Art Tatum - The Art Of Jazz Piano -documentary

so i met art in the early 30s i met  him in chicago at the three deuces   and i was working at a radio  station wjjd and wind in chicago   and a friend of mine come over to me and at that  time i was playing piano with jackie gleason and i   had my trio and i was destined to be in my mind a  piano player and a friend of mine came over to me   and he says i hope you're sitting down because  i got a record that i want you to hear and uh it was a humorous or st louis blues one of  those numbers of art tatum and i heard art   tatum for the first time and i went into  shock i could not believe what i heard   and i quit playing the piano right  then and there and went to the guitar he lived on city park in toledo i know when i was  in toledo in 1932 i lived right across the street   from him and he was about maybe at that time about  17 well maybe he's a little old maybe he's about   20 years old 18. and he used to send off he used  to buy all of earl heinz's records because earl   hines was one of his favorite musicians and when  i first went there well i was musical director for   frank terry's chicago nightingales i was about 22  then we used to play at the recreation boardroom   and every monday night we gave a colored dance  this monday we were playing this dance and i   uh we had intermission and i was getting ready  to go out and get me a drink or something and   frank says to me said wait a minute i want you to  hear something i said what do you want me to hear   i was anxious to go get out he says i want you  to hear a pianist i said oh i've heard all the   piano players i heard little hines or frank heinz  i heard fats heard all these flawless i don't need   to hear nobody playing out and as i was going out  they brought this blind kid up on the stand and   he sat down and as i reached the door he made a  big arpeggio on the piano and went into tiger rag   on the piano i switched turned right around went  back up there and listened to him play i was just fantastic so do i gave up that night i i i gave up the day i heard  it on the on the on the record but i went down to   him that night he says he's appearing live at  at the three deuces in chicago when i heard him   at the three deuces i said my god almighty what  that man is doing when he played his run he'd be   a b-flat an a-flat and a g-flat and the next note  would be a d now the thumb glist across played a d   and a c and then he was back to his b flat again  and he goes and he's going down and he's playing   that run and he plays flat hand piano so he's not  playing this way he's playing down like this so   no matter how close you look at art the hand looks  almost motionless so you're just here and you're   hearing a million notes and his hands aren't  moving at all they just went from here to there   the one thing you will know is when you go think  and he goes up and hits that note that you will   notice or if he reaches for his handkerchief and  he's making a gigantic run right those things so the father of stride piano was in most pianists  judgment james p johnson and he was the one who   made the leap from what had been scott joplin's  ragtime into something entirely different   this became what has since been called  stride piano the left hand was lengthened   the stride physically was greater and often contain a counter melody in the  bass notes to something else for example people like james p and others uh willie the  lion certainly uh exemplified that song they   were the transitional players and of course then  fatz walla came along and then tatum because you   hear a lot of fat swallower stride in tatum's  stride this is one of fat's wallets compositions so when tatum got to it it became less deliberate  less obvious more flowing still and began to   take on dimensions in the right hand which were  something that hadn't been heard much before if he were to be playing that same eight  misbehaving it would come out more like like this so so there's no place that my father club that  i tate and work that my father would come   in and he wouldn't ask my father to play and  vice versa there's no place that my father be   working you see artadium come in a club that  you couldn't play one time in the club he said   when i tatum came in the club he said god's in  the house so he had a whole lot of respect for him   tiny grimes the guitar player to play with my  father and art tatum told me that they were the   two greatest jazz piano players that ever lived my  father and ortega that was the rooster come from   in those days strike piano play they were piano  plays they played the entire orchestra because   they had been playing in places like where  in baltimore ballrooms were then playing in   apartment houses where the you could buy a  house flats in chicago was loaded with that   you have a flat where the guys come by after  hours and you can buy some food and meet some   nice ladies and sit around the dining room  and eat and drink and have a lovely time   and he had a piano play in the corner so  he had to play the whole bit he wasn't it   wasn't room for a clarity or a