A favorite of producers Dave Bartholomew, Allen Toussaint, Senator Jones, Isaac Bolden, and Wardell Quezergue during the 1970s, Teddy Royal was one of the busiest guitarists in New Orleans. Adept at playing rhythm and blues, funk and jazz, Royal has been Fats Domino’s on-and-off guitarist for a quarter-of-a-century, and has recorded with artists ranging from the Wild Tchoupitoulas to Patti LaBelle.

Born in the Bronx section of New York City on November 7, 1948, Royal became interested in the guitar at the age of eight.

“My uncle had a guitar,” recalled Royal. “He let me play it but only at his house. He wouldn’t let me take it home until I was 11. The first song I learned to play was ‘Tequila’ [by the Champs]. I used to buy 45s for 99 cents and learn to play the guitar from listening to them. I didn’t know anything about chords or tuning and at first I chorded with an old butter knife. I just tuned the guitar to what I thought sounded right.

“A guy named Lewis, who was a janitor, heard me and he showed me how to properly tune the guitar and how to play chords. I was running errands at a shoe shine stand and I saved up enough money to buy my first electric guitar—a Winston. It was a Japanese guitar with a big thick neck and real high action. I also bought a Silvertone amp from Sears.”

Lewis eventually introduced Royal to a group of kids that drank wine and sang doo-wop on the corner of Second and Broadway most evenings [standard behavior for youths in the Big Apple] and he added his guitar. One of the kids introduced Royal to Johnny Maestro, who had a soul group called the Four Pennies. Maestro needed a guitar player and offered Royal a job.

“I was 18 and they took me to Montreal,” said Royal. “Their booking agent was in Canada and we worked a lot there even though the band was based in Providence, Rhode Island. We played for a month at the Esquire Sho Bar. We were following Jr. Walker and Wilson Pickett. Then we went around the corner and played at Rockhill Paradise. That’s were I got into Wes Montgomery and the jazz thing. They also had a guitar player at that club that was just a great jazz player and he really impressed me. When we left there we went to Halifax and to Toronto. That’s were we were discovered by Motown Records.”

Thinking that the Four Pennies was a dated name, Motown renamed the group to the Hearts of Stone. The Hearts of Stone recorded one LP, Stop the World, We Want To Get On, that was recorded at Motown’s original Studio One in Detroit.

“Recording at Motown was like going to work in the morning and punching a clock,” laughed Royal. ‘They ran the place like an assembly line. I wrote and arranged all the material on the album. It made some noise in some areas but it wasn’t a hit.”

In 1972, Royal was in Boston and stopped at the Sugar Shack club to check out New Orleans’ King Floyd, who was still touring on the strength of his Number One R&B hit, “Groove Me.” Royal liked what he heard and asked Floyd if he ever need a guitar player to give him a call. Sure enough, two weeks later, Floyd sent for Royal who got on an airplane bound for the Crescent City with a guitar, an amplifier and a suitcase.

“We spent a lot of time on the road,” said Royal. “Two weeks out, five days here. I didn’t really like New Orleans at first. We made good money on the road, but we couldn’t make any money here. After a few months, I got fed up and went back to Providence.”

However, Floyd’s executive producer, Elijah Walker, was aware of Royal’s talent and convinced him try New Orleans again.

“Elijah took me under his wing and introduced me to a new circle of people in the music business. Through him I met Wardell Quezergue and I became his personal guitarist. We wrote a lot of songs together up in the hotel rooms—I came up with the rhythms, he wrote the words.”

In addition to recording and writing songs with King Floyd (who Quezergue produced), Quezergue used him on sessions he cut with Jean Knight, C. L. Blast and Larry Hamilton among others. Royal’s reputation spread quickly and Toussaint used him on sessions with the Wild Magnolias, Lee Dorsey and Ernie K-Doe. Senator Jones used him on Johnny Adams’ early J.B.s singles and a James Rivers Hep’ Me LP, while Isaac Bolden hired him to back Tony Owens on several 45s.

On the live front, after five years with King Floyd—and being stranded on the road one too many times—Royal and Floyd’s entire band, World Blues, collectively quit. The group, which also featured the awesome drummer Herman Ernest, became regulars at the Sandpiper and the Nite Cap on Louisiana Avenue and Club 77 on North Claiborne. Royal eventually left the group and began freelancing around the city. In 1977 fate and fortune stepped in.

“I was playing in the band for the play ‘Shangri La’ [loosely based on what went on at the Dew Drop Inn during the club’s heyday]. Roy Montrell [Fats Domino’s long time guitarist] came by and asked if he could sit in. Somebody said it might be nice if I let him so I did. I didn’t know he hired and fired the musicians that played with Fats Domino. At the end of the night he said, ‘Do you want to go to Europe with Fats? He needs a bass player.’ I said, ‘I can’t play bass.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘You do now.’

“Our first gig was in Germany and there was a white Fender Precision bass waiting for me at the hotel. We went to rehearsal and Fats asked David Douglas [Domino’s second guitarist] to play a riff and he couldn’t. Reggie [Hall, Domino’s brother-in-law and “eyes” during tours] said to Fats, ‘Teddy plays guitar—let him try.’ I played the riff and Fats said, ‘Dave, give Teddy the guitar—you play bass.’ I never touched a bass again,” Royal played several dates with Domino in Europe when tragedy struck.

“We were in Amsterdam. We went to dinner at the hotel we stayed in and Roy [Montrell] told us what suits we were wearing for the show that night. Then he went up to his room to take a bath, A little later his girlfriend went up to the room, but the door was locked and water was streaming into the hall. She went to the desk to get security to unlock the door. When they went in they found Roy on the toilet dead with a needle stuck in his arm. We played the gig that night but we just went through the motions. We had a hard time getting the body back to New Orleans and when we got home, people thought we were all heroin addicts.”

Royal relates that playing with Domino offers the best of both worlds.

“Fats always has a great band and when you’re working everything is first class. I learned a lot about discipline working with Fats and Dave Bartholomew, as well as dealing with different musicians’ personalities. If you did what was expected of you—which was playing Fats Domino music—there were no problems. After awhile I did it with my eyes closed. The problem is that Fats doesn’t work that often and when you come in off the road you have to scramble to find a gig.”

In 1981, Royal recorded “Whiskey Heaven” with Domino before getting tired of the New Orleans scene. Royal moved to Chicago the following year where he started a jazz quartet and sat in with several blues artists including Lonnie Brooks and Buddy Guy. Eventually he was by hired Koko Taylor. In the late 1980s, Royal moved to Philadelphia where he persued a career in jazz. Domino stayed in touch with him, and in 1992, Royal accompanied Domino to Europe once again. Two years later he cut his first jazz CD, Morning Groove, with his old buddy Wardell Quezergue arranging, which appeared on Sunshine, a label financed by his English girlfriend. This was followed by Keep On Moving On and Royal Blue, which appeared at the end of the decade.

Royal had taken residence in London, England, in the late 1990s, but returned to New Orleans this year after the death of his British girlfriend. He attempted to kick start his career but found gigs hard to come by. A tentative tour of England with Domino’s band was in the works but that fell through. Lamenting on his situation in New Orleans, Royal stated: “I don’t mind dying in another city, but I don’t want to rot in New Orleans.”

Postscript

After Jazz Fest gigs with Fats Domino and King Floyd, Royal packed a suitcase and his guitar and bought a one-way bus ticket to Philadelphia the day after the festival.