Art Tatum

Art Tatum (1909-1956) sounds like he’s constantly out to impress and take the listener’s breath away – not perhaps the best goal of an artist. But his superhuman technical prowess aside, his pure musicality is also breath taking.

Of course, there is no shortage of piano prodigies in jazz – just think of George Shearing (try “Tenderly”), Oscar Peterson and Keith Jarrett who all have more of a rounded classical touch than Art. But less commented on is Art’s rich and innovative understanding of harmony. Fats Waller – an incredible performer himself – was reported to have said when Art walked in “I’m just a piano player, but tonight God is in the house…”. Tatum not only drank phenomenally before his performances (which would often go all through the night) but he was almost totally blind. Tatum courted the admiration of classical pianists including Rachmaninov and Horowitz for his virtuosity, improvisatory skills and super human stamina. How exactly he developed his skills remains anecdotal and guesswork. Biographer James Lester in “Too Marvellous for Words” couldn’t offer much more than:

• “This achievement certainly did not come from years of hard labor under European-trained teachers, which is the usual route for concert pianists. It seems instead to have come from a very fine match between the opportunities the piano offers, on the one hand, and Tatum’s innate sensitivities and gifts of coordination, on the other.”

Lester goes on to describe Art’s style as follows:

• “Compression may be the key to understanding an Art Tatum performance. Tatum…packs into a few dense bars the content a lesser pianist would spread over a long solo. Whether or not you like this, or find it admirable, may depend on how closely you are willing to listen. Tatum, in his own time, made far more demands on his listeners than anyone in jazz had ever done, and even ardent admirers might have trouble with it… Some critics were tempted to echo Dr Johnson’s remarks on hearing a violin solo: “Difficult do you call it, sir? I wish it were impossible!” For such critics Tatum is “garrulous”, “congested”, full of “a disarray of flourishes”, constantly working with “a predictable bag of tricks”.

So you can see that he isn’t for everyone. But he was unique and I’m personally fascinated by everything he did, both his solo recordings and group work. One gets drawn in and becomes addicted to his sound, just like an addiction for Thelonious Monk.

For pianists there’s a wonderful book entitled “The Right Hand According to Tatum” (Riccardo Scivales) which dissects some of Art’s famous runs, and offers a number of transcriptions – which are impossible, but great fun to try out at least the first few bars with a recording next to you.

There is alas only a very small number of videos of Art’s playing in existence – Tiny’s Exercise, Yesterdays and Art’s take on a Dvorak. His technique is not only amazing but really peculiar – how the hands seem to glide over the keys at an unusual angle, and an apparently very active use of the thumb hidden below the fingers. It would have been fantastic for someone to have taken one of these videos and annotate the transcription with Art’s own fingering. Anecdotes about Art’s playing abound. There’s a very nice discussion between Oscar Peterson and Andre Previn about Tatum, available on YouTube.

One can pick any recorded piece to showcase his artistry, but a supreme example is his “Tea for Two”, available also on YouTube (his 1933 recording) where you can follow the transcription: