Art Tatum - Blue Skies Extended Liner Notes
Art Tatum - Blue Skies
There are jazz pianists—and then there’s Art Tatum. He was so far ahead of his time that he pushed the hands of the clock forward at least a decade.
Tatum combined prodigious technique (his two-handed coordination was simply uncanny, each hand sometimes playing something entirely disconnected from the other yet never faltering), perfect pitch (he was known to refuse to play out-of-tune instruments), and an unquenchable penchant for expanding the definition of jazz piano that was light years beyond what had been established prior to his emergence.
Music critics often cite Tatum’s groundbreaking use of reharmonization and bitonality, but those high-falutin’ terms didn’t mean a thing to the folks who laid down their hard-earned cash to dig his ivories exploits at the Onyx Club on New York’s West 52nd Street or the Three Deuces, located just north of the el on North State Street in Chicago. My late mother couldn’t play a note on the piano, yet spoke of him in the same reverent tones she used in describing Louis Armstrong and the King Cole Trio. To his legion of fans, Tatum was the man.
Born in Toledo, Ohio on October 13, 1909, Arthur Tatum, Jr. suffered from impaired vision from infancy. That didn’t deter him in the slightest from finding his way to a piano; some accounts claim he was picking out hymns on the 88s as early as three years of age. Little Arthur would reportedly surprise onlookers at Toledo’s Jefferson School by playing the ivories in the kindergarten room, his rhythmic foot unable to touch the ground so he knocked the varnish off the instrument’s undercarriage with well-timed kicks instead.
Tatum later studied under instructor Overton G. Rainey at the Toledo School of Music, though Rainey strictly taught the classics and discouraged improvisation from his pupils. That classical grounding was placed on the back burner whenever Art played at house parties before he hit his teens. By 1925, when he was in his mid-teens and attending the Columbus School for the Blind, Tatum was already fully developed as a pianist, playing at a Toledo gambling house despite his youth. His early influences outside of school ranged from ragtime and jazz to hymns, piano rolls, radio, and various recordings spanning a wide variety of styles. Along with stride master Fats Waller, Tatum cited non-jazz player Lee Sims as a particularly important influence on piano; James P. Johnson and Earl “Fatha” Hines were other likely favorites. Art’s ears were wide-open, and the genuine prodigy incorporated it all into his rapidly blossoming approach.
Naturally, local nightclubs welcomed Tatum to their bandstands as soon as he was old enough to perform there. He landed his own program on Toledo’s WSPD radio that was eventually broadcast over the Blue Network during the late ‘20s—quite an honor for someone so young. Jazz luminaries Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson were impressed by what they heard from the newcomer, who delayed venturing to New York where the real jazz action was until 1932, when he made the lengthy jaunt as an accompanist to singer Adelaide Hall.
After emerging victorious at a contest at Morgan’s Bar in Harlem that saw him pitted against the top names in the field--Waller, Johnson and Willie “The Lion” Smith--Tatum found himself the toast of the town. He cut his debut recordings for Brunswick in March of 1933, notably his immortal version of “Tiger Rag” and its opposite side, a personalized treatment of W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues.” Tatum settled in at the Onyx Club, rapidly building a vaunted reputation. He spent a year headlining at the Three Deuces, one of his main haunts, during the mid-‘30s, then relocated to the West Coast, hobnobbing with Hollywood’s elite. For three months in 1938, Tatum performed in England, sailing overseas aboard the Queen Mary.
Tatum settled in at Decca Records from 1934 until the advent of World War II. Although he usually recorded in a solo format where he could let his complex ideas flow free and without restraint, Tatum also backed blues shouter Big Joe Turner on a few sides for the label, most notably “Wee Baby Blues” and Big Joe’s first pass at “Corrine Corrina,” both released under Tatum’s name in 1941. The piano master put together a trio in 1943 with guitarist Tiny Grimes and bassist Slam Stewart to play on 52nd Street and record for the Comet and Asch imprints. He was backed by guitar and bass when he waxed “Cocktails For Two” and “Liza” for the nation’s wartime V-Disc program, but recorded a fair amount of solo material for V-Disc as well.
Esquire magazine’s 1944 critics’ poll paid tribute by handing Tatum its coveted award as the year’s top jazz pianist. The honor included holding down the piano chair at an Esquire-sponsored jam session that January at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House alongside Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden and Coleman Hawkins. Despite his increased visibility as leader of his own trio, Tatum disbanded it before 1944 was through, reverting to playing as a solo.
Tatum made precious few appearances on film, but did turn up in the 1947 Hollywood biopic The Fabulous Dorseys. After paying tribute to his old pal Fats with a rendition of “Ain’t Misbehavin’” for RCA Victor, Tatum cut several platters for Los Angeles-based Capitol Records in 1949. The pianist reformed his trio in ‘51, bringing Stewart back into the fold but this time adding guitarist Everett Barksdale instead of Grimes, who was by then leading his own combo. A 1952 national tour billed as Piano Parade combined Tatum’s incredible artistry with that of three other ivories aces: Meade Lux Lewis, Pete Johnson, and Erroll Garner. It must have been absolutely heavenly for dedicated fans of jazz and blues piano.
Tatum hadn’t been in a studio for awhile when Norman Granz inaugurated the most extensive recording project that Tatum would ever undertake at the close of 1953—one that would continue until just prior to the pianist’s passing. Granz, the owner of the Clef label and impresario behind the many all-star Jazz at the Philharmonic tours, determined to let Tatum record everything he wanted to without industry limitations for Clef—an all-but-unheard-of situation illustrating Granz’s extreme respect for Tatum’s mammoth talent.
At the beginning of the massive project, Granz recorded Tatum’s pianistic genius in his traditional solo setting. After that, the producer surrounded Tatum with other jazz royalty: Lionel Hampton, Roy Eldridge, Ben Webster, Red Callender, Buddy Rich, Louis Bellson. Clef released an avalanche of Tatum product during his final years on the planet, offering the most complete library of his artistry ever laid on tape. All that fresh high-fidelity product rejuvenated Tatum’s profile among jazz lovers, which had been languishing as other trends came and went in the jazz field. Tatum won Down Beat magazine’s critics’ poll for pianists for three consecutive years, beginning in 1954.
This collection takes a deep dive into Tatum’s pianistic genius as he brilliantly reinvents the Great American Songbook in his singular image. Disc one captures Tatum at his solo finest as he turns Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s “All The Things You Are” and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s “Have You Met Miss Jones?” (both from a 1940 radio performance) as well as two versions of “Body And Soul” inside out, embellishing every one of them with barrages of unexpected twists and turns. We also have two renditions apiece of the peppy “Fine And Dandy” (the second one hails from Voice of America) and Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg’s “Over The Rainbow.” Both versions of the latter were apparently done at a late ‘40s Hollywood house party, along with “It’s The Talk Of The Town,” “I’ll Never Be The Same” and one version of Cole Porter’s “Night And Day.”
“Where Or When,” another Rodgers and Hart classic, was made for the V-Disc program. George and Ira Gershwin’s “Someone To Watch Over Me,” Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach’s “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” Porter’s “Begin The Beguine,” and Johnny Green and Edward Heyman’s “I Cover The Waterfront” were all recorded in New York in 1955 for Swedish radio broadcast. The first disc closes with a spectacular late ‘40s reprise of Tatum’s early triumph “Tiger Rag.”
Disc two opens with several tracks from a May 1, 1944 New York studio session with Grimes and Stewart that were part of a 78 album on the Comet imprint titled Inspirations in Jazz with Art Tatum. The astounding piano man tears through “Body And Soul” and a dizzying “I Know That You Know” with Slam bowing his bass like a man possessed. Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields’ “On The Sunny Side Of The Street,” the Gershwins’ “The Man I Love” and the beguiling “Dark Eyes” also received the full trio treatment that day for Comet, and their treatment of Hampton and Benny Goodman’s flagwaver “Flying Home” swings like mad.
Tatum’s high-flying trio took on McHugh and Fields’ “Exactly Like You,” “I Cover The Waterfront” and a raging arrangement of Goodman’s “Soft Winds” that’s anything but mellow at other sessions (Slam took more of his signature bowed bass solos along the way, as usual humming along in perfect synchronization). There’s another brief “Flying Home” with Stewart and Barksdale done live at a concert in Portland that’s counted off so supersonically fast that you fear it’s certain to sail off into outer space, but it never does. An elegant live treatment of “Tenderly” cools out the fevered pace—not for long, however.
No wonder the audience is in such a rapturous mood when the trio counts off “Tea For Two”—whirlwind tempos like that were enough to convince attendees to leap from a handy balcony. An all-too-brief early ‘50s interview with Tatum conducted by Leigh Kamman on New York’s WOV radio adds a precious bit of insight into the man himself.
Tatum was a habitual participant in late-night jam sessions, usually waiting until everyone else played before proceeding to blow them all off the bandstand. He was also a prodigious drinker, entirely capable of knocking off a case of beer or a couple of quarts of whiskey in a single day and night. That careless attitude regarding his well-being eventually led to declining health for the sightless piano wizard in the form of uremia. Tatum remained musically active until the end all the same, dazzling a throng of 19,000 at a Granz-produced Hollywood Bowl concert in August of 1956 and making his last recording session the following month for Granz.
Unfortunately, the uremia ultimately won, taking Tatum’s life November 5, 1956 in Los Angeles at the much-too-young age of 47. No one would ever equal his astonishing piano technique--then or now.
--Bill Dahl
SOURCES
The Art Music Lounge website: https://artmusiclounge.wordpress.com/2023/01/26/granz-art-tatum-recordings-a-piano-method-for-jazz/
The Copacetic Comics Company website: https://copaceticcomics.com/cds/piano-grand-master-by-art-tatum
Discogs website: www.discogs.com
45worlds website: https://www.45worlds.com/78rpm/artist/art-tatum
Too Marvelous for Words: The Life and Genius of Art Tatum, by James Lester (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)
Wikipedia website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Tatum