You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The Greatest Pianist Ever

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Join us as we dive into the life and legacy of Art Tatum, the jazz piano virtuoso who took entertainment on the instrument to a new level.  YT playlist • https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kn6Z2anqCFpTOc4H957o0Oktgr_C9gl7QOscar Peterson and Count Basie on Art Tatum  • https://youtu.be/YAeT3Dr74YsArt Tatum performances • https://youtu.be/D9Cs_zb4q14 • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzMyhzadzTQLooking to drop a question? Want to listen to the audio pod? Look no furtherhttps://youllhearit.com/Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open Studio🎹 Head over to our YouTube channel for a better look 👀.Follow us on Instagram

Hey Adam. Yo. Look at where we are. The sun is shining. We're in the city of St. Louis. Blues. It's a good one. This is a great one.

This might be the best one. There's going to be a lot of woo's today. Woo birds are out. Woo birds are out. I'm having to stop myself from wooing. That's right. That's right. I'm Adam Manus.

And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at Podcast. Music Explored. Explore. Explore, brought you today by Open Studio. go to Open StudioJazz.com for, oh, your jazz lesson needs. Absolutely. And we are listening to, we are celebrating the great, the master, Artatum.

And this is St. Louis Blues, of course, from his piano starts here, record. Oh, yeah. Let's listen a little more. Whole tone much? What is happening? 1933. Ridiculous. Ridiculous.

One of the themes of today when we listen to this album, Piano Starts here, is that. that like, it's almost unreal. Yeah. It feels like, is this CGI? Is this like... Is this AI, perhaps? Is this AI?

Like, it's just incredible what this brilliant musician was able to do. His whole life. Yeah. From a young age, 1933. Yeah, 1933. And this is a very interesting record. Did we see the album cover? Full disclosure, this is one of the least interesting parts of the record.

You don't like this album cover. kind of love it. It's, I mean, I love it because I have a real close connection with the music and with like holding this. This was one of the first jazz records of my fathers that I like listened to and put on myself. He used to listen to a lot at a certain point. You know, it was like kind of well-worned. I can still imagine kind of how it feels, you know. And, but I don't know, artistically, it's a little bit, you know, whatever. But this record's super interesting because the first four tracks were written, were recorded in 1933. Yeah. How old was Artatom in 1935?

Artatim was like 23 years old, right? And then the rest of the record, the last nine tracks were from all the way in 1949 when he was 39 or 40, I wasn't exactly sure. So you really get the trajectory. I mean, he was already Artatim at age 23, I'm sure even well before that. But this is some of his very first solo recording.

So it's such a glimpse into, you know, his concepts, his trajectory, which he continued on. And then, of course, he did some trio playing, some great work with Slam Stewart, and we're going to talk a little bit about that. But, I mean, he was primarily known as a solo jazz pianist, extraordinary, and, you know, is much loved. I mean, some of the quotes here are crazy.

There's even a quote from any, well, from Fats Waller, ladies and gentlemen, I play the piano, but God is in the house tonight. And I think that's a verified. Some of these things are kind of like, did they actually say that? But apparently that's been verified, Fatswellers, and when he stepped into the club. It was in the Ken Burns jazz documentary, so it's got to be true. Wait, it was on PBS? It was on PBS. It must be true. True. So let's put this into, I'm very excited about the two timelines here, 1933, and we say 1949. 49. Let's put this into some cultural context here. So in 1933, the number one movie was in America was King Kong.

King Kong. Ever heard of it? The original King Kong. The original King Kong gross. Which somehow I saw as a child, it was still being played on Channel 11 or Channel 30 here. Oh, yeah. You can watch it on YouTube right now. Gross. Gross $10 million in 1933. Yeah, that's crazy. That's insane.

Of like $1933. I know. I know. That'd be good now. It'd be a good opening weekend now. It's like $300 million. No, it's probably a billion. No, that's easily a billion dollars.

Well, if there's any math wizards in the house, put in the chat, what $10 million in 1933 would be in 2020. I'm not a math wizard, but I am a Google wizard. So while you're moving on there, the number one movie in 1949, when the rest of the album was recorded, was Samson and Delilah. The number one TV show in 1933 was there were no TV shows. They really were. I mean, there was a little bit.

There was a little bit, but like nothing good. In 1949, the Lone Ranger had started. I have watched the Lone Ranger a bunch. Peter, I don't know if you remember, but in the mornings before school, channel 11 here in St. Louis, the Lone Ranger would be on, I think starting at like 6 a.m. or something. We'd watch the Lone Ranger as my mom was getting ready for work

and I was getting ready for school. Fawn memories of the Lone Ranger. Okay, $10 million in 1933 is the equivalent to, okay, I overstayed it a little bit, but not much, $242 million. Amazing. Yeah. Amazing.

Shout out King Kong. Yeah. The number one album slash song in 1933, it was night and day. with the vocal by Fred Stair, Leo Reisbend in his orchestra. In 1949, it was Riders in the Sky by Vaughn Monroe, which is pretty interesting. Yeah, I'm not familiar with the work. But we're going to listen to it.

Maybe we'll listen to it first, Tiger Rag, which is kind of the most famous track off of this Artatum record. In 1933, what they described as a minor hit. I couldn't get precise sales figures, but it was like a hit record. You know, which was weird. It was still a time, like, the jazz sound was so popular and it was such a unique thing. But when we listened to it, to think about that being a hit is crazy. When we were prepping this, you had a great story about the history of Tiger Rag in New Orleans, about just the publishing rights were kind of being fought over by various bands.

