No jazz musician was ever as relaxed as Jack Teagarden. Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby may have been the two coolest individuals in the history of music, but when they worked with Teagarden they looked almost nervous by comparison.

Teagarden projected the image of the lazy, unflappable Texan relaxing in the very rockin’ chair he sang about so often. He made it seem like the only reason he even picked up his trombone or opened his mouth was because it happened to be easier than not doing those things. Even when he sang the blues he seemed not to have a care in the world. He never broke a sweat while playing trombone runs so intricate and difficult that a lesser player would have torn his arm.

Jack Teagarden (1905-64) was also the greatest trombonist in history. Of his approximate contemporaries Kid Ory had loads of personality, Tommy Dorsey had impeccable technique, Lawrence Brown had a distinctive tone, and Dicky Wells had boundless imagination. But none had as much of everything as did Teagarden. His speed was eventually matched by technically prodigious early beboppers like J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding, yet they couldn’t equal his emotional resonance. And no jazz musician has sung or played the blues as movingly as Teagarden.

He was born 100 years ago this month, yet you’d never know it. The jazz world seems indifferent. There is no comprehensive CD reissue package – although there are a few worthy-looking imports from England. Not one of the major concert producers in the metropolitan area has announced an appropriate Tea Party. The only good news is that 2006 promises the publication of the definitive Teagarden biography. The Toronto-based archivist and filmmaker Joe Showler has been working on this project for more than 30 years and has amassed the world’s largest collection of Teagarden material. The book will be more than 1,000 pages, and Mr. Showler has also made a superb two-hour documentary on Teagarden’s life, which he hopes will be distributed on DVD and shown on PBS.

It’s not surprising that Teagarden’s centennial should be shouted less loudly from the hilltops than that of Duke Ellington in 1999, Armstrong in 2001, Bix Beiderbecke in 2003, or Count Basie and Fats Waller last year. The trombone itself seems to have lost its star quality. Not only is Teagarden absent from the Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame – situated in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall – but so are all other purveyors of the instrument. I suspect this has less to do with the trombone’s glorious history than its shaky present. While there are some brilliant players around today, like Steve Turre, Wycliffe Gordon, or John Allred, there are no big trombone stars. Like the clarinet, which has been superseded in modern jazz by the soprano saxophone, the trombone is pretty much only heard in big bands.

Another reason for the oversight is that Teagarden was the perfect jazz collaborator; his career was less a series of star turns than a set of partnerships with musicians more celebrated than he. When he first blew into New York from his native Texas in 1927, he joined the “hot dance” band led by drummer Ben Pollack. This started a fruitful collaboration with the slightly younger, equally prodigious Benny Goodman; the two would record prolifically together in the years leading up to the swing era. (Except for one guest appearance, on the well-titled “You’re a Heavenly Thing,” Goodman couldn’t get Teagarden into his breakout band, and so employed a string of Tea-influenced trombonists over the years, such Cutty Cutshaw and Lou McGarity.)

In fact, Teagarden nearly missed out on the swing era. He was under contract to Paul Whiteman and his archaic concert orchestra at the beginning of the big-band boom. What saved him was the 11-piece side band he formed with his kid brother Charlie on trumpet and fellow Whitemanian Frank Trumbauer on sax. The sides they recorded for Brunswick – collected on Mosaic’s seven-disc “Complete Okeh/Brunswick Bix, Trumbauer & Teagarden” – showcase the trombonist’s tremendous swing skills.

Teagarden’s most celebrated collaboration was with Armstrong. Some regard the blues as the point of division between the races, but on recordings like 1929’s “Knockin’ a Jug” Teagarden and Armstrong made it clear that the blues were a place where New Orleans and Texas could meet. From 1947 to 1951 Teagarden was officially a sideman in the All-Stars, the very popular small band that showcased Armstrong in most of his postwar activities. When they sang “Rockin’ Chair” or “Jack-Armstrong Blues,” it was clear that the two men regarded each other as nothing less than full-fledged equals.

Teagarden left Armstrong’s All-Stars because the constant traveling was too much for him, and formed his own group in 1952. But he was far less successful as a bandleader than he had been as a collaborator. Former sidemen all say that he was a terrible businessman, and he never developed a distinct vision of what a band should be. He was very good at surrounding himself with first-rate players – he discovered stride pianist Don Ewell and clarinetist Kenny Davern – but he never gave much thought to the context of his music or the drive behind a band. He also tried to remain in California, where he lived, as much as possible.

