Teddy Powell

Once dubbed by Down Beat magazine as the “bad boy of the band biz,” Teddy Powell liked to live big and act even bigger. During the 1930s, Powell worked as a guitarist, advertising agency executive, and songwriter, before forming his own swing orchestra in 1939 with the stated aim of having the number one band in the country. The road to fame was harder and longer than Powell had envisioned, however, and he lost a large fortune trying to pursue his goal. Not well remembered today, Powell’s band emerged in 1943 as one of the top acts in the country, but it all came crashing down in mid-1944 when he was arrested for evading the draft.

The son of Italian immigrants, Powell began his career working in local Bay Area bands. He was playing banjo with Ray West’s orchestra when bandleader Abe Lyman hired him away in 1926. Powell remained with Lyman for eight years, shifting from banjo to guitar. During his time with Lyman’s orchestra, he tried to mimic the wealthy bandleader’s extravagant tastes, smoking the same custom cigars, buying custom suits from the same tailor, and even purchasing a Cadillac and hiring a chauffeur to drive him around, just like Lyman. Lyman made him get rid of the car and driver.

Powell left Lyman’s band in 1934 when Lyman made him an executive in the advertising agency he owned and put him in charge of various commercial programs, paying him $750 a week, six to seven times the average salary of a musician at the time. Powell also took up songwriter during the 1930s, finding success in that field as well. He became wealthy and liked to flaunt his money, carrying around ten or fifteen thousand dollars in cash at all times. He would show off by loaning friends large sums or picking up the check at expensive restaurants.

Early Band

In 1939, Powell decided to start a swing orchestra, and he invested $68,000 of his own money into the venture.^[1] That money bought him top musicians culled from such bands as those of Benny Goodman, Bunny Berigan, and Red Norvo.^[2] When the band opened at New York’s Famous Door in September, it drew rave reviews and large crowds. Its month-long stand also came with airtime. Powell continued to earn good reviews as the orchestra went into the Paramount Theater in late October. Decca quickly signed them to a contract. Vocalists in the early band were Ruth Gaylor and Jimmy Blair.

Powell’s early success went straight to his head. He wanted to have the number one band in the country, and he acted like he already did. As soon as the band left New York, however, he quickly learned that what went over big in New York didn’t necessarily go over big in the rest of the country. The band struggled doing one-nighters, and Powell went through several booking agents, angrily blaming each of them for the band’s failure to catch the public’s attention. His attitude turned off many in the industry. Even the ever affable Lyman quit talking to him. Down Beat politely called Powell a “real stinker.”

Powell’s ego and inexperience as a bandleader also turned many of his musicians against him. In early 1940, he faced a rebellion after a rift with clarinet player Gus Bivona, who left Powell’s group and tried to convince other band members to follow him. No one joined Bivona in exiting the band however. Part of the reason they stayed was that they knew they could take advantage of Powell. In 1941, Powell told Down Beat:

Jeez, I was a naive punk. My musicians took me for money; so did my bookers. One of the tricks some of the men in my first band used was to send telegrams to themselves, signed by Glenn Miller or Jimmy Dorsey, offering them jobs for $125 or $150 a week. They’d bring the wires up to me and ask what I was going to do about it. I was a sucker. I admit it. I never batted an eye. I’d raise 'em to meet the competitive offers.

Powell claimed to have lost more than $40,000 in his first two years as a bandleader. In early 1940, Decca dropped the band after their recordings failed to sell, and Powell changed tack, reorganizing to play a mixture of sweet and swing. That summer, the band went back into New York’s Famous Door. The club’s owners were neck deep in debt at the time, however, and during Powell’s run they shut the doors, leaving Powell unpaid. Powell and his manager, Milton Pickman, then bought the club and reopened it on Labor Day.

