Art Tatum

Steven Cerra
Monday, March 7, 2016

“Genius is an overworked word in this era of thunderous hyperbolic press agency. Still, when one considers Arthur Tatum, there is no other proper descriptive adjective for referring to his talents. I have purposely pluralized them, for Tatum possessed several gifts—most of which remained unknown to all but a few of his best friends—his prodigious memory, his grasp of all sports statistics and his skill at playing cards.”

 “At the piano, Art seemingly delighted in creating impossible problems from the standpoint of harmonies and chord progressions. Then he would gleefully impro-
vise sequence upon sequence until the phrase emerged as a complete entity within the structure of whatever composition he happened to be playing. Many is the time I have heard him speed blithely into what I feared was a musical cul-de-sac, only to hear the tying resolution come shining through. This required great knowledge, dexterity and daring.”

 “Perhaps Art Tatum would have been assured a firmer place in musical history if he had not alienated too many of the self-righteous aficionados who preferred their piano sounds less embroidered, less imaginative and more orthodox. Therefore, it follows that Tatum would never be their favorite pianist. Posterity tends to prove that Art requires neither champion nor defense, since the proof of his genius remains intact and unblemished. The beauty within the framework of his music transcends the opinions of critics, aficionados, fans and musicians themselves. History is the arbiter. For the truly great, fame is not fleeting but everlasting.” - Rex Stewart, Jazz trumpet player and author

Photo: www.bookofdaystales.com

 In his impeccably written American Masters: 56 Portraits in Jazz, the esteemed author Whitney Balliett observed:

 “Great talent often has a divine air: it's there, but no one knows where it comes from. Tatum's gifts were no exception; his background was plain and strict…. 

 “Tatum was a restless, compulsive player who abhorred silence. He used the piano's orchestral possibilities to the fullest, simultaneously maintaining a melodic voice, a harmonic voice, a variety of decorative voices, and a kind of whimsical voice, a laughing, look-Ma-no-hands voice. The effect was both confounding and exhilarating.

 Tatum had two main modes—the flashy, kaleidoscopic style he used on the job, and the straight-ahead jazz style, which emerges in fragments from his few after-hours recordings and from some of the recordings made with his various trios (piano, guitar, and bass), which seemed to galvanize him. (Tatum did not have an easy time playing with other instruments; he tended to compete with them, then overrun them.) He offered the first style to the public, which accepted it with awe, and he used the second to delight himself and his peers….”

 “Tatum did not fit comfortably in jazz, for his playing, which was largely orchestral, both encompassed it and overflowed it. He occupied his own country. His playing was shaped primarily by his technique, which was prodigious, even virtuosic. Tatum had an angelic touch: no pianist has got a better sound out of the instrument. He was completely ambidextrous. And he could move his hands at bewildering speeds, whether through gargantuan arpeggios, oompah stride basses, on-the-beat tenths, or single-note melodic lines. No matter how fast he played or how intense and complex his harmonic inventions became, his attack kept its commanding clarity. The Duke Ellington cornetist Rex Stewart, who turned into something of a writer in his later years, said of Tatum in his Jazz Masters of the Thirties:”

 “At every dance that Fletcher Henderson's band played, there'd be someone boasting about hometown talent. Usually, the loca talent was pretty bad, and we were reluctant to take the word of anyone but a darn-good musician, such as alto saxophonist Milton Senior of McKinney's Cotton Pickers, who was touting a piano player.

 "Out of this world," Milton said. We were persuaded to go to the club where this pianist was working.

 The setting was not impressive; it was in an alley, in the middle of Toledo's Bohemian section. I 'm not sure if the year was 1926 or 1927, but I am sure that my first impression of Art Tatum was a lasting one. As a matter of fact, the experience was almost traumatic for me, and for a brief spell afterward, I toyed with the idea of giving up my horn and returning to school.


 Looking back, I can see why Tatum had this effect on me. Not only did he play all that piano, but, by doing so, he also reminded me of how inadequately I was filling Louis Armstrong's chair with the Henderson band.

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