Arthur Tatum, Jr. was born in Toledo, Ohio, on October 13, 1909. Art was severely visually impaired from birth; however, his parents were both accomplished amateur musicians and he was picking out tunes on his mother’s piano from the age of three. He learned arrangements from piano rolls, but his uncanny sense of intonation, his physical dexterity at the keyboard, and above all his high intelligence contributed to his increasingly astonishing piano technique.
In Toledo, he received tutelage from Overton G. Rainey, who, like Tatum, was blind but insisted that Art learn the classics. Rainey discouraged improvisation; Art could not but improvise. All the music that Art heard lodged in his brilliant musical brain and emerged, transformed, through his gifted hands. He had a few favorite sources of inspiration from the mid-1920s on: Thomas “Fats” Waller, James P. Johnson, Earl Hines, and popular pianist Lee Sims (1898-1966), whose complex harmonies (reminiscent of Debussy) and changes of tempo within a performance have clear echoes within Tatum’s own mature piano style.
Art performed on local Toledo radio as early as age 17. He was discovered by vocalist Adelaide Hall in 1932. Hall hired Tatum, brought him to New York, and made records with him that year. A solo recorded during those sessions (“Tiger Rag”) exists as a test-pressing—his technique, at age 22, is fully realized. He continued to work around New York and later elsewhere, flabbergasting his own pianistic idols with his towering command of the keyboard.
It doesn’t do to attempt to describe Art Tatum’s playing. One must hear him. Testimonials from other pianists abound. The most famous story is of Fats Waller relinquishing the piano bench to Tatum when he appeared in the club where Waller was performing, stating “I only play the piano, but tonight God is in the house.” Oscar Peterson, perhaps Tatum’s most Tatumesque follower, also considered him a “musical God,” and said, “If you speak of pianists, the most complete pianist that we have known and possibly will know is Art Tatum.”
Art Tatum never failed to dazzle listeners with his Olympian musical prowess and limitless melodic and harmonic invention. He died, far too young, on November 5, 1956.
Also see: Influence and Art Tatum
