Ed Grady Videos : Teddy Reynolds - "Puppy Dogs" (1958)

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Teddy Reynolds - "Puppy Dogs" (1958)

TEDDY REYNOLDS (1931-1998). Teddy Reynolds, blues pianist, songwriter, and singer, was born in Houston on July 12, 1931. He was the son of Ora Lee Reynolds Miles. Reynolds recorded numerous tracks but is most famous among blues aficionados for his studio work and touring with some of the top Texas-based artists of his generation, including Bobby Bland, Texas Johnny Brown, Johnny Copeland, Grady Gaines, Clarence Green, Peppermint Harris (Harrison D. Nelsonqv), Joe "Guitar" Hughes, BB King, and Phillip Walker. Reynolds was raised by his maternal grandmother, Hallie Robinson, in the southeast Houston neighborhood known as the Third Ward. In an interview he reported that his father, also named Theodore, had played piano in "bootleg" houses in Houston. Teddy attended Blackshear Elementary School but discontinued his formal education in the fifth grade. He survived by working a variety of odd jobs until his mid-teens, when his skills on piano, which he had learned at his grandmother's house, earned him a chance to perform in a Third Ward nightclub called Shady's Playhouse (originally Jeff's Playhouse). He soon became a member of the house band there and formed key friendships with guitarists such as Johnny Copeland and Albert Collins,qqv as well as with the man Reynolds always credited as his most significant music teacher, Henry Hayes, plus songwriting collaborator Joe Medwick and pianists Charles Brownqv and Amos Milburn. In 1950 Reynolds first recorded in Houston, for the ...

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