TEEN PALM STEPPED OFF THE TRAIN IN RALEIGH, GREETED by a muggy August evening in 1933. He looked relatively fresh in his suit and tie, though he had been on the train for nearly a day. He had been driven by a friend to New York City’s Grand Central station, boarded in darkness, and then watched as five hundred miles of lovely countryside rolled across the window — New Jersey — Delaware — Maryland — Virginia — until he was farther from home than he had ever been.
Clutching a suitcase in one hand and his saxophone case in the other, he scanned the platform. He had been expecting a greeting party, Jimmy Poyner and his “boys.” But he saw no one until he spotted, far down the platform, a disheveled-looking man getting off the train. The man was immediately surrounded by a group of five younger men who had emerged from the station. One member of this crowd spotted Teen, and in a moment he and the rest of the young men were sprinting toward him.
The first to reach him thrust out his right hand and shouted, “Teen! Teen Palm! It’s you!”
Teen nodded, reflexively dropped his suitcase and extended his right hand to grip the man’s hand. “That’s me,” he said.“I’m Teen Palm.”
“I’m Jimmy Poyner,” the man said, continuing to pump his hand. “These boys are part of our band. We’re so glad to meet you.”
Teen’s face broke into a broad grin as he said, “Well, hello to you, Jimmy. Boys. I’m so glad to be here.”
After a quick round of introductions, Teen’s suitcase and saxophone were scooped up and carried to a car parked behind the station.
“Sorry we weren’t at your train car door when you got off,” Poyner said. “But we saw this man carrying something that looked like a saxophone case and right away we thought it was you. But he wasn’t — he was some kind of salesman — and then we saw you and, and … So, welcome to Raleigh.”
As the car sped off, Poyner continued his nonstop chatter: “We’re heading straight down to Southern Pines where we practice. Is that okay? Of course it’s okay, right? You can give us a listen, and then we want to hear you play that sax of yours and sing some of your favorite tunes.”
Earlier that month, Teen had made his decision, telling his parents that he wanted to enroll at North Carolina State College. But instead of playing collegiate football, he wanted to try out for Poyner’s “Southern Pines Orchestra.” His parents gave him their reluctant blessing, never expressing to him their shared worry about where they were going to find the money; they were already paying tuition plus room and board for Teen’s older brother at the school.
They were pleased, though, that Teen wouldn’t be risking injury by playing football, and Susan was confident that his playing and singing would improve in a professional orchestra, believing that being in a working band might not only help cover the cost of his education but could lead to a show business career.
Crowded in a sedan, Poyner and the “boys” whisked Teen the seventy miles south to Southern Pines, where the band had summer living quarters. Even though it was late, they got right to business, and Teen was impressed as the band ran through a few numbers.
“Now, let’s hear what you’ve got,” said Poyner.
Teen played with passion and precision, and his audition was a success. He had a hard time determining whether he felt more elated or relieved when told he had been accepted into the band.
Poyner was so pleased with Teen’s performance that he quickly arranged for him to sing on a Raleigh radio station for eight dollars a week. Back home in Mount Vernon, his parents and Aunt Nan were so excited by this news that they started asking friends if any had more powerful radios on which they might be able to hear Teen.
The days passed quickly as the band members spent long hours in rehearsal. Poyner and his younger brother, George, decided to rename the orchestra Jimmy Poyner’s Famous Collegians and to hit the road, even though all of them had started classes at their respective colleges. With Teen as lead singer and featured saxophone player, the band quickly became popular as it toured the East Coast, playing on university campuses and in hotels and clubs.
This was the beginning of a productive and exciting period. Jimmy Poyner would later reminisce about it, writing:
During the four years we all played together — fourteen men, none of whom drank and only seven of whom smoked — we got along amazingly well as we travelled considerably between Washington, D.C., and Savannah, Georgia, and went to school in between. We never missed a day of playing in the four summers we worked, and we averaged three to five nights a week during the winter. The fact that we got along so well under these circumstances is to a great extent due to Teen Palm’s presence as he was extremely liked by all, never displayed any temper, and was a great motivating force. With his looks and voice, he captivated audiences all over this part of the country.
For a time, one band member was Les Brown, a student at Duke University and later the leader of the immensely popular Les Brown and His Band of Renown. Brown arranged much of the band’s music and was particularly fond of Teen.
Even with the success of the band, Teen battled self-doubt throughout his college years, worrying about his class work, fearing that he was a drain on the family’s finances, wondering whether he would be an utter disappointment, a failure.
Money was a frequent topic in letters from his mother, who wrote in the fall of 1933:
Dearest Boys,
I am enclosing a check to Cliff for $20 — a dollar more, Cliff, than you said you’d need. So if Teen needs a few cents, just divide with him and please don’t be discouraged with your mother if she is slow to understand where money goes. I have quite a bit just now to shoulder and no one to help me — so just bear up until I get myself together.