And it was kind of just a neighborhood tune, right, that people played. Well, they say that, yeah, there's definitely origins of what Tiger Rag became. I mean, it was recorded. There's a lot of controversy around this. Yeah, yeah. We could do a whole episode on that. the original Dixieland jazz band, which, you know, supposedly, and this is controversial, too, whether or not they made the first jazz recording in 1917 or 1918, allegedly, we'll say,

you know. Right, right. We're going to check with DeBosia. Well, there's Southern Louisiana boys. Debossia and DeBosier would be the law firm to joke with. They may have represented the original Dixieland jazz band as possible. It sounds like something that Debosea would do. But it was, I mean, Tiger Ragg, there was a lot of other origins and parts of it that sounded

like other tunes that had been being done all the way back to Buddy Bolden. That's the case for so many things, though. I mean, we just listen to that, like Mary Lou Williams' rhythmining melody, like very common story in the history of music. Yeah. But, you know, our Tatum's version, well, let's just, why we give that sort of a listen as we kind of work that into things? Because I think this says a lot about not only his version of the tune, because it was

recorded so much. I mean, at one time, this was the most recorded jazz tune up until, like, I think the 50s or 60s. There's a whole lot of different versions of it. People knew it. It was like an instrumental hit. There was vocal versions of it. I mean, I think Frank Sinatra recorded it.

It was like everybody was recording this. People wanted to hear this. But Art Tatum's take on it is so interesting and extraordinary. Let's check it out. 1933. The intro, I mean, it's like, right? It's so good, though. Oh, it's great.

I mean, the precision. I'm telling you what, I've played piano all my life. played a lot of piano. I don't even, I can't even comprehend what it would feel like to play like that. You know what I mean?

And I know how it feels to play a lot of different kinds of piano things. Yeah. But to be able to, so first of all, like just, like you said,

the cleanliness, the clean runs of that are so clean and crisp. They're so fast. Yeah. They're so dynamically alive. Yeah. You know,

even coming through from this recording, which doesn't give you a lot of dynamic nuance, you know. But also, like all great Art Tatum recordings, there's a lot of sophistication in the details, right? The arrangement's not just him doing stride the whole time. It sort of builds to this big stride section where he's doing all of these different orchestration techniques to sort of draw your ear into the melody in different ways and that it ends in this big bombastic stride feel. All the cascading lines, the Art Tatum signatures are there.

But to me, that's like really what sets Art Tatum above everyone else. It's not just like this amazing technique in chops, but he was an incredible arranger and orchestrator within these solo piano arrangements specifically. And this just proves that. It's amazing. Yeah. Well, when we get to the hot takes, that's actually something I was thinking about.

Like, is Art Tatum is his arranging as important as his piano technique? I would say possibly. Yeah, I think so. Because that's what makes... I mean, he could just sit there and stride at whatever... So somebody said, we're going to test that. They said it's 376.

That's Tiger Rag? Yeah. How would we know that, though? Well, we're going to check that because I have. Well, let's get... We're going to put a matcher on to... It's right about that, right? I think he dropped the beat.

Amazing. 376. Wow. But, like, he could have just, from the get-go, played stride. and just flying on top of that for the whole, you know, three minutes, two minutes and 19 seconds or whatever it is, three minutes. But the arrangement of it, the orchestration of it, like, I mean, to hear this live

must have been just crazy. Could you imagine? On a grand piano in a room hearing this live. Yeah. And he had a lot of reach for people that normally wouldn't be like, oh, let's go hear a solo pianist, even at like some of the best clubs. You know, when he toured, he would play, you know, like three deuses in Chicago and stuff just like, you know, bird or whoever else

and be there for a couple weeks doing a run where people just solo piano, you've ever done that in a club? It's terrifying. Because it's like, whatever thing you think is going to be great, they're like, when's the singer coming out? When's the drummer coming out? Is this it?

Yeah, but I mean, Art Tatum, there's none of that. There's none of that. It's an extraordinary thing. And I think, like, this tiger rag, upon hearing it again, I listened to this a lot growing up, this whole record, but there's certain tracks where I'd be like, whoa, even before I was like super into jazz,

but I was kind of into piano. And like a lot of people, you hear stories of, I mean, Corey Henry, I was looking at an interview with him talking about like, oh, I thought it was CGI or like the added in two other. CTI. Sorry, I can put you on to that. It's my bad.

But I think there's that, like, once you listen to it a bunch of times as a pianist or even like seeing like an acrobat, like if you go to the circus and you don't know anything about it, you're like, wow, How can a human do that? So there's the acrobatic level. The acrobatic level is off the charts, too.

A lot of them are actually like very ergonomical runs, which we can talk about. Again, a little bit here, like they, it's not like they're easy to play by any means, but they may not be as like, they might not be as difficult as you might think. Now, could you get it as fast and as clean as Art Tatum? Probably not. No. Because that's such a huge part of his style and he was possibly the greatest pianist who ever lived. However, you can definitely put some of this stuff into your playing, especially some of these pentatonic runs or these six-cord runs

or even more ergonical, like, chromatic runs, for sure. Yep. Yeah, yeah, that'll be fun to get into. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about Artaicum, because I didn't know, this is always fun preparing for these episodes because I think I know somebody like Artaicum, I feel so close to his music, especially somebody that, you know, we've been listening to since we're very young.

It's like, it's always been a part of my life. but, and I knew he was from Ohio. It's from Toledo, Ohio. Shout out Toledo. Can we, is our first Toledo shot out? Hey, Toledo. The state of Ohio, though, produces a lot. You said, hey.

I think I've been to Toledo one time in my whole life. Is Toledo the St. Louis of Ohio? Perhaps. No? That would be Cleveland, right? Is that not giving St. Louis enough? I don't know. I don't know.

Yeah, who am I dissing here? I don't know. Both. I don't like it, though. I don't like where this is going. producer caleb have you been to Toledo i have not been to Toledo so have you ever been to a have you ever been to a mid-sized industrial midwestern city that used to be a little bit more bustling but now is a little bit more empty yeah he's from st. Louis of course he's been in there's a lot like that

that's a lot like that's all calum knows say my favorite type of city is my favorite type of city too yeah but Toledo i mean that that that whole area has produced a lot of greatness in terms of music and obviously lebron james is from akron which i think is close there I don't know what the connection with him and Art Tatum is, but there you go. Born in Toledo, Ohio, 1909, and then died really, you know, what now he can see is certainly prematurely in 1956. And like a real turning point for him, like some, he was playing around Toledo in that area in some of those other cities in Ohio. And, you know, at that time, musicians traveling around, you'd hear somebody like Art Tatum and like Word would get around, even without the World Wide Web. And so, you know, he came to New York with, I think, some singer that I wasn't familiar with.

He's just one of those musicians that's going to go to New York, like, no matter what. Artatim famously hated a fly, never flew, was scared of flying. I guess he didn't hate it because they never did it. He just was scared of flying, so everything was trains. Of course, he was blind, so he didn't drive or anything. But he made it up to New York in 1932, so he was 22, 23 years old. Right before this first, he recorded some other stuff that I couldn't find, but it wasn't solo piano. These tracks are part of his first solo piano recordings ever. And like,

you know that was recording. I mean, who knows how many takes? It feels like a first take. Whatever. One thing it wasn't was there was no edits on him because you couldn't do that at that time. I mean, it would have been such an onerous thing. He didn't really play in a way that felt like it needed edits though. You know, and of course, there's so many great live kind of jazz party recordings of him from later in late 40s, early 50s and stuff where we're hearing him play some of these same arrangements very close to how he played them 15 years before. Absolutely. You know, he really stuck to the script of his arrangements, which was, I think, a feature,

not a bug. Yeah. And that's partially why he could do these kinds of acrobatics and speed is because he would learn it like, I mean, he obviously composed the arrangements. Yeah. And then would stay fairly true to them with, of course, improvisations and letting them evolve. But you're right. They were fairly intact over the years.

Right. And he just would go into those gears of those arrangements. And just that's why they crush so hard every time. And is it? And like with his kind of, like, he had little streaks of, of huge popularity at different times. Yeah. And it's almost like a pop music mentality, though,

where you keep things. Like, it's very easy for us as jazz players, sophisticated jazz pianists. Can I put my ask out, my turtle. Oh, you've got your turtle neck on. Yeah. Maybe my be on. But I mean, like, for us to be like,

look down on that and then become a snobble meter thing perhaps? But he is not a pop, like a pop musician. No, but I'm saying it's a pop mentality in terms of like, stick to the script. When you've got something that works, you know, play the part, run it back, play the same arrangement. Yeah. You know, to me, the part of the genius of Art Tatum was that he would be playing

the same arrangement, but it would feel like it was being improvised for the first time ever. Yeah. To me, that's just as great as just coming up in improv. Because I've heard other pianists saying, like, oh, yeah, he was great, but he always played the same thing. He wasn't really an improviser. And I was like, yes, he is an improviser. Yeah, for sure.

Even if you decide to have the structure of the tune in the same way, there's still like space in there for improvisation. Yeah, obviously, there's a switch flipped at some point about having to create music out of nothing all the time and live or improvise in the moment, which is not actually a thing. Right. But, and that, like, you might look down on someone like Art Tatum, or actually there's plenty of other musicians who similarly will use, like, the same arrangement or even, like, the same kind of solo over the same tunes, you know what I mean?

And not change it much. Guilty is charged here, too, because it works. And because it's like, it's part of your sound, right? And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I would not consider it like a pop mentality of the day. You know what I mean? Of the day, in the 30s and 40s, this was just a. That's showbiz, baby.

No, but I would say that because he lived, like, his prime was right up in the bebop period. Yeah. You know, and we can talk about, like, was he a bebop musician? He wasn't. And, you know, there's even some chatter about that he was kind of, not against bebop, but he's like, no, that's, and you can hear the way he played and the way he recorded. Like, he influenced the bebop for sure, but he didn't adopt that. He wasn't like, oh, let's go play bebop.

And then the bebop thing was a little bit of like, we're going to improvise more, we're going to challenge the audience more. It's not going to be as much dance. I mean, it's still dance music. But, like, this is crazy solo piano stride. It's too much for most people.

Whole tone stuff, stuff. But it's, like, danceable. I mean, it's like, make, like, it still taps into that, like, like, I can see why it sold a bunch of records at times and, like,

why the general public might have been interested in this. I don't know if we want to get into this here or later, but like, I want to be around a corner and get into it later. I'll push back. We aren't saying, I'll push back a little bit on that and just say, Like, you know, whenever I play Art Tatum for my non-musician friends, they can only take about a song or maybe two.

Well, yeah, now, I'm talking about in his time. In his time. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, no. Yeah, like Tiger Rag wouldn't do good. I was about to say something really boomer. Tiger Rag wouldn't work on MTV today. Sorry, this is if we did the podcast, what, 28 years ago?

Oh, Caleb. What do you think this is going to be on Casey Kasem's American Countdown? Well, that maybe. You're out of your mind. think this is going to be an American bandstand. It could have caught the very beginning, the tail end of that, you know? You think the kids on Soul Train when they hear Tiger Rag? Kids.

Fred of mine, I went to high school, was a dancer on Soul Train. No. He's an old dude now. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, he's an old dude. He's a great, great guy. Yeah, he's your age.

Yeah. Yeah. Like I say, don't play this on MTV. No, I mean, I'm talking about when in that, and really, even from, I mean, think about from 1933 to 1949, a huge change in the jazz world and how the music was presented. 100%. You know what I mean?

Not to say that there weren't artists that were still playing in the swing style and the big bands and stuff were still growing strong, but that heyday, that train had left pretty much. Yeah, what would have been interesting is if Art Tenim would have been born post-Bob. Like, what would that sound like? You know what I mean?

