[Dixielandjazz] Teddy Charles obit

[Stephen G Barbone]

Almost missed this obit. Teddy Charles was a renaissance man who  
played jazz with Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman before graduating to  
Charlie Parker, Charlie Mingus and Miles Davis. This plus classical  
piano was left behind as he ran away to sea. Then he came back home to  
his musical calling. I met him in the late 1950s while gigging in  
Southampton Long Island.  If you've never heard of him go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI9nlJI3Yuo

or if your ears are more adventurous, go to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj9XTEM7BYQ&feature=related

RIP Teddy

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

North Fork Jazz great, Teddy Charles dead at 84.
By Tim Kelly - Shelter Island (Long Island NY) Reporter


Teddy Charles, who during a career as a pioneering jazz musician  
played with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and other  
legendary performers, died Monday at Peconic Bay Medical Center in  
Riverhead at age 84.

More recently, Mr. Charles, a former Greenporter who lived in  
Riverhead for the past eight years, was known for his love of the sea  
and as Captain Ted Charles owned and operated the skipjack Pilgrim out  
of Greenport Harbor. He was considered by many to be the most  
experienced owner-operator of commercial sailing charters on the east  
coast, sailing extensively from Martha’s Vineyard to the Caribbean.


Mr. Charles was considered to be one of the great jazz vibraphonists  
and composers of all time. But his talents went beyond that one  
instrument.

“Everyone thinks of Ted as a jazz musician. What must don’t know is  
that he was an accomplished classical pianist,” said former Greenport  
Mayor David Kapell, whose father, William Kapell, was considered one  
of the most brilliant American pianists of his time. “When I once went  
to visit Teddy at home years ago, he was alone in the house playing  
the piano with impressive virtuosity. Seems he reverted to classical  
music in his private moments.”

Former Greenport trustee Mike Osinski, who runs an oyster business,  
recalled Mr. Charles giving his children music lessons every Saturday.

“He became family,” said Mr. Osinski. “I gave him a dock for the  
Pilgrim, his last big sailboat, even bought him an one cylinder diesel  
so he could get in and out of Widow’s Hole. One afternoon, after  
helping him clean his boat, my kids ran back into the house shouting,  
‘Ted’s swimming around the creek in his underwear.’ I hope I’m doing  
that in my eighties.”

He was born Theodore Charles Cohen in Chicopee Falls, Mass., on April  
13, 1928. As a student at the Julliard School of Music in the mid  
1940s, he haunted New York’s jazz clubs, occasionally sitting in with  
the bands on vibes or piano.

He later recorded and played solo and with bands as Teddy Cohen before  
changing his last name to Charles in 1951.

His break came unexpectedly one night when he was asked to sit in on  
piano with Coleman Hawkin’s band for the overdue Thelonious Monk. Soon  
after, Mr. Charles began to appear regularly with the top jazz groups  
of the day — Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman and Buddy De Franco — playing  
alongside and writing for jazz greats. In the early 1950s, he began  
leading his own groups, composing, producing and recording original  
works such as “No More Nights,” “Blues Become Elektra” and “Word from  
Bird.”

In recent years he appeared with Max Roach, David Amram and Lee Konitz.

When jazz’s popularity began to fade in the 1960s, he took a break  
from the music world to follow the other great love of his life: the  
sea. He left the icy streets of New York and headed for the balmy  
Caribbean, where he sailed the famous Golden Eagle, formerly owned by  
the DuPont family, and became one of the pioneering American charter  
boat skippers in the Caribbean.

He later bought and restored the derelict Tiki, the famed 85-foot  
wooden schooner from the 1950s TV series “Adventures in Paradise,” and  
began running a charter service out of Martinique. In 1980, he  
switched from running charters to carrying cargo including rum and  
soap from Antigua.

It didn’t take long for him to realize that the Tiki wasn’t built for  
cargo.

“It was too hard on a wood ship at many of the wharves we tied up at,”  
Mr. Charles said in a 1984 article in Soundings, a boating magazine.  
“The swells would pound the boat right into the wharf.”

The article was written by David Berson of Greenport, the captain of  
the Greenport-based electric tour boat “Glory” and an amateur musician.

“Teddy was a musical prodigy who had his last name given to him by the  
great Charles Mingus,” Mr. Berson said this week. “He combined his  
love of the sea and music in a manner that no one had ever done  
before, or may ever do again. He added his own personality to the mix  
and will be missed.”

Mr. Charles first raced in small centerboard sloops called “zips” in  
Long Island Sound off Clinton, Conn., in the mid-1940s. He bought his  
first boat in 1958. In his Soundings profile, Mr. Berson wrote that  
when Mr. Charles was invited to perform at the Newport Jazz Festival  
in 1959, he decided to sail there from New York. And although he great  
trip, he didn’t arrive in time for his performance.

Since the mid 1960s, Mr. Charles has owned and operated commercial  
charter vessels from ports such as New York’s City Island and South  
Street Seaport, Miami and Key West, and throughout the Leeward Islands  
in the Caribbean.

Returning to New York after spending a decade in the Caribbean, Mr.  
Charles became the owner of the famed Seven Seas Sailing Club of City  
Island. In 1973, he bought and restored the Mary E., a 1906  
swordfishing schooner, and in 1990 brought her to Greenport.

Arrangements are pending, but a memorial service will take place at 2  
p.m. this Sunday, April 22, at D’Latte, the Main Street, Greenport,  
restaurant where Mr. Charles played on occasion. Musicians are  
encouraged to bring their instruments.