Now please write each week. My mind gets so upset. I have terrible dreams of you and it’s upsetting.
Loads of love to you both.
Your Devoted Mother
Fred was working infrequently, and Susan relied on boarders and some sewing to make ends meet. Her letters to Teen and Cliff invariably mentioned the difficulties she faced trying to keep the household afloat and how the hard economic times were making it difficult for many people in Mount Vernon. Frequently, she wondered where Cliff and Teen were spending the money she sent them and what Teen earned with the band. Little seemed to be applied to room and board.
Aunt Nan also wrote to Teen, offering him all manner of counsel regarding how to care for his health and baby his singing voice: “Keep your system open by taking something once a week. Chew a Fenemint or eat a Boll Rolls on Saturday nite. Every ailment comes from poison in the system.”
Teen’s sister, Gladys, kept Teen current about home life, friends, and local events in Mount Vernon. Always an encouraging voice, she predicted that someday he would be a national singing star. She loved a song he had composed and hoped it would be published.
In his sophomore year, after being accepted into Pi Kappa Phi, Teen lived in the campus fraternity house. In December 1934, the fraternity treasurer wrote his mother to report that he had failed to pay his initiation fee from the previous year and that he was two months behind on rent: “Embarrassing for both Teen and us.”
Somehow, though, those bills and others got paid, and the 1936 college yearbook featured a photograph of Teen holding a pipe and sitting in a bathtub at the fraternity house. In another, he was shown lying on his bed reading a book and formally clad in a suit, white shirt, tie, and shoes.
But Teen expressed his lingering insecurities in a letter to his sister, written after a concert in the late summer of 1936:
It’s about two AM and I’m whipped down. I want to get this off to you so it will leave on the early train. This is sort of an apology concerning your birthday. I am sorry that I let the 24th go by without sending you a card or even some sort of congratulations. It has gotten so that I don’t even know what day it is and the date doesn’t enter my mind. We live from day to day in music and as far as time goes we only check from ten till one each night.
You probably think me pretty sorry after the swell things you have done for me through all my twenty-three years. I guess I am a washout as far as things of importance are concerned. I hope I can make up for it in some manner or form but I still can say happy birthday if it is not too late.
I hope you can make all of this out because I can’t even see or think.
All my love
In 1937, the band published a promotional brochure that singled out Teen for garnering “wide recognition with his song writing” and singing of “sweet vocals.” The brochure included a photograph of the orchestra and in the lower right a showcase inset photograph of Teen. The brochure copy included this: “With increasing popularity and a reputation for entertainment and fine music which is now known throughout the East, this young organization has played major engagements in practically every city from Charleston, S.C., to Washington, D.C.”
Teen was becoming increasingly convinced that he was on the threshold of a successful show business career. Poyner was always touting Teen as the best young band singer in the country, and he too saw big things in the future for his young singer and, in turn, for the band.
But then George Poyner was diagnosed with leukemia. Within months, he was dead. His brother was devastated, as were the rest of the band members. The group fell into disarray, and the future that had appeared so promising now was clouded in pain and uncertainty.
Despite his own brush with death in the car crash, or perhaps because of it, Teen was still young enough to feel indestructible. But now, for the first time, in the wake of George’s death, and with fewer band performances to distract him from the tragedy, Teen was forced to confront the details of his life. It was not a pretty picture. His grades, never sterling, were worse in college; his most recent set of marks was pocked with more Ds than Cs, and nothing higher. There was justifiable fear that he would not be able to graduate in four years. And his financial world was marred with debts.
Compounding these troubles in the spring of 1937, a recurring pain in his abdomen that he had tried to ignore for nearly a year turned into a medical emergency. While traveling with the band near Burlington, N.C., his appendix burst. He was hospitalized for several days after surgery, and his physician later told Teen’s mother that while the infection had spread to his large intestine, it had been stopped.
He noted, “I believe that Teen’s health will be much better now than it has been as we found a stone in the appendix, the only one, incidentally, that I have ever seen. It well accounts for the nagging pain that has been troubling him for the past year or more.”
George Poyner’s death and Teen’s physical problems, poor grades, failing finances, and ever-present self-doubt were a heavy load for Teen, and after much soul-searching he decided on a bold course. He dropped out of the orchestra, left college, and began to look for a steady job.
Jimmy Poyner never really got over his brother’s premature death. Not long afterward, he disbanded the orchestra and enrolled in law school. When Teen learned of this, it reassured him that his own decision had been the right one, even if he had no idea where it was going to lead.