Also, what's interesting is, like, how many pianists or musicians in general were born before recorded music that were as good as Art Tatum. You know what I mean? Like Art Tatum added recordings to the history and the culture of music. But he didn't really add very many original tunes, right?

So he's not like Beethoven, you know, composing all of this music, but he was this incredible player arranging popular songs of the day or, you know, artful songs. But I'm saying, like, sometimes I think about like, who are the musicians in like 1888,

right before? recorded music who could just like crush on the piano and we never got to hear that style of music you know what I mean right I mean there's a little I mean there there's a line there's a thread at least in there no no no it's a direct line to Scott Joplin for sure you know what I mean absolutely to art yeah that's true but Joplin's an incredible composer too that's what I'm saying right right right but we don't really I mean we have the piano roles we don't have him actually playing I mean he was a great pianist but yeah he was more known as a composer but there's a connection with Tatum in terms of like this very direct

link from the keyboard, from the piano to classical music, because they both studied that and their technique is based around that. And then, you know, Art Tatum did arrange. And I mean, well, actually, we should listen to that humorous, the DeVorjoc song. You know, so like he got it, he got into some of that stuff. But really, I would say even on that tiger egg, to me, what I'm hearing is Jelly Roll Morton on steroids. You know, like we talk about Willie the Lion Smith and Fatswaller, James B. Johnson. When he got to New York, he was going into the cutting contests and stuff with them at Morgans and Minton and all the uptown, you know, Harlem places and like, Tatum established himself immediately where they were all like, damn, because he's, you know,

he was playing some stuff that was a little more modern in a way, but influencing them coming out of that, but he could do the stride, you know, obviously he was doing the strike. But I think what you hear with like Jelly Roll Morton, and Jelly Role Morton is another one that famously claims Tiger Ag was his and was stolen from him and stuff. Tiger Rag is like a little gem back in 1933. Yeah. But I mean, in terms of like Jellymoreton, he didn't have the technique that Art Tim, but nobody did. But he had that kind of arranging mentality.

Of course, he wrote a bunch of music too. Yeah, he did. Where he would go from like section to section and then set it up, the really heavy groove, the use of stride but as a dance facet, not just as like a pyrotechnic piano thing. I think Artite him totally had that. It's easy for us to miss that because there's so much stuff going on. But when he went into that group, I mean, to groove at 376 BPM, do I need to remind you of what that sounds like? That's no grooving there. But right here...

That's what I listen to when I go to sleep. Okay, that part, that's like a segue. That's like a gel. A real kind of... A lot of weird stuff in which we can... I mean, that's like... Even when he leads the stride. Yeah, look at it.

Okay, I'm adding to my hot... I got a new hot take when we get that. Okay. Remind it. Let's push forward, Peter. Let's do some of our bangor tracks. Okay. So my banger track is yesterday's.

Now, it's from this album. There's a yesterday's version. But I thought maybe this would be a good opportunity to watch the famous video. Okay, here we go. You want to pull this up, producer Caleb. Yeah, so this is kind of misidentified as the only video. There's actually several great videos.

If you ever looked up, Artanem, you've likely seen this video or even just seen it put in front of you on social media. But it's worth a listen always. Yeah. This is later, of course. But about the time it's, he recorded it. That's what I'm saying. The arrangement is not really what make it.

And just throwing in those tents moving on. I mean, yeah, it's got a good suit happening. It's a nice suit happening there. I mean, you know, there's this element, too, of like Art Tatum. It's the ultimate, like, you know, you've got a friend over. We've all been there as pianists. Oh, Adam plays piano. Why don't you play us something?

You know, could you imagine if it's like, oh, Uncle Art plays piano. Why don't you play us something? And then you sit down like, you want to play a piano. something like that. Like that. You know what I mean? Where people are like, holy shit, you know, but like just jaws dropping, like, you know, to the point they're like, they're disassociate, they're like lost and you rob them all leave because they're lost in the world, you know. But I mean, that like, it can be, it can be lost on folks to be like, oh yeah, you just got great tech, you're playing this flashy stuff. But what's underneath that arrangement is so, like,

thrilling and inch, I mean, to do, yesterday's is a great tune. The lyric is great on it, But if you're going to play it on piano and bring it to life in like two and a half minutes, it's a whole journey there. Yeah, it's like you can make a two-hour epic movie about something or you can figure out how to do it in two minutes. There's some genius there to be able to do that and to put that together. And then you've got all the fun stuff. And then for somebody that's not even understanding how hard that stuff is to do, he makes it so easy, but it's so thrilling. That's what it is.

It's like, it's like seeing somebody up on the high wire and they're not like, oh, am I going to fall? They're just like, what's good? Like they're acting. Like you or I walking down the street, but up there. That's fun. It's super fun. And there's some lessons to be learned in that arrangement. He starts off slowly and Roboto and then goes into that.

Yeah, just instant groove. Yeah. Just like setting you up. There's some Duke Allington influence on that. And then the stride. But then as you mentioned, it's not like he sticks with that stride for very long. And he goes into that broken stride. And then he goes back to Roboto.

the end. So you do have this actual arc of an arrangement where I think a lesser musician with that kind of technique would just be flash all the time. And certainly there are moments of flash even within the roboto and things like that. And that broken up stuff, like that became very influential. I mean, I use that. A lot of people use that. Like that was really, I mean, there's other people that did that or whatever, but the way he would do that, like separating from the stride, like that broken thing is like, it's been huge. McCoy Tyner. I mean, like, huge influence. Not to mention, within all of that, there are some little subtle harmonic substitutions he's making that are way past his time. Right.

