Teddy Edwards:

Played and lived with Wardell Gray

Section One:

Teddy Edwards:
I came out here in, to Los Angeles in '44 with Ernie Field's orchestra and I stayed here. So he came out in '45 him and his wife Jeri, we lived together we were in the same house at the same time, we actually lived together on 24th street in the same rooming house. We were together and we were in the same rooming house and we practiced many many hours together. We played duets and single lines and put us on a pot of beans and make us some cornbread and go to work on the saxophone. Hour after hour. It was really great, in fact I practiced with him more than I ever practiced with anybody else by far. We'd had so many great moments with the guys out here like Sonny Chris and Hampton Hawes,Sammy Yacey(?),Gene Montgomery, Chuck Thompson the drummer, a lot of other guys like Roy Porter that we used to play with quite often, Clarence Jones, who was around here at the time. Shifty Henry another bass player, we all had a certain kind of camaraderie going on, Kenny Bright trumpet player, we'd spend our off time together, as well as our on the bandstand time.

Section Two:

Abraham:
Teddy could you give us a slate again? Were you on..o.k. Teddy could you just..before in our conversation we talked about the lifestyles of you and Wardell and some of your friends as young musicians..that you used to practice all day and practice all night and then go out and as a result, or one of the reasons was that drugs became part of your lifestyle.
Teddy:
Well it was a popular thing to be doing. You know. Maybe you can call it peer pressure to a degree, but it was a popular thing that a lot of us were doing it. But it was not the wise thing to be doing. And I really like the idea that a lot of these younger musicians coming up now they don't want any part of drugs. And I've really seen a lot of great people go down through drugs. Back in those days a lot musicians a lot of really good musicians thought it would make them play better, you know, they'd say so and so is a drug addict and he plays real good, but drugs don't make you play, practice is what makes you play. I don't care how many drugs you use, in that case anybody could use some drugs and go and be a genius on the saxophone or the trumpet, piano, something you know. It's practice that makes you play you know. So it was very foolish in many ways, to take a chance on your life and with drugs it's so stupid anyway because drugs take away, sometimes your appetite, can take away your health can take away, some of them take away your sex life, some of them take away your freedom. So they`re not that important. The price is too great. You know. And if you go up you got to come down. And then it's harder to go back up again and then it's worse when you come down again. So it's a losing battle any way you take it. I used to say that using heroin is like holding a mule by the tail you pull this way and you get weaker and the mule gets stronger and he pulls the other way. So that's the kind of situation it is.

Section Three:

Abraham:
Teddy, when we talked before you mentioned your own version of what you knew about how he died. Could you share that with us I mean..
Teddy:
Of course. Well we were working with Benny Carter's orchestra in Las Vegas there was a big club that the hotel had built on the west side of Las Vegas which is in the Black inhabited part of town. In fact they used to call it the Iron Curtain because Vegas was very segregated during that period up til the middle fifties. It loosened up after that period more or less. And we were playing for the production ,Clarence Robinson was the producer, Benny Carter was the band leader and we had finished playing the first show the night of his death. Prior to his death or whatever. And we were standing backstage talking about our good old times in Detroit with the baritone saxophone player Joel Grant and the trumpet player John Anderson. And some of the stagehands. He was telling the story about what a great band we had and everything. And in the meantime he's waiting for Teddy Hale this great tap dancer to let him know when Teddy's girlfriend came back from Los Angeles. She had flown to Los Angeles to pick up the heroin. And so finally Teddy came in and waved to him, beckoned to him, and so we broke up the conversation and so we were walking on back out the stage door and he and Teddy Hale were walking briskly around this Foster Freeze ice cream deal there, which was close to the parking lot of the Moulin Rouge, and John Anderson and I were the last two to see him leave the hotel. So when he didn't show for the second show I said that something is drastically wrong because Las Vegas at that time, Black people weren't allowed to go into the places on the Sunset strip, on the Vegas strip rather, Las Vegas strip, and so he had to be in some form of trouble. Either in the hospital or in jail or dead. You know when he didn't show for the second show. The third show he still didn't show. So Benny Carter told me to put his horn in the case. So I put his horn in his case and Benny took his horn with him. So the next day I went up on D Street, my wife and I were really curious about why he didn't show. My wife was a dancer in the show, Jeannie Thompson, that was her stage name. And so we went up on D Street to see what we could find out, around about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. So we saw Teddy Hale and his girlfriend and so we said what happened, what happened to you guys? Teddy, his girlfriend was getting ready to say something and Teddy closed her mouth up with his eyes with the look that he gave her. And so I could tell that something really strong had happened. So he says Hi man, that Wardell he's wild he's wild we dropped him off back at the parking lot you know. So we accepted his story at the time, but then later on, later that afternoon when they found Wardell out in the desert, he finally said that Wardell slid off the bed, he "o.d'd" (overdose) and he slid off the bed and that's when he broke his neck. And I said, wait that doesn't read too well because I knew the beds that they were using, we were sleeping in the same kind of apartments, same kind of beds you know. And the bed couldn't of been over say, 15 inches off the floor. So I said, wow, that's kind of far-fetched because if you had "od'd" you have no resistance in your body and you're not going to break your neck too easily by sliding off of a bed 15 inches from the floor you know. Still, but my conclusion was that when he "od'd" they panicked and took him out in the desert and dumped him and that's probably how his neck was broken was when they dumped him out of the car. So it was a very sad moment it was a big loss he was definitely making big marks in his career, a fantastic person read a lot in fact every morning he would buy the newspaper and take it home with him before he went home, he would always get the morning newspaper you know. And he read it..you running out of film?

Section Four:

Abraham:
What I'd like to do, if I could remind you
Teddy:
You'd like me to look at the camera?
Abraham:
It's alright if you don't you don't. The other thing I wanted to ask you in a conversation that I had with another contemporary tenor player , he said that the reason why someone like Wardell isn't appreciated or isn't known by the larger general public is because of the inherent racism in this country.
Teddy:
Oh that is very much a part of the situation in fact it hasn't ceased. It still goes on you know. Well,he had an opportunity to make some fine moves but doesn't matter, we know another lesser player of another paint job (that means of another color) who got much further than we did, guys who used to come down and studied, learnin how to play on the bandstand,back in Central Avenue days became multi-millionaires and we're still around scratching you know. We saw all these things happen. But....we've been living with that demon all our lives you know. From childhood. You know. So you deal with it and make it you know, work your thing around all of that. Like I always tell people that the Black people in America have six senses because that other sense has to deal with that monster out there which is this racial prejudice. The minute you walk out the door you know that monster is out there. You might not look it in the eyes but subconsciously you know he's out there. And it could block you out many different ways you know. By the same token you know there are a lot of good people out there you know, or else we'd be back in slavery if it wasn't a lot of good people out there that respect your abilities and make moves for you, or help you make moves or because it's important that you make moves you know, it's real ironic that you have to go out of the country to get respected for our work you know. You out of film already, just like that huh?