saxophone or a  bass so you stride he played the whole thing so so when we were in toledo ohio i imagine i was  about four or five years old at the time   and i couldn't relate exactly as to what he was  doing but then as i grew older i understood what   he was doing of course he's much older than i am  and i realized because i would hear him playing   he and his friends would come in  and they'd be playing the piano   and then i realized that  he was going to be a talent my mother was born in virginia my father in  north carolina but they came there at young ages my father played a little piano  little ragtime but nothing basic   there was always music in the house radio or the  roller piano they spent a small fortune sending   him to a blind handicapped school in columbus  ohio and he developed this talent as he progressed   year by year they fostered it you know if they  saw he could do something i mean i imagine someone   said hey let him play the piano okay he  had a teacher mr remy piana teacher who   helped him with his initial basics  but after that it was he on his own he started getting work in the clubs he followed  teddy wilson teddy wilson was the house pianist   and band for lou grinder and then teddy  left and then art took over his uh position toledo was one of the most unusual  cities at that time there was no racial   conflict there never has been in toledo  ohio that was unusual in ohio at the time   he played there about five years four to five  years then he got this opportunity with um why should it be it was a great thrill for the family to  know that he was working with adelie hall   she responded to him and he responded to  her and i think they had a good relationship   which was going to be terminated eventually  because of his popularity and things like that   but they had a good relationship and  he speaks always spoke well of adeline   the opportunity that she gave him to be known  and to perform it became evident that he was   a star in his own right because he drew a great  deal of applause for his solo performances during   the adelaide hall singing performances and in  1933 he did make his first records for brunswick   which were solos there were four records made  at that time and they took the music world   by storm certainly the jazz musicians were  overwhelmed to find this tremendous talent   and they really didn't know  where it had come from or who his inspirations were he himself   stated that fatswalla was his primary inspiration  there was a piano player named lee sims who   exerted a great deal of influence on him with his  harmonic style sims was not a jazz performer but   he had some interesting ideas of harmony  and had written a book on the subject   those players who were the prominent  figures in stride piano like james p   johnson and people like earl heinz and and others  were uh astonished at his facility and the uh   the new harmonies that he brought into the music  the the rhythmic intensity and and complexity   of the music and um he continued to be a solo  performer of some considerable note in those days so so so so so so artanium could play a tune for half an  hour and never play the same thing twice   play a tune for half an hour and  never say play the same chorus twice   you never make the mistake of making the same  run twice his mind would always be thinking   he could just sit up for half an hour 45 minutes  play a tune and every time he come around he'd   be playing something else he's fantastic  man tatum's greatness i think is grounded   first and this may be surprising because many  people would say first in his technique i don't   think so i think first in his ability  as a musician to do what waller did in   a different way to create improvisations that  were almost limitless in in their inventiveness   lots of different tricks i think are in tatum's  vocabulary as they were in waller's vocabulary by   that i mean not stride tricks not decorative  figures that are applied to a melodic line   but ways of going up and down the  keyboard of using patterns of runs   five six note runs repeated over and over up way  up and down the keyboard using the whole extent   of the keyboard and what tatum does is to apply  these in different situations the way waller did   in his but with an enormous amount of variety and  inventiveness all over the keyboard rhythmically   he's completely unpredictable harmonically he  enriches the language that waller bequeathed   to him to the same extent that waller enriched the  language that was likewise bequeathed to him in   other words it's it's taken that much further  uh the way he alters chords and transposes   a phrase in the middle of the phrase is  shocking and new and yet somehow it's right   it works um he certainly defined however  what great piano jazz playing would be for   for the boppers clearly one had to have a  flawless technique waller did but tatum's   technique was even greater than waller and i  didn't mean to suggest when i said that i don't   find that his technique is the most important  thing about him that it wasn't important   he couldn't have done anything he did  without having