History Teddy Edwards Quartet

Teddy Edwards was together with Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray, the top young tenor of the late '40s. Teddy Edwards’s recordings for the Dial label not only were among one of the greatest tenor side in modern jazz, they were definitely among the first. Teddy Edwards chose to remain in Los Angeles instead of moving to NYC when it mattered. He has been grossly underrated through the years. He remained in prime form well into his 70s.

THEODORE MARCUS “TEDDY” EDWARDS was born on April 26, 1924 in Jackson, Mississippi to a musical family. His grandfather, Henry C. Reed, played the bass and his father, Bruce Edwards, trombone, violin and reed instruments. Under these circumstances it was quite obvious that Teddy started to play very young, at first alto saxophone and later clarinet.

Early on, he toured with Ernie Fields' Orchestra, moving to Los Angeles in 1945 to work with Roy Milton as an altoist. Edwards switched to tenor when he joined Howard McGhee's band and was featured in many jam sessions during the era, recording "The Duel" with Dexter Gordon in 1947. He was playing Bebop on the famous Central Avenue and in Hollywood in 1945 with Roy Porter before the arrival of Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie in December of that same year. A natural-born leader, Edwards did work briefly with Max Roach & Clifford Brown (1954), Benny Carter (1955), and Benny Goodman (1964), and he recorded in the 1960s with Milt Jackson and Jimmy Smith. But it was his own records -- for Onyx (1947-1948), Pacific Jazz, Contemporary (1960-1962), Prestige, Xanadu, Muse, SteepleChase, Timeless, and Antilles -- that best displayed his playing and writing; "Sunset Eyes" is Edwards' best-known original. Teddy Edwards experienced a great comeback in the early 1990s, when thanks to multi-talented artist Tom Waits and his wife, Polygram Jazz France agreed to record Teddy Edwards on his own label. The result was four CDs: Mississippi Lad, Blue Saxophone, Teddy Edwards Live at La Villa and Tango in Harlem. Teddy Edwards also released Midnight Creeper on HighNote and numerous other records all the way up to 2002, a year before his passing.

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