Things that musicians of his generation weren't quite doing yet. No. At least as prolifically as he was, it wouldn't be later until bebop musicians really took that and ran with it. But he's putting it in all of his stuff. Yeah. And then that ended up influencing, you know, Gershwin, for sure. Gershwin talked about, you know, being a big fan of Art Tatum. And people always think, like, oh, because they're pianists or Rachmanoff.

you know, who there's quotes from him talking about Art Tatum. They always think like, oh, because he had this incredible technique. Of course they noticed that, but some of this harmonic stuff, that chromaticism and stuff, you can hear that. You can hear it, Gershwin, for sure. Yep. So, yeah, I mean, he's just, wow, thrilling. So, Peter, your top track is one of my favorites as well, and it's a great song.

It's Willoweepe for me. Yes. Yeah, this is one of the only Artatim things I've ever transcribed, so it's very near dear to me and I've had to study it very closely, but I think it's great. I mean, a lot of people have heard it. He's did several different versions. This is from, you know, now we're getting into the 1949. Some of this stuff was live, too, for not Norman Grants. He did, he ended up doing a bunch of concerts for Norman, jazz of the Philharmonic and stuff, but it was a different Norman. Anyway, this is Willoughby for me. This is incredible arrangement. Yeah, of course, it's live.

Yeah. iconic arrangement this one. This is kind of, like it's in time, but it feels a little bit ribado-esque. It's like a cool way of playing. Like there's definitely a group, but it's so free, rhythm. But it goes, he ratchets it up in the second here. Probably originally in G? Yeah, this is out of tune.

I don't know why. And you can tell from that run, which we'll talk about in a minute. Apologies, I don't know why this is out of tune. Then he goes to here. The whole turn scale. Oh, yeah. Scott Scrapuse never heard him play this. He did the first after Chiross left in the runs.

You know what I mean? I mean, he's right in the... It is. And then he breaks him in rebuttal. But even that beginning part, it feels rebuttal, but it's not... ...goes back to the intro. Oh, the ending. All those subtle things.

Man. And so, yeah, I think originally that was in G because he does a famous art-tanum line here, which you can do very easily in the key of G. So it's based off a G major triad. Yeah. And you could really fly on this. It's like 4, 3, 2, 1.

Yep. 4, 3, 2, 1. Yeah, where you're starting a scale tone above G, A, G, F, sharp, G, and then a scale tone above B, C, B, and then a half step below. B flat. And then a scale tone above D, E, D, C, sharp. And it's all just 4, 3, 2, 1. So as fast as you can do this, 4, 3, 2, 1, you can do this. I've been done that in a while.

It's kind of, it's more like, it's a little straighter and more basic than most people would think. Like what he's doing in the left hand, you know? Like he's doing some tents and stuff underneath it and how he's placing it in the rhythm is what brings it to life. Yeah.

Because this is, I mean, it's not easy doing that, but it's like, it's pretty simple. Well, yeah, like I said, you can turn and burn on it. Exactly. But just playing it like that on its own is. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's fantastic. many great, you know, a lot of that, you know, that D7, sharp, 9, flat 13 kind of run.

What was that one? I think it's, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the intro, man, so to me, the first thing... Hold on, back up real quick, real quick. So for those of you that didn't catch it, yeah, D-7 chord, and I just have a D and at F-sharp here, F, E-flat, D-C, B-flat F-sharp, and you're back at F with your thumb. Yeah, and he plays around with that. I'm not sure if it's on this track.

I think it is, too, though. where it's like an E flat 13 sharp 11. Right. You know, on top of that. He loved that. Yeah. And again, you can just turn and burn. Yeah.

Hey. Yep. But yeah, the intro to me, that's what I remember first being like, what is he doing? Okay, so whack because it's not like, I don't know why it was like half step below. Yeah, that's one. So it's like going from a G7, but it's almost like a little mini, like a, like a, like a, Not a moob, but a two. It's not, I mean, once he gets into,

you know, it's that famously dominant, you know, it's not major. So what are you playing there on the second course? You know, but that's like, Adam and Peter's Ode to Art. Artatum turning over to his grave. No, but so he's going, like, first of all, just this, you know, I think he actually did fully chromatic. But, like, his phrasing is just so, like,

so he's going, that G2, And then to like a C-SUS, C-7-suss full. Wow. But it's over G. So what is that? G minor 11. Yeah. And then he kind of plays around it then, you know, it like ends it with that.

But that's a kind of weird thing to go back and forth between. And I, for me, that was always that. I remember it took me so long to like figure that out. And, you know, the other stuff is hard too. But those little arranging things, I think, are just genius. So that's why that's my favorite, my banger track. For my banger solo, I'm just going to pick another banger track. So this is humoresque.

And we mentioned this before. This is Dvorjak. And this arrangement is just so incredible. So there is a video of this tune. But play the one from The Thing. Okay. Yeah. Oh, no, I got it.

I got you. Sorry, man. Sorry, here, I got you. I've already got it pulled up here. Right here. This is Dvorzak, humorous. If you played Suzuki violin, you know this song. And he did several arrangements of classical composition.

That's confidence going to that. Oh, anyway, I was going to show the thing. Damn, off with the sign. Good. It's ridiculously good. Okay, can we just talk about this? Like, you talk about dropping the needle, right? Yeah.

Like, the way he goes into time, it's very, like, you might think, oh, he goes right into stride, but check out. He doesn't even play the stride at first. Like, he's able to articulate the time. It's such, check it out. The stride, he holds back. on it. So he's like, bo-bo-bo-bo-bo-bo-bo

before he even comes in with the stride. You know, I would have just bang-d-d-d-d-d-c-c-c-c-c-c-c. Come on, guys, let's swing it, man. But, I mean, I love this start. Playing full strides. And that enables him to break that up. Greatest endings ever.

Greatest, I mean, I prefer, like, just a but I get what he's doing. Yeah. No, I mean, you know what I hear this? When I listen to Art-Ain, when I sit down and listen Art-Artain, I'm always like, damn, the piano is amazing. Like, I'm always, like, so, like, amped up for the piano as an instrument. It really is the king.

