Article published October 11, 2009
A genius on 88 keys: Toledo continues its celebration of jazz piano great Art Tatum
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BLADE ILLUSTRATION/JEFF BASTING
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By ROD LOCKWOOD
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Art Tatum could mess with your mind.
Not because the Toledo-born jazz piano genius was a bad guy; far from it. By all accounts he was a friendly, generous cat who liked sports, a good drink with pleasant company, and the camaraderie that comes with playing music nonstop.
Where Tatum could get inside the heads of musicians — especially piano players — and freak them out was when they chose to listen to his music. This could be a big mistake because even the most accomplished artist would hear things in Tatum's inventive playing and quickly conclude: That's impossible and I stink.
It happened to Phil Moore, a 1940s-era band leader and musical director who considered himself a piano prodigy in Seattle. He told The Blade in 1992 that when he went to Los Angeles and heard Tatum play, everything changed.
"I walked out of that club so discouraged that I decided to become a musical director, arranger, and composer instead of a piano artist."
Stanley Cowell understands.
"Art will have that effect on you," he said. "The technical virtuosity and the harmonic manipulations that he just seems to toss off are pretty mind-boggling."
Cowell, a Toledo native and chairman of the jazz department at Rutgers University, will perform a tribute concert to Tatum today at Owens Community College as part of an ongoing celebration of 100th anniversary of the jazz great's birthday Tuesday.
Various musical events have been taking place throughout the month in honor of Tatum, who died at the age of 47. His musical legacy is vast and international in scope. In jazz circles, he is to piano what Jimi Hendrix is to rock guitar.
"He is still at the apex of total music in terms of the devices he uses," Cowell said. "There are so many devices that he uses, that mastering them is just a lifetime effort."
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As the centennial celebration of Art Tatum's birth continues over the next month, two more events featuring major jazz performances will take place in Toledo.
•Today at Owens Community College Stanley Cowell will perform a concert/benefit in celebration of Tatum in the Owens Community College Center for Performing Arts Recital Hall. His appearance is sponsored by the African American Legacy Project, a local not-for-profit organization promoting black achievement.
Tickets are $35-$100 at the box office. Also, the African American Legacy Project will celebrate the genius of Tatum with a special service at 10:30 a.m. today in Grace Presbyterian Church, 1171 Oakwood Ave.
•On Oct. 25, Jazz Around the World and the Arts Council Erie West will present jazz artists McCoy Tyner, Benny Golson and Jon Hendricks in a concert entitled the Art Tatum Centennial Celebration: A Legacy Continues. The concert will be at 7 p.m. at the Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle. Tickets are $20, $25, and $35, and proceeds will help launch the Art Tatum Youth Jazz Orchestra. Call 41-246-8000 for tickets.
•The Art Tatum Jazz Heritage Foundation is honoring Tatum by placing pianos at various locations around the city — including the Toledo Zoo, the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library, the University of Toledo Student Union, the Toledo Museum of Art — to be painted and for passers-by to play. |
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Growing up
Tatum was one of four children and he grew up in a solid family in a home on City Park Avenue just off Dorr Street. Details on how he went blind vary from early childhood diphtheria to complications caused by a series of cataract operations to injuries from a mugging. Whatever the case, he spent most of his life with severely limited eyesight.
According to James Lester's definitive 1994 biography, Too Marvelous for Words: The Life and Genius of Art Tatum (which is available from the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library), young Art was musical from a very early age, playing piano for hours a day.
As he grew older, he naturally gravitated toward the circuit of clubs and after-hours joints in Toledo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Columbus, making a name for himself as he incorporated the extant styles of the day — stride, boogie woogie, and swing — and then used his ambidexterity and pitch-perfect ear to single-handedly evolve jazz piano.
In the 1920s he broadcast over WSPD radio in Toledo, but in the 1930s and for the rest of his life he spent most of his time on both coasts. His playing, which is available on a number of compilation CDs, sounds impossible to the novice. He launches complex runs from all angles of the song, always maintaining a rhythmic base while essentially soloing over himself. It has been said many times that when Tatum played, it sounded like three players at once.
Because he was ambidextrous, and his skill generally made him too complex for jazz, but too improvisational for classical piano. Tatum existed in his own world stylistically even though he wrote very little music and simply played popular songs of the era.
"He had the highest level of skills as a technician as well as how he interprets tunes. When he lays tunes down they sound like they're his own," said pianist Johnny O'Neal, who portrayed Tatum in the movie Ray.
"When you look at all the great masters like Rubinstein, Horowitz, people talk about their techniques, but harmonically you can't even duplicate what [Tatum] did."Hometown hero
Stories abound regarding Tatum's generosity and gregarious nature. He loved to go to sporting events, drink beer, and hang out with friends. He also was open to showing younger piano players his secrets, although none could keep up. And he had a reputation for sharing the stage with willing players.
O'Neal said he talked to one of Tatum's acquaintances, who described him as "the most loving, warm, sensitive person, just talking to him you would never think he was the genius that he is. He had a lot of humility as an artist."
A number of his recordings have been released over the years and several are available at the Toledo library. But there was a long period after his death of uremia in 1956 that Tatum was something of a mystery. No one knew much about his personal life until Lester wrote his book and The Blade wrote a series of stories in the mid-1980s that explored the artist in detail.
The Toledo Jazz Society, as it was then known, created a festival 10 years ago called the Art Tatum Jazz Heritage Festival, to honor Tatum. It was canceled this year due to a lack of funding, but the jazz society developed a new way to keep the name alive.
Now called the Art Tatum Jazz Heritage Foundation, the group wanted to capitalize on the Tatum name — given its worldwide cachet — and also boost the artist's local profile.
"That's our mission: to preserve his legacy and help people know more about him," the foundation's president, Jeff Jaffe, said when the name change was announced. "I grew up here and have lived here all my life and I don't think I knew who Art Tatum was until I was in my 30s, and that's a shame."
Also ensuring that Tatum will not be forgotten is the 27-foot steel-and-glass memorial statue stretching into the sky outside the new Lucas County Arena.Enduring legacy
Tatum's music will always be a necessary, although intimidating, avenue for all young pianists to explore, Cowell said.
"Imitating Art Tatum is not such a great thrill, but checking out the devices that he uses and learning from them and seeing if you can synthesize them into your own approach and evolve as a creative musicians, that's the important thing," he said.
"You can totally get swamped by the plethora of ideas that are in his music, the orchestration, his multitude of runs, the way he can take a 32-measure song and each one is different."
O'Neal said he routinely tries to play along with Tatum, calling it "sparring," to improve his own chops and doing it in a way that he feels brings him closer to the jazz great.
"It's like two boxers going in the gym. When I spar with Tatum I do it in the dark because you can actually hear more than you see. Think about it like a blind person, where you can hear, but you can't see."
He said every jazz piano player alive owes something to the Toledo native, and he is always honored to play here because it is Tatum's hometown.
"There was the piano and then there was Art Tatum," O'Neal said. "He was an extension of the piano and no one to date has come close."
Contact Rod Lockwood at rlockwood@theblade.com
or 419-724-6159.
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