Piano Starts Here

Art Tatum - Piano Starts Here

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CD Details

Artist: Art Tatum
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2008-02-01
Music Label: Sbme Special Mkts.
Soundtracks:

Tea for Two
St. Louis Blues
Tiger Rag
Sophisticated Lady
How High the Moon
Humoresque
Someone to Watch Over Me
Yesterdays
I Know That You Know
Willow Weep for Me
Tatum Pole Boogie
The Kerry Dance
The Man I Love

Music reviews of Piano Starts Here

Music Review: Were the price of knowledge as cheap
Rating: 5 Stars

Arguably the greatest pianist of all time going for Amazon's lowest price. What's not to like?

Once asked why he didn't choose a more innovative, progressive, exploratory path, saxophonist supreme Sonny Stitt snapped back, "What's wrong with you, man? You're supposed to keep it simple and play so people understand the music and enjoy it. Look at Art Tatum. He was a genius, and all he did is try to entertain people."

We could draw a number of lessons from the response: 1. Sonny overestimated the musical understanding of his audience; 2. Sonny underestimated what is required to entertain people in the present time. 3. Sonny was simply wrong, and Art Tatum's indisputable genius has nothing to do with his success with the greater share of the public, whose interest rarely extends beyond guitars and vocals (except for those occasions when a parent's child is performing in public)..

Amazon currently has this Columbia collection priced as low as it can go, so it's a perfect time to pick up some Art Tatum for those who have yet to make his acquaintance. "Tiger Rag" was Art's explosive entrance in music, but to a public accustomed to relegate instrumental music to the background and to take automatic disclaviers and digital pianos for granted, it's highly unlikely the 1934 recording would have a comparable effect upon first hearing. But there are several ways to gain an entrance into Tatum's music which, like a Shakespeare sonnet, "tests" the listener as much as the other way around:

1. Listen to the plainest, most unadorned version of the melody you can find--enough times that it's part of your consciousness. Be sure to take note of the form (32-bar song form, Type A song with a bridge or Type B song without a bridge, etc.). Keep time--don't wait for the time to catch ahold of you but take an active role in accounting for each beat.

2. Put Tatum's version alongside versions of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. Before pulling the trigger and making a judgment, simply take note of the differences among them.

3. Learn as much about the "language" of music as possible. Certainly we wouldn't feel competent to judge the meaning and effects of a language that was unfamiliar with us. Also, take into consideration the "dialects" that often make the comprehension of a native language difficult. The same is true with regard to musical "style."

Tatum can be difficult because he offers too much, rather than too little, help to the listener. With Oscar Peterson the key changes are fairly predictable and clearly stated whereas with Tatum they slip in and out like a record that has either been momentarily slowed down or speeded up. With Monk, on the other hand, there are so many stops and starts, extended silences, deliberations that may or may not result in a musical statement, that we as listeners have no choice but to become involved in "helping him out" with completion of the melodic-harmonic-rhythmic idea.

And rather than assume that a failure to respond fully to Tatum's music represents a shortfall--whether the listener's or the artist's--take it as a sign of progress. For all of us who struggle to grasp Tatum's art, there's a point where we wonder if we're simply being "snowed" by a lot of pointless technique. But without arriving at that point--of doubt, skepticism, suspicion--there's no possibility of making progress beyond it. You've come half way. The second half of the journey is to discover how all of those streams of notes can produce comprehensible and enjoyable, complete and immeasurable satisfaction and delight--not in spite of, but because of, the pyrotechnics. That moment brings the realization that the apparent extra verbiage, like the longer sentences of Faulkner or Joyce, aren't extra at all but essential to, if not inseparable from, the palace of art that has been constructed for the invited guest (but certainly not mapped, explored or domesticated) in record time. But from that point on, the world of the performance is all yours, and the revelation comes at the discovery of beauty that is a function of technique, not to mention a microcosm of the very nature of music, the creative process, and the potential of human consciousness itself.

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