I know the violin is the king of instruments. No, it's not. The piano is friggin' amazing, man. Like, you can do so much cool shit on a piano. Yeah. I mean, he can do so much cool shit on a piano. Can you indulge me? Can we watch this?

I just want to see if this is. Yeah. So I want to see when he goes into time and, like, how much is different on this. than what we just heard is a little bit earlier, I think. Faster, probably time limit for television. Same arrangement. I mean, this is just, like,

there's a world of art tape recording and just a couple of these videos for folks to explore, which is just, it's inspiring, man. Every time I see this stuff and hear it, like, it really is piano starts here. It's like a world of piano, you know, like these things really,

what he did for, like, solo. Like, a lot of people feel like there was a disconnect because it was like, oh, I'm quitting. You know, you hear the stories like, I heard Art Tatum and I switched to saxophone. Yeah. You know, like, unless you're Oscar Peterson, you're like, okay, I think I might be up for the challenge, you know.

Yeah. But he really did influence every, I mean, Benny Green, Herbie, I mean, I'm jumping around generations, but you can hear like pretty much every jazz pianist, even beyond the obvious ones like Oscar Peterson or something. Totally. And if you're not directly influenced by him, you're influenced by someone who was influenced by him.

He's one of those kind of artists. Yeah. So, Peter, your banger track was. Tiger Rag, which we've already heard and is amazing. Let's get into some over underdogs. Okay. So I would say underrated is Art Tatum's swing. Agreed.

Which is weird because everybody, no one's going to be like, Art Tatum does not swing. Well, I... Well, no, but like I would say like... Drag them in here. More of a modernist might think, like, you know, that stride is... I mean, I don't actually know anybody who doesn't think Art Tatum is not swinging. So I'm totally straw manning that. Right.

But I'm saying, like, I think underrated in terms of, like, his genius, it's right up there with his technique. Yeah. With the pirates. I mean, to me, that ability is slipping in and out of the time and to play that. Like, for me, it's great time at the piano when you play solo piano. You can swing hard when you can abandon everything and just play one thing and jump back and forth and play weird shit and make it sound like a trubato and then go and do a run.

But, like, you're still tapping your foot during the whole time. His feel was like par excellence. What about, but what about your overrated? I think his technique was overrated. No, I mean, kind of, in a way, as great as it was, like, there's nothing that I ever heard in play that I don't think somebody else could do at a certain point. Like, there's nothing actually impossible if you take out. I think the arranging, the swing, the groove, the originality. Like, no one can do it like him, obviously.

But I think that, like, some of the runs and stuff are actually, like, like, we demonstrated, like, they're achievable. So I don't want to say his actual technique is overrated. but when people only focus on that, I feel like it's a little bit like, you know, that's one piece of though. If it was just that, it wouldn't be as interesting. So the awards for this album are kind of non-existent because it's all one person.

The John Coltrane Thief Award, who stole the album, obviously, Art Tatum. The Oscar Peterson Overplaying Award, that's got to be Art Tatum. The Keith Jarrett Vocalization Award, also Art Tatum. And we'll get to Keith Jared vocalized about Art Tape, we'll talk about that.

And then the Cecil Taylor taking out an award, obviously, Art Tatum. Art Tatum does. take it out, too. Oh, he does. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You know, all those, those weird. Not afraid of a whole tone scale, not of afraid of a modulation. Not afraid of, like, some crazy stuff. Yeah. But first call subs should be an interesting conversation. So, Peter, your first call sub? God. Is that a controversial? Well, but this is the great Fats Waller, right, said, and this was, we talk about, ladies and gentlemen, I play the piano, but God is in the house. That's what Fats Waller called him. Yeah, that's great.

No, I would say, you know, some of the stride pianists that he came, like, right up after or even in line with William and Lyon Smith. I think Meadlux Lewis is kind of a less heralded. I mean, no, they're not going to step in to do what Art Tatum did, but Oscar Peterson is probably the obvious one. Like if you said, you know, record some, give us some solo piano in the Art Tatum style. I mean, that's going to get you the closest, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about modern pianists who would we pick? I know we have...

Billy Joel. Billy Joel. I don't know if Billy Joel. can handle. I'm thinking about it. Yeah, that's another. MTV, give me my, I want my MTV. I feel like Emmett Cohen is probably in the conversation for some of this stuff.

I feel like Jahari Stampley we're going to see a little bit. Yeah. Later could be in the conversation. There's also, there's a lot of folks. Emmett, Jahari. I think that there's, oh, Elu. Eric Lewis. Eric Lewis can nail, I don't know how much he's doing that now, but like I've heard him nail some

Art Tatum stuff. I mean, the advantage that all these people have, though, is they, they, heard Art Tatum. I know, that's what I'm saying. It's not the, I mean, Eric Lewis gets the vibe, too. Yeah. You know, Jihari does too. Emmett, like, Emmett's got a really good stride feel and understanding of...

Incredible techniques. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Those are all good. Let's talk about the bespoke genre. Let's talk about that. It's so individual. We didn't talk much today in the episode or listened to any of his...

He did trio stuff. He had great recordings with Slam Stewart. That's when I first heard Slam Stewart. Yeah. You know, especially in the early 50s and stuff. Yeah, I used to have a vineyards. final of that trio. Yeah.

It's weird. It's to hear Art Tatum with a trio. Yeah, and it's very easy to be like, well, he didn't need to play. But it's interesting too. It's certainly an important

part of his output. But I would call this genre as flyover piano. We've got to fly over states, right, of which we live in one, apparently. Shout out Toledo. Shout out Toledo. Shout out St. Louis, Kansas City.

