Known by fellow musicians and jazz fans alike as simply "Tesch," Frank Teschemacher was a key member of the famed Austin High Gang, a group of schoolmates who helped pioneer what was known as "Chicago-style jazz."

Though talented at many instruments, Tesch is best known for his hot and exciting playing on the clarinet and alto saxophone. His career was cut tragically short after he was killed in a car accident in 1932.

Track Title: Out of the Dawn

Artist: Buddy Clark's Orchestra

Album: Out of the Dawn 78

Out of the Dawn | Buddy Clark’s Orchestra
A newly-discovered possible Frank Teschemacher recording

Recorded in New York for Brunswick on November 24, 1928, this rare side was recently discovered by Kurt Weisbecker and it is thought that Frank Teschemacher is present on the record due to the very Teschemacher-like clarinet solo starting at 1:22. (This record is not to be confused with a previous recording of “Out of the Dawn” recorded on September 28th, with the Dorsey brothers and Frank Teschemacher definitely present; this is a completely different recording)

Here is Weisbecker’s argument as to why the solo indicates that Frank Teschemacher is the clarinetist:

The soloist here is playing it pretty straight. What makes this a difficult identification is that we have no other known example of Tesch playing a subdued, close to the vest, “blinders on” solo. We are used to hearing him blowtorch his way through melodies. The soloist here does nothing of the kind, yet plays with a phrasing and tonality (playing to the sharp side of things), as Brad Kay has noted, reminiscent of Tesch. […]

This soloist almost squeaks at the beginning of this solo, during a fill-in between measures of the song, and actually does squeak towards the end in the same spot between measures. The presence of these squeaks, both in the same place musically and also on the downbeat indicates to me a presence of style as opposed to a bad reed or a mistake.

Many have argued that the clarinetist could simply be Jimmy Dorsey directly emulating the Chicago-style but Weisbecker counter-argues that by saying that even on other recordings when Dorsey emulates the Chicago-style, his playing is still clean and we never hear anything close to the squeaks and sharp tonality exhibited here.

Considering Teschemacher arrived in New York in mid-June, stayed there for roughly 5 months, and there is no concrete evidence of Teschemacher being back in Chicago until he appears on a Chicago recording session on December 17th, it is entirely possible that he could have been around to make this recording.

Thank goodness for UHCA for saving so many of these great records! It’s unfortunate that the “Singin’ The Blues” sides seem to have suffered a worse fate. I’d still like to believe they might exist somewhere but I’m sure it’s unlikely.

Anyway, thank you for this added insight!

Tesch’s “Chicagoans” recorded two sides for Brunswick in 1928, “Singin’ The Blues” and “Jazz Me Blues.” Both were rejected and were thought to have been lost. “Singin’ The Blues” seems to have perished, but a test pressing of “Jazz Me Blues” managed to survive and was issued in May of 1939 by the United Hot Clubs of America. Even later, it was reissued by Decca and credited to “McKenzie and Condon’s Chicagoans, Direction of Mr. Tesch.”

Ah, thank you so much!

Indeed! Wishing a very happy birthday to a wonderful musician!

“My buddy Tesch was way ahead of his time.” — Jess Stacy

“Teschemacher ignored his critics. He knew where he was going even if he did not always get there, and he usually seemed unconcerned about whether anyone else understood or cared. Frank Teschemacher played hot jazz for Frank Teschemacher.” — Red Hot Jazz Archive

Happy birthday, Frank Teschemacher! | March 13, 1906 — March 1, 1932

Yes, Tumblr makes it quite difficult to contact people who message Anonymous.

I’ll try to contact Mr. Wilby for your email address, but if you’d like, you can just send me your email address here on Tumblr and I won’t post it, to protect your privacy.

This sounds incredibly exciting and I’m very excited to see/hear what you’ve discovered!

Ah yes, are you the same person who’s been contacting me through my personal blog? I apologize if you’ve been unable to read my replies to your messages over there but I post a lot so messages tend to get obscured.

You mentioned something about a link over at jazzoracle.com but I couldn’t find what you were talking about?

But a discovery of a new Tesch side is very exciting and I’m very interested!

“Notes are not the only improvisations in hot jazz. More often than not the anecdotes are improvised, too. This is doubly true when the subject meets an untimely end. What there is about early death that should inspire tall tales I do not know. But I do know that there must be something. A man — especially a man of not inconsiderable jazz endowments — perishes young; and all of a sudden the tales about his life and death begin to incorporate the misty qualities of folklore.

It was true of Beiderbecke and of Berigan, and it was certainly true of Frank Teschemacher. For everywhere that jazz musicians gather — on a bus roaring through the night, the length and breadth of the land — everywhere that jazz musicians gather to smoke or to drink or merely to talk small talk, the apocrypha grow. So presently what you have is not the accredited facts about Leon Bismarck Beiderbecke or Bernard Berigan or Frank Teschemacher, but a gossipy fugue on the accredited facts. You have a theme and variations in which the variations are so elaborate, so fanciful, that the theme is all but obscured.

If Tesch seems a little less fantastic, a little less incredible than several others among the departed, it is simply because he was too studious, too self-conscious, to be readily molded into the fabulous patterns which imaginative jazz musicians like to invent for their collegues post-mortem.”

— Liner notes on the Tesch: Chicago Style Clarinetist record by George Frazier

Rest In Peace, Frank Teschemacher (March 13, 1906 — March 1, 1932)