Powell publicly stated that he bought the Famous Door because a “monument to swing shouldn’t be allowed to die,” and if it remained closed there would be too few swing showcases left in New York. The main reason for Powell’s purchase though was that it gave him a showcase location for his band. When the Famous Door reopened, Powell debuted an almost entirely new outfit and remained there for the next two months. The publicity around Powell’s purchase of the club paid off. He secured a new recording contract with Bluebird in late 1940 and also made the cover of Billboard magazine’s December, 7, 1940, issue.^[3]

Gaining Popularity

The public finally began to notice Powell’s band in 1941. While the orchestra’s Decca recordings had been largely ignored, his Bluebird discs started to sell. Not needing the Famous Door anymore, he and Pickman sold it at the first of the year. Blair remained with the band through at least December 1940. In March 1941, however, Gaylor was the only singer. By July, Dick Judge had taken over as male vocalist. In October, the band suffered a setback when playing the Rustic Cabin nightclub in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, after the venue caught fire and burned down, destroying all their instruments and arrangements. Powell had to quickly replace everything.

Gaylor left Powell to get married in November 1941. To take her place, Powell scooped up Peggy Mann, who had just left Larry Clinton’s band. Mann, a popular vocalist, proved to be Powell’s greatest asset over the next two-and-a-half years, helping to raise the band’s profile both on stage and on recordings. Powell came to realize her value and signed her to a two-year contract in April 1942. Judge fell victim to the draft in early 1942, leaving by March, with former Goodman singer Tommy Taylor taking his place. In May, the orchestra earned the distinction of becoming only the third white band to play the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem, following in the footsteps of Charlie Barnet and Louis Prima.

The band continued to struggle financially during 1942, and in August Powell signed to Joe Glaser’s management firm. Under Glaser’s firm hand, the orchestra finally began to crack the ranks of the top swing bands in the country. Powell himself also began to take his role as bandleader seriously, learning from his past mistakes. In 1943, Powell’s band became a hot ticket, setting attendance records across the country. They also made their only film appearance that year in Columbia’s Jam Session. Despite these successes, Victor dropped the orchestra. On the vocalist front, Taylor left in June, quitting the music business temporarily. Gene Howard replaced him.

1944 saw the band make a Universal short. That year, Powell had perhaps his strongest musical line-up, which included trumpeter Pete Candoli and tenor saxman Charlie Ventura. By February, Howard had left, replaced by former Glenn Miller singer Skip Nelson. Mann and Powell made the cover of Down Beat on March 15. Mann’s contract was up in April, but she decided to remain with the band. She finally left on June 30 to join Gene Krupa’s new outfit. Only a few days later, while the band was in Detroit, Powell was served with an arrest warrant for draft evasion.

Draft Evasion Charges and Later Career

After Powell’s arrest, the orchestra disbanded.^[4] Powell faced six counts for failing to report to his local New York draft board in December 1942 and for bribing the board’s chief clerk, John E. Wilson, with liquor and clothing. In December 1943, Powell had reported to a Los Angeles draft board when it was discovered that his New York papers were not in the files, prompting an investigation.^[5] The investigation implicated Wilson in another evasion case as well, and in 1945, as charges were being prepared, Wilson committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the draft board building. It wasn’t until June 1945 when Powell finally came up before a jury. In the interim, he kept busy working as a songwriter. Facing a possible 25 years in prison and a fine of $50,000, he pleaded guilty to all six charges. In October, he was sentenced to 15 months.

Powell was out of prison by June 1946. That month, he announced the formation of a new band. If he actually organized an outfit at that time is unknown. He spent the rest of the decade writing songs and attempting comebacks as a bandleader, leading groups mostly in Florida during the winter season. In mid-1950, he finally managed a successful comeback with an eleven-piece dance orchestra that featured up to six violins, one of which Powell himself played. “Jazz is dead. You can’t make people listen to it any more,” he told Down Beat. With a talented set of musicians and Willard Alexander as his booker, Powell’s band became a popular staple on the hotel circuit. The band reportedly signed to London Records in 1950, and they released an album on the Lion label in early 1953.

In mid-1953, Powell permanently hung up his baton and opened his own song publishing company. Teddy Powell passed away in 1993 at the age of 87.

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