Denver, everything. So, like, this is just the piano. He's flying over the piano. And he's flying back. Woo, who. It's like the continent of music. That's similar to what I I have a couple here.

I have Cascade keys as a genre. God stride in your reference to the Fatswaller. Hey, just don't throw that word around, willy-nilly. Sorry, stride. And then I have four-handed man-jam. It sounds, not that I say that out loud. Man-jam?

Four-handed man-jam. That's another kind of video, probably. Is that like a raspberry-cherry man-jam? Like from the... Moving on. A kutermontz. the album artwork, Peter doesn't like... Peter says nah, I say, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, this was, this album was released in the late 60s, so it's not like this was released in 1949. Right, 1968, right. Yeah, and I like the little sort of, what is it, like a watercolor or something? Hmm. No?

Sounds like, it looks like something I would like, hmm, okay. No, no, it's fine. It doesn't look like Art Tatum, though. It doesn't kind of... It doesn't kind of... I'm kind of... InterVisions or the Inipires,

the Pau album. Yeah, that one I'm not a fan of. I guess because, I've always had this on like, I had it on an iPod, I had a CD of it, you know what I mean? Like the cover,

it's one of those covers where it's like, it always kind of, like, I know what it is. You know what I mean? For sure. And it's got, you know,

I had the out, the LP and it's, um, the colors are not 1968. They're kind of ahead of their time. It's more like 1975 looking. Yeah. Colors or whatever.

It's fine. Whatever. I have a suit with the peak lapels. It's not a real record in the sense of like, it shouldn't work, but it does. And that's just our Tatum's solo piano stuff. even when you put together some live stuff,

some studio stuff from like 15 years apart, it still makes a cohesive record. So shout out to the folks that put this together, obviously, well after he'd passed, because that's a hard thing to do. It can be sort of a jumbled mess, and the record is fantastic from the beginning to hand. All right, hot takes, Peter.

Hot takes, okay. Well, we talked about one, but I just want to reiterate, some of the runs are actually not that hard. Yeah, that's a hot take. There's that. Another hot take I have is that the Internet is full of disinformation.

This is not really related to just to Art Tatum. Yeah, there's a lot of just bad. Say more. You know what I mean? If it's not something that like one of the social media networks is flagging for disinformation, which is great, no problem with that. But like no one's going to get on a thing of like someone's like, there's only one video of Art Tatum.

Like, you know what? Don't say shit if you don't know what it means. Don't write it. Don't be willy nilly with your thoughts out on the worldwide. Even though it's like, well, you're not killing anybody. It's just music. No, like get the shit accurate. Some people saw several videos of Art Tatum.

We've watched several today. But no, my biggest hot take is that, and I developed this as we were listening to this again, after listening to it so many times, I think Tiger Rag, this version, 1933, Art Tatum Tiger Rag, is on the short list for greatest jazz tracks of all time. I agree with that. And by short, I mean, like, three.

I would say more like five or ten, but yeah. For sure, five or ten. And I mean, I could make a strong art. argument, at least in my mind, that number one and number two, in either order would be Tiger Rag, Artatum, West End Blues, Louis Armstrong. Like, for their importance, for their just, like, artistic tour defoursery, for their, like, just complete embodiment of the jazz spirit. Now, they're both from going on 100-plus years over, so it's kind of like, what about something a little more modern, let's something that's been on MTV, you know. So what? Yeah, kind of loose. I think from like the last century. No, I mean, they're old, but I would say some of the most important, because they were

early on, and we think about, oh, this is so much that happened in jazz. But in terms of recorded jazz, we're only a few years in, you know, a decade, 15 years or whatever, but a blink of the eye. But I just think what he does there, well, what about this? Is this the greatest recorded solo jazz solo piano track of all the time?

Or solo piano. Probably the greatest solo piano track, I would say. Of any genre. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe. That's a short list. That's the top three to five.

I mean, you got some, you have a slew of Keith Jarrett recordings that would probably be in the conversation. Yep. There's some Hank Jones stuff that I would put in the conversation. There's some Oscar Peterson, obviously. There's also jelly roll and that whole scene as well. I think I would put this as number one for my favorite and just for important and I don't know. Anyway, that's my hot take.

Okay. What do you got for hot takes? You're nailing all my hot takes. I love these quotes that you have here, like from Hank Jones. I believe that Tatum was the greatest pianist of the century. That's really strong words coming from a very strong musician himself. Yeah. That's why I chose that.

When I'm like, Hank Jones, that's not, no, I mean, we talk about Hank Jones a lot because he's super influential on us and one of the greatest pianists. But in terms of, like, going to get a hot take or opinion, like, who could you possibly valuable more because of Hank Jones' expertise level and because of his age and how, and he knew Artato, Hank Jones, goes deep. Hank Jones, as a musician,

goes super deep. And so when he says someone is the greatest pianist in the century, you kind of trust that, you know what I mean? And he didn't say he's one of the greatest.

Yeah, no, he said he's the greatest. But that makes sense to considering Hank Jones's age, that like Artine was a little bit older than him, and so he would have looked up to him like that as well.

But it makes total sense. Yeah. And you can actually hear, speaking of influence. He's probably at least 20 years, 25 years old. Probably. You could hear a lot of influence

in Hank Jones is playing. And thus in a lot of other players as well. Hank Jones put his Hank Jones stuff on it, obviously. Right. He's good at that. Yeah, he really is. And then there Keith Jarrett quote here is awesome.

Yeah, so Ethan Iverson, shout out Ethan Iverson on his wonderful blog. I think this was on the old blog. But he did a famous interview with him. And there was a transcript of it available. We'll link to that, actually. That'll be a phone one. But no, we won't because it doesn't really have anything to with Art Tatum. But it's cool.

What do you think of Art Tatum? He's just talking about different pianists, you know, asking him about influences. And he says, what about Art Tato? Keith Jared says, too many notes. Ethan says, really? Too many notes? Keith Jared, yeah, too many notes too often. And that was it.

