy Grace turned out to be a privileged white woman from BienvilleParish,Louisiana. David W McCain is a born seeker. Raised in New Orleans, hispreoccupationhas long been collecting, digging up recordings by various femalevocalistslike Mildred Bailey, Lee Wiley, and Ethel Waters. A compulsiveexcavator, hehas the habit, familiar to obsessive's, of moving heaven and earth tofeedhis interests. As a young man, he turned a predilection for femalevocalistsinto a fondness for the Andrews Sisters into a love affair with theBoswellSisters into a full-scale investigation, rediscovering the youngest ofthelatter three, Helvetia "Vet" Boswell, and preserving her memories beforethey faded away for good. (He's currently writing a book on the Boswellswith her daughter, Chica Minnerly.) McCain attended college at Northeast Louisiana University for a while,andthen transferred to Northwestern in Natchitoches (right in Teddy Grace'sbackyard), where he received a BA in journalism and the research skillsthatcontinue to serve his life's pursuit. He drifted from job to job foryears,at one time training to be a court reporter. At thirty-six, he moved toNewYork. He slept on the couch of a friend until he landed stable officework.New York has no end of serious jazz and blues collectors, and McCainfell inwith a like-minded community. Somewhere along the way he came across Teddy Grace. He thinks the songwas"Alibi Baby," a track on a mix tape given to him by a fellow collector,nestled amongst a number of his treasured female vocalists. The musicwasgood enough, swing dressed up in blues by a riveting vocal performance,butthe story was great. She stayed in the back of his mind. He managed totrackdown some of her best performances, including the gravelly and acrobatic"Downhearted Blues" and its yearning B-side "Monday Morning," each ofwhichbrought his interest to a boil. A short time later he was on the phone with the woman who used to beTeddyGrace. That small biography on her record sleeve, woefully incomplete, reservedmost of the space for selling her peculiar ability to "sing like thecoloredpeople." It was the pre-Civil Rights equivalent of saying she'd spentsometime in prison. Her full name and hometown of Arcadia, Louisiana, gavehimenough to start with, though. McCain called the parish historian on theoff-chance of a local record. By some miracle, Teddy's younger brotherhadbeen in town only a week earlier for a high-school reunion. McCain foundhimself two phone calls away from the Southern California nursing homewherethe former Miss Grace was living out her days. The story she told himfilledin the blanks. She was born Stella Gloria Crowson in 1905, the penultimate of tensiblings:seven boys and three girls. Teddy always hated the name "Stella," andwasonly too happy to become Ted or Teddy when her baby brother couldn'tmanageher given name. Her father was a parish clerk, old-moneyed andimportant,and the inventor of a fraction-adding machine. Her mother was FrancesJames,a college graduate and dutiful wife. They lived on a forty-eight-acrepecanorchard. Her older sister received classical training on the piano from a blindinstructor named Elizabeth Garrett (the daughter of Pat Garrett, whoshotBilly the Kid), and Teddy maintained to her dying day that big sis wasthegreatest pianist she had ever heard. One of her brothers played thetrombone. While Teddy had no formal musical training, she could pick outsongs by ear at a very young age, and she made good use of a ukulelegivento her by an uncle. For her own instruction, she preferred to sneak outandclimb to the roof of the barn, where she could hear the family of herfather's "fetch and tote man," "Catlick" Johnson, sing black spiritualsandthe blues. For most of her formative years, she didn't have much to cry about.Then, atfourteen, the first in a series of misfortunes struck her family. Withindays of each other, her father and her mother died from a bad flu,leavingTeddy and her younger brother, the only siblings still at home,prematurelyadrift. Teddy was sent to Virginia to live with her namesake, StellaCox,but missed Louisiana too much to stay permanently. She returned toattendMansfield Female College and graduated at eighteen. Though she had lost her parents, Teddy didn't want for much. Now a youngwoman, she continued to enjoy the advantages of her class. Her brotherJohnwas an oil man in El Dorado, Arkansas, at a very good time to be an oilmanin El Dorado, Arkansas. She fondly recalled the "sophisticated life"-onetime meeting a handsomely renumerated Babe Ruth at a local event-andspending her weekends among social darlings on the Saline River. At hereighteenth-birthday party, she met George Grace, a recently divorced,extremely successful older man. They courted for a year, then Teddyacquiredher stage name and a big house in Montgomery, Alabama. She whiled away almost a decade in country-club comfort, drainingcocktailswith high society, prepping with the golfers' wives for a long anddistinguished career by the pool in the beating sun. Happily childless,often on the road with her traveling businessman of a husband, she mighthave spent the rest of her days singing the blues under her breath. Thensomebody caught her quietly singing along at a party where a band wasplaying a W.C. Handy number over a radio remote. I