Any account of Teagarden’s life will also be full of outlandish anecdotes about excessive drinking. Once when he was too drunk to play, Tommy Dorsey happened to be in the house and was called upon to lead Tea’s band and play his solos. So excessive and acknowledged was the trombonist’s drinking that it was even considered droll for Teagarden to appear regularly at a San Francisco jazz joint called “The Club Hangover.” But his drinking was ultimately more tragic than funny: It killed him in 1964 at 58, when his powers of inspiration were still with him.

Indeed, Teagarden’s final years amounted to an Indian summer. He made some of the best albums of his career in extensive sessions for Capitol, Roulette, and Verve. He formed a great partnership with the brilliant cornetist Bobby Hackett on a pair of Capitol albums, “Coast Concert” and “Jazz Ultimate.” (They are combined on a single CD from Collector’s Choice Music, WWCCM0165x.) He also cut a trio of marvelous LPs in 1961-62 for Verve.

“Mis’ry and the Blues” (1961) is a marvelously eclectic batch of tunes with Teagarden and his regular group, as well as one tune (“Love Lies”) with organ accompaniment. Though Tea had two years to go when he taped “Think Well of Me” in 1962, I always think of that lovely album as his swan song. His very first recorded solo, waxed in January 1928, had been with Willard Robison, and Tea capped his recording career 34 years later with this stunningly beautiful, heartfelt collection of Robison’s evocative Americana tunes.

Here’s hoping Verve next reissues Tea’s last studio album, called simply “Jack Teagarden!!!” which stretches his repertoire in the direction of “Moon River,” “All the Way,” and “Learnin’ the Blues.” The latter title is an ironic one: It was Jack Teagarden, after all, who taught the rest of us how to sing and play the blues.

The Essential Teagarden

Jack Teagarden was one of the most recorded jazz musicians of the 1920s and 1930s. His ability to construct brilliant solos in very short spaces – and sing the blues like nobody’s business – was a major asset to producers of the era, and he was comfortable both in small group jam features and pop-oriented dance bands. The problem with trying to assemble a comprehensive collection of early Teagarden work lies in that very diversity. His key sessions of the 1920s and 1930s are spread across many labels and, unlike Louis Armstrong, he did most of his best work as a sideman, making comparatively few sessions as a bandleader.

There are two new and promising collections from England. The four-CD “Big T” (ProperBox 80) ambitiously samples the first two-thirds of Teagarden’s career up to 1953, while the wittily titled “One Hundred Years From Today” (just released from ASV/Living Era, CDAJS2005) goes up to the big-band period.

Teagarden is also one of the most prominent jazz legends in the Mosaic Records catalogue, appearing on eight Mosaic boxes, including three in which he is prominently featured. There are two collections of late-vintage Tea: “The Complete Roulette Jack Teagarden Sessions” (218) and “Complete Capitol Fifties Jack Teagarden Sessions” (168). Also highly recommended is “The Complete Okeh/Brunswick Bix, Trumbauer & Teagarden” (Mosiac MD7-211), which concentrates on saxophonist Frank Trumbauer’s remarkable partnerships with cornetist Bix Beiderbecke in the 1920s and Teagarden in the 1930s. Tea is only featured on 51 tracks of this seven-CD set, but who could object to having a complete accounting of Columbia’s holdings on Beiderbecke as part of the bargain?

In 1954, Teagarden recorded a stellar album called “Accent on Trombone,” accompanied by neo-swing trumpeter Ruby Braff, the Benny Goodman-esque Sol Yaged on clarinet, and the tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson. The highlight of the disc is the Teagarden mainstay “Lover,” which he had been using as a virtuoso showpiece at least since his days with the Armstrong All-Stars. He takes this rather gentle Richard Rodgers waltz and supercharges it into a swinging four. For the most part, Teagarden played melodic, rather than harmonic variations, yet on this recasting of “Lover,” his use of chromatic embellishments parallel Coleman Hawkins’s arpeggios, breaks, and runs. Teagarden spins three marvelous choruses that barely hint at Rodgers’s melody – taking it here and there, this way and that way. It’s impossible not to feel the love in “Lover” – and like love itself, you want it to never end.

For the best overall sampler of Teagarden’s greatest, it’s best to stick with the classics. In 1963 – when Tea himself was still around to appreciate it – producers Frank Driggs, Richard Dupage, and John Hammond put together what has stood for the last 40 years as the definitive Tea collection, “King of the Blues Trombone.” Originally released as a three-LP box on Epic, it has been recently re-released as a two-CD set (with all 48 tracks) from Collector’s Choice Music (WWCCM0279x). The package is in need of new mastering, and now that BMG is part of the same corporation as Sony, they could easily incorporate the tracks from the marvelous Teagarden Victor Vintage LP. But even as it stands, “King of the Blues Trombone” is still an essential introduction to an essential musician.