Jazz Articles about Art Tatum

Art Tatum: Solo Masterpieces, Volume One

by C. Michael Bailey
September 24, 2013

Art TatumSolo Masterpieces, Volume OneOJC1975/2013 If blues icon Robert Johnson is a phantom, then pianist Art Tatum is a myth. In spite of James Lester's 1995 biography Too Marvelous For Words: The Life and Genius of Art Tatum (Oxford University Press, 1995), little is known of Tatum, whose piano talent has yet to be equaled more than fifty years after his death. It is acknowledged by more than one authority that ...

Art Tatum Goes To College

by Nick Catalano
January 9, 2011

After teaching jazz studies at my university for over 30 years, I have amended many original pedagogical goals and done a great deal of revisionist thinking. Although some of my students are part-time musicians, mostly with perfunctory training, most of them like the pop music of the day and take my course because they have heard that jazz music might be “cool." The course is taught chronologically, and it is always gratifying to see them respond enthusiastically ...

Art Tatum: Piano Starts Here. Live at the Shrine.

by AAJ Italy Staff
March 13, 2009

Questo disco contiene la ristampa del celebre Live at the Shrine del 1949, rielaborato con l'ausilio congiunto di pianoforte e software informatico. I fan di Tatum faranno bene a tenersi alla larga da questa iniziativa editoriale, rivolta più agli integralisti dell'audiofilia che non agli appassionati di jazz. Lo si capisce già dalla lettura delle note di copertina, dove si parla di tutto (microfoni, files informatici, computer) tranne che della musica eseguita, peraltro sacrificata sull'altare dell'edulcorazione sonora. In un sol colpo ...

Art Tatum: Piano Starts Here: Live at the Shrine

by David Rickert
October 11, 2008

The Zenph recording technology will be the most important aspect in deciding whether you will give this Tatum album a spin, so here are the details; the engineers have taken Tatum's Piano Starts Here, a fifty year old live recording, and rerecorded it by digitized the music, capturing every single nuance from touch to pedal action, and recorded it again through a piano fashioned for the purpose, capturing in both stereo surround and binaural stereo. Thus the poor recording quality ...

Art Tatum: The Best of the Pablo Solo Masterpieces

by Dr. Judith Schlesinger
December 11, 2003

I have a dear friend, an accomplished jazz pianist, who used to attach the following tag to his e-mail: “I believe in God and Art Tatum — not necessarily in that order." I too appreciate Tatum's peerless mastery of keys and harmonies, his signature inventiveness, impeccable inner metronome, feathery runs, and pioneering ability to bridge the stride before him with the bop that lay ahead. But I can't take too much of him at one sitting, and I finally recognized ...

Art Tatum: Piano Grand Master

by Mike Perciaccante
November 2, 2003

Featuring 99 tracks in total, the Piano Grand Master box set is the finest Art Tatum collection ever assembled. UK-based Proper Records has delivered an appropriately titled four-disc set which presents itself as a career retrospective, but actually spans only Tatum's prime years (1932-1951). The only essential recordings missing from this set are the mid-'50s material done for Norman Granz. For those interested in the Granz works, those sides have previously been reissued by Pablo on a six-CD box. This ...

Art Tatum: The Best of the Complete Pablo Group Masterpieces

by Dr. Judith Schlesinger
October 20, 2003

These 12 recently remastered tracks were culled from the Complete Pablo Group Masterpieces, a six-CD set of Art Tatum playing with assorted all-star groups from 1954-56. Since Tatum played solo for most of his career, these are rare gems which provide fodder for the endless debate over whether Tatum could, in fact, play well with others.

Scott Yanow, in his characteristically informative liners, suggests that most musicians were simply scared to death to share the bandstand with the ...