hate to see that evening sun go down, I hate to see that evening sungodown, 'Cause, my baby, he's gone left this town. Feelin' tomorrow like Ifeel today, If I'm feelin' tomorrow like I feel today, I'll pack mytruck,make my getaway. Teddy Grace was already twenty-six years old and well on her way to alifeof comfort and leisure when she accepted a fortuitous dare and sangthosewords into a microphone. The odd Bessie Smith fan in the crowd may haveheard them coming from miles off but they took the high and mighty ofMontgomery by surprise. Coming from a white woman, they opened a windowhadalways been nailed shut. The owner of the local radio station, WSFA,rushedto her side, followed closely by the owner of French's Piano Company,herfirst sponsor: She went on the air the very next day. McCain was able to piece together the story of her tumultuous careerusingGrace's recollections and the dusty work of pre-Internet research. Graceremained on WSFA for a couple of years before moving on to the largerWBRCin Birmingham, where she played sometimes with an orchestra, but oftenaccompanying herself on a piano or on a guitar strung with four stringslikeher beloved ukulele. Her signature tune was "Stormy Weather," a song shewould never get around to recording. From there, she hooked up with AlStanley and His Arcadians (pure coincidence) on a tour of the Gulf Coastbefore landing in Pensacola, Florida, for a month-long summerengagement. Meanwhile, her relationship with her husband was deteriorating.Well-traveled though he was, Mr. Grace expected his wife around on hisdaysoff and grew to resent her success. "He thought it [her musical career]wascute at first, but it soon became a nuisance," she later explained. WhenAlKatz and His Kittens breezed through Pensacola looking for a vocalistalongthe same lines of Connee Boswell and found instead an eager Teddy, theGraces' tenuous partnership couldn't withstand the blow. Grace joined Katz for an eight-week stint up the Atlantic Coast,stoppingoff in North Carolina, where she first tasted fame: She was named"Wilmington's Sweetheart" and was hounded by some overly familiarfans.(Onesuch admirer was the appropriately christened Hap Hazard. When Teddylaterplayed New York City, Hazard sailed his boat up the coast to see her. Hethought they'd just married.) By the time she arrived in New York withKatz,her career was beginning to run full-tilt. She accrued "about seventhousandmanagers" and played essential teeth-cutting gigs to bigger audienceswithTommy Christian's orchestra. Meanwhile, another amorous fan showed up atenough shows to catch her eye. She married Harry Maple,an actuary withSunindemnity and friend of Tommy Christian's, in 1933. After Teddy signed on with the Mal Hallett Orchestra in 1934, herheadlongascent plateaued for a few years. Hallett's was a flamboyant territoryband,led by gangly Mal in raucous dance numbers before drunken weekendrevelers,limited in popularity but touring almost nonstop, hopelessly on the cuspofbreaking out. Though successful enough to merit the cover of OrchestraWorldin June of 1934 (almost unheard of for a vocalist), Teddy found the lifenerve-wracking and resented the advances of the kind of men she ran intoonthe road. Rattled by a horrible accident somewhere in Ohio, in which allofthe band members save Teddy were injured, she gave up the business for acouple of years rest at home in New York. When she returned in 1937, conditions had changed. Hallett had a muchhigherprofile, landing bigger gigs and snagging a little radio time, andTeddy'sreturn only took things up a notch. Her first recording was "Rockin'ChairSwing," a fine introduction to the way her blues insinuated themselvesintoHallett's white-boy swing, highlighting her sleepy drawl, pierced bybright,pinched high notes. She went on to record ten sides with Hallett. Thatsameyear, Warner Bros. released a one-reeler called Mal Hallett & HisOrchestra,a hammy revue in the form of a music class, featuring, along with acrashcourse in "Swinglish," two restrained but revealing performances byTeddy.Such success managed to coax her back onto the road, and she played astringof engagements all over the Northeast. Her Hallett sessions sold Decca on a deal, and Grace left the band torecordon her own. Five of the best musicians around gave her one day forscale,and together they laid down four of her best tracks, including thecharacteristically defiant "Love Me or Leave Me" and her firsttraditional-blues number, "Crazy Blues." Teddy, Frank Froeba, BillyKyle,Bobby Hackett, Buster Bailey, and Jack Teagarden started drinking earlyinthe day, but you can't hear it in the music, unless that easy shuffle isthewhiskey talking. Teagarden, an infamous lightweight, would bandy aboutTeddy's abilities with a bottle for years. The music business is like one of those infuriating glass cubes at thecounty fair, swirling with money but little more than a rube's game toallbut a sticky-fingered few. Decca founder Jack Kapp had a knack forsnatchingbills out of the air. And he thought they might be onto something withTeddy. Organizing a similar session the next year, he put together aslightly larger band but drew material from the same bluesy tradition.Kapphad already discovered a number of huge acts, including such vanillaiconsas Bing Crosby and Guy