that enormous fluency so do so do so tatum's technique was universally regarded as the  most prodigious the finest the most powerful um   and still is i think today people people regard  him as uh an outsized pianist a pianist whose   technique is beyond imitation uh it's it's anyone  who hears tatum for the first time simply wonders   how does he move his fingers so fast because  they literally fly over the keyboard or blur   there are ways to learn how to  do his runs but they involve   cheating using just these three fingers  all the time up and down down the keyboard   when waller heard tatum play there obviously would  have been an element of competition involved but   having heard tatum i think waller recognized  that tatum indeed was the genius that he was   proclaimed to be that that no other pianist  could really touch him as a as a technician and   as a musician in in many ways but tatum's basis  ii is also stride and again occasionally even   in some of the most mind-boggling and complex  improvisations on the standard repertoire   that tatum does you will suddenly hear just a  bit a very small bit of stride but it's there   it says to a listener these are  my roots this is where i came from   that tradition is passed even further  beyond tatum to felonious monk oddly   enough perhaps the most avant-garde pianist  of his day the most experimental the most   likely to do things that even other jazz  musicians would find difficult to accept so tatum's harmonies when he uh when he doubled  up and quadrupled up the passing tones from instead of doing that feed that sort of thing was  in one aspect what charlie parker brought to jazz   quite a bit later parker's innovations were so  universal that they affected every player of every   instrument it's clear that parker was familiar  with what tatum had done on the piano and i   think it's easy to say that tatum's  harmonic knowledge opened up parker's   and showed him the way and then also just  the very rapidity with which tatum played   was something that parker seemed to  be trying to do and would tatum when   fast fast flighty things like that you hear you  hear bird playing that way often little rapid   notes and connecting things because tatum wasn't  only doing these patterns he wasn't doing only   those runs and things i was showing before he  would he would he would actually get into a   single tone line by combining them  all and running from one to another which was getting to be very close to what parker  was developing or would develop somewhat later oscar peterson is the pianist who when he wishes  to can probably come closest to tatum's command   of the instrument oscar of course plays a great  many different ways but oscar among other things   can replicate tatum's style very well and he is  he has a marvelous technique and he can he can   do that and also oscar unlike some other pianist  cares about playing solo piano as well as he plays   with the with accompaniments such as ray brown  and so forth he also is a marvelous solo pianist do do do   tatum was staying at a hotel on eighth avenue  i think it was the braddock an old beaten up   hotel i don't know why i stayed there perhaps  because there was no other hotel available   but anyway he stayed there and he was working  at the three deuces down on 52nd street but   um during this period uh i had become friendly  with tatum in buffalo new york just be prior   to coming to new york he used to play at a club up  there called mcvans and we used to always go there   and hear his last set after we finished playing  up there but anyway when we came to new york   uh tatum would have this habit of going to all  the after hour spots that he could find you know   wherever wherever there was a piano that's where  you'd go so one night uh he wanted to go to this   club and so he said hey let's go there so i took  him there he couldn't see very well you know   so we went down there and um when we got there  um see there there was marlo morris who was a   fairly big name in new york at the time as a  stride piano player and whatever teddy wilson   i believe was there oh there were about 10  or 15 pianists there and they all played   and tatum i don't know how he did it but  he enveloped me to get up there and play   i had no business even in there you know with  all these great pianists and then after that   tatum got up and played and as usual he just  made a complete um he watched every that the   tournaments you've heard the term washed everybody  away he washed everybody away the slate was clean   and of course he did some phenomenal things as  he always did whenever he sat down to the piano   the man was incredible and you forgot about  everything else that had happened before that so so he had this unique abilities he had this  unique touch to get the most out of any   instrument and there are very few penis who can  do that he could for instance play on a piano   that was let's say considerably less than  perfect you know which means it was a rotten   piano but he could take a piano like that and  make it sound like a baldwin concert grand   we're in a joint one night and there