Then they went on to talk about some notes. I mean, you know, full disclosure, he's not wrong. He's not wrong. If you listen to this whole album, start to finish, it's a lot, man. Is it too many? You're getting battered. At some point, you just feel like you're just in this crazy ocean of notes. Right.

There's so many notes. And the runs just never end. Yeah. And I think for us piano. nerds, it's like, it's heaven. But like I said, whenever I play this for friends who aren't pianists, even other musicians, they're like, oh, it's a lot. Yeah, I would push back only to say that we live in a time now when almost anything, unless you're just like, for the general public. Because like, you're not sitting down to listen to the piano. Well, that's one thing, but I'm saying

like, not even for the general public, but even for my own listening pleasure. You know, like, imagine. If you were to take some of the notes away, which point to the ones that you don't like in there. You could point, I mean, it would take away Art Tatum's whole thing. Whom I love, by the way, I'm not disparaging it, but imagine an Art Tatum record where there were some tracks without those runs, where he went on more of like a journey that was like introspective rather than these like super flashy things all the time. I think that's... There is some of that, but we didn't listen to that today. So that might have been a little

bit of a disservice. And like, especially on these, the early solo piano stuff, it was, I think it was so formatted for the 78 and for whatever that two minutes 40. It's like play the tune. But even within that, compared to the other stuff, like he had a lot of introspective little parts within there. Or even like the way Tiger Rag starts, you know?

Yeah, but then you get just again, you get flooded with notes, notes, notes, notes, notes. Which again, we love, but I can, I see where Keith is coming here. From just a pure, like, if we spend a lot of time, if you spend 25 minutes with an Art Tatum record, after a while, you're just like, whoa, it's just so much piano coming at me. That's true.

Fair enough. Fair enough. Hot take from both Sergei Rachmaninoff ever heard of him and Vladimir Horowitz. They claimed that Art Tatum was the greatest piano player in any style. Gershman was a huge fan as well. And I believe Rock Mononoff, no, Horowitz said, if this guy starts playing only classical music, we're all in trouble. Yeah. He had some quote along those lines. He's not wrong about that either. Right. Yeah. It would be interesting to hear Art Tatum's take, like, strict take. on some of those rock monotov things,

honestly. Yeah, and I mean, some of these quotes might have been like misattributed or, I know definitely Horowitz

knew him and there's pictures of them together stuff, but even if, I wonder if some of that stuff from the classical guys

was not just technically. I mean, of course, damn, he's a great piano. But he arranging. Exactly. That when he says in trouble,

it's kind of like if he can take classical stuff played and then, you know. Didn't he do a version of the rock Mononoff's prelude? Yeah.

That one? Yeah. He did a version, I think so. Yeah, he did a couple of things similar to the humoresque, but... The snobometer. Okay, explain it to me again. Sorry, we've been off for a couple of weeks.

So the higher, the more snobby. The lower, the more broad, the less snobby. So I've had this, again, pretty high because of that. I have experience, direct experience with like, hey, you guys have got to see the greatest, you got to hear the greatest pianists who ever lived. And then people who aren't so super snobby are like, ugh, I don't know, man, you know.

So, like, yeah, it's impressive. but I don't think it lands emotionally as well with a lot of non-snobs as we might think. Okay. So you're going eight? Yeah. I see. I think I'm going six,

only because I do feel like snobs are a little bit along the too many notes, too many, too redactive, two arranged, you know, not enough original. I don't know. I don't know.

I'm going seven. I'm changing it. I'm nervous here. The snobometer. Sorry, an instrument that can. An instrument that confuses me. It is.

Most of the topics here, let's be honest, most of the topics here are borrowed or directly stolen from the rewatchables. Or... Never heard of it. Never heard of it. Or kind of vague in what they mean. But they're fun for us to talk about, too.

Yeah. Is it, finally, is it better than K.O.B. Is it better than kind of blue? No. But it's much closer, like having lived with this record for the last couple days again,

it's a lot closer than that. I remembered. Yeah. Or would say now. Like at my point in my life, it's very close. In fact, the main thing that would make it, like, this is not a real album. Not because it was put together after Art Tatum was, I'm never like, oh, the artist has to be the one to decide.

We don't always figure that stuff out right. And that might not have been Art Tatum's things. I mean, he came up in a time of making tracks. Yep. You know, it's almost like full circle to the- Just going to sessions and I'm just going to go to the session today. And making a 78, you know, the deals for this man. And it had to exist on its own, and then you turn it over and you play, do something else.

Yeah, albums weren't even really a thing when he started. No, no. And so it's almost like Art Tatum could be great now for like, I'm dropping a track on Spotify, unannounced, a disc track of Drake. Dude, Art the piano. Art Tatum would crush so hard on Instagram and TikTok. He would crush on TikTok. I mean, he does crush on TikTok. There's a whole Instagram and TikTok world of art people talking about Art Tatum.

You talk about IG's. He would have been an OG. original OTP for I. Exactly. Absolutely right. Can you imagine him at a Nam jam? Holy. Could you imagine him on MTV today? I'm Kurt Loder.

Kurt Loder. I also put No for Is it Better Than K-O-B? Yeah. I think because of the similar things that you're talking about. Yeah, cool. All right, should we go out on...

I mean, on this one, we don't really have to go out on the official last track. We could. You know what, let's go out on sophisticated lady. Perfect choice. Because this is the last one

of the 1933 ones. And this is, this was probably the most introspective and kind of ahead of its time from those tracks in my opinion. So,

this was fun, man. I don't know how we haven't covered our Tatum yet here. I mean, we've talked about them. But I feel like this is, this is,

the time is coming. I would say we nailed it. Yeah. Okay. You'll hear it starts here. Until next time. You'll hear.