Lombardo, but he did little to tweak the sound oftheinitial recordings. The music remained a stripped-down vehicle for thelived-in loneliness of Teddy's voice. The resulting album succeeded, but not enough to warrant a follow-up.Kappmay have been savvy enough to give her a shot, but he was hardly set tomakedecisions based on any value outside of a dollar. Teddy only had ahandfulof sessions with a couple of different orchestras left in her She putdownsome vibrant sides with Bing's brother Bob Crosby and His Orchestra-andalsoplayed with them at the 1939 World's Fair in Flushing. But her bestremaining recordings were four numbers with Bud Freeman's Summa CumLaudeOrchestra, including a sorrowful version of Marlene Dietrich's "See WhattheBoys in the Backroom Will Have." Then, nothing. However easy her life had been, Teddy Grace seemed to be gathering soulinreverse. By 1940, she grew weary of the business. Touring took too muchoutof her and her recording career gained too little traction withaudiences.She felt under-promoted, but Decca found her anomalously authentic bluesunmarketable. A white lady who sounded black might've been a strikingfind,but the world proved unready for her brand of cross-fertilization. Shestopped touring. Recording sessions thinned out. Her second marriagefailed.She retreated to the wings for three years. Another tragedy broke her silence. When her nephew was killed in the warin1943, she joined the Women's Army Corps, or WACs (immortalized oncelluloidin the Cary Grant vehicle I Was a Male War Bride). She completed basictraining in Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia, and set to touring, singing, andorganizing war-bond drives- all over the Southeast as Sgt. Stella Maple.Enlisting the help of red-blooded stars like Ozzie and Harriet, BobHope,and Red Skelton, she raised over three hundred million dollars andconsistently broke records for recruitment. If her previous tours had been strenuous, this schedule was grueling.Oneneed only recall the inexhaustible tempo of contemporary newsreelfootage,the ceaseless procession toward some hopeful but unimaginable end, torecognize the simultaneous elation and strain of such work. She movedfromtown to town, taking on ever more responsibility, singing at every stop.Dallas, Sherman, Texarkana, Little Rock, and back again. She shreddedhervoice. Teddy felt it going, but pushed forward-one more bond rally, one morerecruitment drive. She ended up in a Little Rock hospital, speechless.Doctors weren't sure if she'd ever regain her speaking voice, much lesssingas she once had. Six months later she was talking in whispers, but herprogress had a low ceiling. Having stripped her of that glorious asset,theArmy shipped her down to Camp Plauche in New Orleans to learn a trade,asany kind of pension commensurate with her loss was out of the question.Having never done much menial work, Teddy was on her way to becoming theworld's most tragic secretary. She met her third husband in New Orleans. an instructor at thereceptionistschool. After following him to California, she took on a fourth andfinalname, as horribly fitting as any before. She got a job at RockwellInternational, a contractor with the space program. Now meek andearthbound,she was known as Stella Hurt. Almost fifty years later, all David McCain knew of Teddy -Grace was thatvoice-a voice long dead. The win, shaky drawl at the other end of thelinebelonged to someone else. Their conversations were lovingly digressiveandthick with endearments. He called on her birthday, sent tapes of herrecordings and all the pictures he could scrounge up from that long-agoyesteryear, even the film clip. One night, her fellow residents got toseeTeddy Grace onscreen, dancing lightly at Swing School with Professor Malandthe gang. But however affectionate the relationship, the two never met. Teddy wasinbad shape. She felt abandoned and alone, and cancer was slowly eatingheraway. She felt that she'd lost what she once was. "They used to tell methatI projected happiness, and now I know I project irritability 'cause Ihaveit so much now. I'm just not the same person," she told him. She woulddieonly a few weeks later on January 4, 1992. He'd known her for ninemonths.Around the time he first contacted her, he sent copies of some picturestocommemorate those ten or so years out of her long life. She autographedacouple to send back. On the second, she accidentally signed the name bywhich she now knew herself: "Stella Hurt.' The staff at her nursing homehelped her fix the mistake. He still has that picture hanging on hiswall,with cosmic white-out correcting fifty years of wrong. _______________________________________________78-L mailing list78-L at klickitat.78online.comhttp://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/listinfo/78-l_______________________________________________78-L mailing list78-L at klickitat.78online.comhttp://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/listinfo/78-l_______________________________________________78-L mailing list78-L at klickitat.78online.comhttp://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/listinfo/78-l_______________________________________________78-L mailing list78-L at klickitat.78online.comhttp://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/listinfo/78-l