was five  keys sticking down and we're under a mortuary   okay and we had to walk by a guy that was on a  drain board and he said to me what do i smell i   says that's formaldehyde i says we're on our we're  enroute through a mortuary but we're going to jam   in the back now this particular night it was  chitterson was playing the piano herman citizen   and art says that's a lousy piano and chitterson's  going like this and some of the keys aren't going   down so there's some teeth missing in what he's  playing so i'd say now that that's an f sharp   and that's a b natural that's a d he  name and they're all over the piano an art would say give me another bear so he'd get  about four beers in him and he'd say all right   take me up there and this always knocked me out  because he had him a beer he'd take a drink and   then he tap it and he knew what key it was in  and you know how much beer he had left but now   with all the keys going down when i played a run  he went with this hand and pulled the keys up   so as he was going down this hand all the keys  are back ready to play again with this hand   so when he come up the keys were in shape then  he's down here pulling the keys up with his hand   well this just shocked everybody because you  know to remember five keys and have him up so   you could hit him again you know uh you have to be  pretty pretty alert pretty sharp and art was that   he had a phenomenal mind for sports he could  quote you uh batting averages of players you   never even heard of he had a phenomenal memory  for things like that he was very interested in   sports all sports he loved baseball you know  hockey basketball he knew all the statistics   he knew all the players you know he's really  quite a quite a person i played cards with him he   liked to play pinocchio and then we would sit down  between sets at night in the intermission he said   he'd put a very strong light behind his uh his  his left side and and he would this is i guess he   could see better out of the left one and we would  deal the cars and he would take the cars and put   them up to his eye and put them all in place and  exactly where the cars were was supposed to be   and then he never looked at it again you had to  call your card when you played it you said jack   of spades you know and he should put the queen  on it if he had the queen it was amazing every   night that's where we that past time 1935. so i  really got to know him and have a lot of fun with   really a musician's musician in every way   caused many pianists to reconsider played  rarely with others had a tendency to   to sort of slow down and simplify his  style when he played with other musicians   he was somewhat inhibiting but he did form a  trio in 1943 with slam stuart and tiny grimes and   that started in los angeles where they used  to jam after hours at a at an upstairs club   for free and then lines began to form   people coming to hear them they had to get changed  and put them out in front of the restaurant   and eventually they decided to do a tour with  the trio and they again had a tremendous impact so in those days there weren't very many concert  recital hall opportunities for a pianist   who played jazz and the places that were available  were small dingy dark dank cd not very large and   it was really not possible to get the kind of  exposure that one would get but nevertheless there   were opportunities that did turn up rudy valley  an old time singer who was also a saxophone player   had tatum on his show in 1934 i believe and he  did appear on the craft music hall a radio program   and on a number of other radio programs i  understand that art is quite a favorite with some   of the biggest concert pianists too you better  take that kind of easy i'm not a concert pianist   i mean i'm not except that come on art okay okay  why don't you tell the folks something about the   piano you have at home i understand it's a pretty  important item in the tatum household isn't it   yes i have a good steinway i've had it for  about nine years since i've had my house   and that incidentally was the first  thing to come in the house was a piano   well that was certainly a wonderful write-up you  had in time magazine a couple of months ago art   let's see now uh how long have you been playing  piano well you're gonna make me tell my age i've   been playing quite a while i'll say over 20  years anyway the dorsey brothers were friends   of his and he did appear in the dorsey brothers  film mid-forties called the fabulous dorsey's   the band included the dorsey brothers charlie  barnett ziggy elman and some others of note foreign he i think was basically   an embellisher and an improviser on music of  other people and the music that he used was   popular songs of the day or previous days and  occasionally uh classical themes too which he   must have come in contact with when he was a  child and was studying he had a he had a classical   upbringing and i think it's clear that a  lot of that came through in his playing so he mixed a stride in classical and then  he had that ability that other pianists   just didn't have the mind he could