Frank Teschemacher
b. 13 March 1906, Kansas City, Missouri, USA, d. 1 March 1932. Raised in Chicago, Teschemacher first took up violin then played various other instruments before settling on alto saxophone. He played with many of the young emergent Chicagoans, including Jimmy McPartland, making many jazz records while playing in dance bands for a living. In 1925 he began playing clarinet, the instrument on which he made his greatest mark. In the late '20s he played in the bands of Ben Pollack, Ted Lewis and Red Nichols but continued to work in numerous minor groups. At the end of the '20s he resumed playing alto and violin and also occasionally played cornet. Although he appeared on many fine jazz recordings with Red McKenzie, Eddie Condon and others, usually on clarinet, his contributions here rarely support the enormously high regard in which he was held by his fellow musicians. Shortly after he joined a new band formed by Wild Bill Davison he was killed in a road accident in March 1932, just a few days short of his 26th birthday.