Art Tatum was born into a musical family in Toledo, Ohio, on October 13, 1909. Although he was blind in one eye and only partially sighted in the other, he learned to read music and studied piano formally. By his mid-teens, he was playing professionally in Toledo, first with the Speed Webb band, but more often as a soloist or in small groups working in clubs and playing on radio. In 1932, he moved to New York and made his first recording a year later. He spent the next few years playing in clubs in Cleveland and Chicago, where he established his reputation as a major figure in jazz circles. He toured the United States and the United Kingdom extensively in the 1950s, after being signed by Norman Granz, who recorded him in a series of remarkable performances, both as a soloist and in a small group with such performers as Buddy De Franco and Roy Eldridge.

His dazzling extemporizations on themes from jazz and the classics, but mostly from the popular songbook, became bywords and set standards which few of his successors matched and none surpassed. Capable of breathtaking runs, interspersed with striking single notes and sometimes unexpected chords, he developed a unique solo style. Art Tatum achieved a remarkable work rate through constant "refining and honing down after each performance until an ideal version remained needing no further adjustments". The word genius is often used carelessly but, in assessing Tatum and the manner in which he transformed ideas and the imagined limitations of the piano in jazz, any other word would be inadequate. 1


Selected Recordings

Art Tatum Trio (1950)
Encores (1951)
Piano Solo Private Sessions (1952)
The Genius of Art Tatum, Volumes 1-11 (Clef/Verve, 1954-57).

Footnotes

1 Kernfeld, Barry.   The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz.   London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1988.

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