do things  very quickly with his mind and his brain   and he could improvise and he could do  things that they they just couldn't do   no way they could do it because they weren't him  you know what i mean they just weren't our tatum   and that's that's the way the  cookie goes they weren't him so after the show was over that's  when you'd catch art at his best   art would sit there with only three  or four people in the club and sing and he sang great and he loved to sing blues   early in the morning and i might say that  art was a very lovable gentle guy says took my baby away from here so that i got something to tell you  baby make the headlines on your head   got something to tell you baby to  make the hair rise on your head   said i got something to give  you sugar make the springs i took my brother to hear him one night  in chicago it was at the brass rail   and i said you're going to hear the greatest  piano player in the world and my brother's   sitting there with his wife and mary and i and  we're sitting there and tatum comes up and he goes and the people applaud so my brother turn around  and look and see who came in and i said what are   you looking for ralph and he says somebody  must have come in i heard him all applauding   and i said no they were applauding at what art  played on the piano and my brother says well   what i heard him play on the  piano is like when you when   your mother made your duster  keys on the piano with a rag that stuck with me all my life there  isn't much difference between just   taking your finger and running  them all down the black keys and you got one hell of a run okay and  there it is it's just a gliss down the piano   but it sounds to a layman a layman doesn't  know if this is hard to do or easy to do   and consequently this is one of the drawbacks  that a great person is going to have that the more   talented he is the thinner the air gets  when you have that ability it's very   hard to restrict yourself to play  something as stupid as the melody   if you want to be rich and you want to please  a lot of people you have to give the people   what they can understand what they can digest  and of course that means that you have to play a simple kind of music i'll tell you he baby in 1956 of uh uremic poisoning kidney  failure he had been ill for perhaps a year   prior to that time but he played right up  until a couple of weeks before his death   and then he had to give up the tour and go  back to california where he lived and to the   hospital he died almost immediately thereafter  anyone that thinks a musician has it easy   uh they're just kidding  themselves it's kind of hectic   it's kind of hectic because yeah you're doing a  tuesday to say saturday or sunday uh booking then   you got to leave out of there and go to the next  booklet and you're riding planes and basically   that's your mode of transportation the plane you  got to go in the bad weather in the good weather   he would stay out practically  all night that's just part of him   the funeral itself brought out a whole host of  musicians involved in jazz people like um sarah   vaughan and ella fitzgerald ben webster was there  and uh many other notables in the world of jazz   when i hit something that i think is wonderful  i want to compare it to something i take out my   italian records and play it if i think something  is really new and rare and unusual a player not   only a pianist but any instrumentalist and i said  let me just go back because we haven't heard art   in a long long time now he's even gone so the  sound is not immediately an idea and when we   hear something new we say well i just want to  check check the balances on it brings me back   to what it's like then we actually did the same  thing it was a great great worship for rotating   he was a leader harmonically these things and  people are saying that he paid too many notes   uh all these things harmonically is what  everybody has been striving to do they   just haven't been able to to work it out like like foreign he said to the piano and played  it did not look like his hands were moving   and he was playing notes that  and how much the structure   was balancing the harmonic way and the softness  and the touch that he had just it's mind-boggling   really we i've sat down with ben we have to  listen to our team's recordings and we've cried   just the two men sitting there listening to the  beauty and the power and the fleetness of this man   there isn't a piano player probably in the whole  world that doesn't have his picture on the wall   and say i wonder how he did that and i  sat there and watched him and i'm looking   at those hands go down and no matter  how much and i can take a piano roll   slow it down and watch the keys go down real slow  and then you still can't figure out how he did ah you

Channel: Montxo Garcia

Views: 124,306

Rating: 4.9467998 out of 5

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Id: VXJb14qufe4

Length: 51min 46sec (3106 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Hubbtones73]

His performance of Willow Weep For Me on the Pablo solo masterpieces is the gold standard.