“We played a kind of fair in Laos before about two thousand people, and they just stood there for two hours, with their arms folded, the women with babies on their backs. They didn’t clap, they didn’t say anything. But they didn’t move, either. They stayed until the last note.” – Jack Teagarden
Apparently State Department Goodwill tours were more perilous than I’d ever imagined. This story of Jack Teagarden’s grueling 1958 tour and the various illnesses that beset the members of the band don’t paint a pretty picture. Check out the amazing half-hour Japanese kinescope of Teagarden and his group which included Max Kaminsky.
-Michael Cuscuna
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