Gordon Jack is a frequent contributor to the Jazz Journaland a very generous friend to these pages in his allowance ofJazzProfilesre-publishings of his excellent writings. Gordon is the author of Fifties Jazz Talk An Oral Retrospectiveand he developed the Gerry Mulligan discography in Raymond Horricks’ bookGerry Mulligan’s Ark.
The following article was first published in Jazz Journal April 2018.
“In 1952 Chico Hamilton was working at the Streets of Paris on Hollywood Boulevard in a small band led by Charlie Barnet. He was on a sabbatical from Lena Horne’s backing group and Gerry Mulligan’s girl-friend Gail Madden heard him there one evening. On her recommendation he became a charter member of Gerry’s pianoless quartet along with Chet Baker and Bob Whitlock which performed nightly at the Haig. He was one of the great brush artists and his subtle, lightly swinging performances with Mulligan created a style that was emulated by his successors in the group over the years - Larry Bunker, Frank Isola and Dave Bailey. Gerry once said that Chico was the ideal drummer for the quartet but by early 1953 he returned to Lena Horne where the remuneration was obviously more lucrative than the union scale he was earning with Mulligan.
In 1955 he decided to branch out on his own and the quintet he eventually organised shocked the jazz world by giving prominence to a cello and a flute in the ensemble. The group became so popular that although the personnel changed the instrumentation remained the same for the rest of the decade, becoming for many the quintessential West Coast jazz sound. Things did not start out that way of course and it took a little while for that unique instrumentation to evolve. Richard Bock had given Chico his first opportunity to record as a leader in December 1953 on a trio album with his friend George Duvivier on bass – a colleague from Lena Horne’s group - and the young and relatively unknown guitarist Howard Roberts. The recording was an instant success for Pacific Jazz, receiving a five-star review in Down Beat. Later on in 1954, he played an extended engagement at New York’s Capitol Theatre with Lena Horne and one of his fellow musicians in the orchestra was Fred Katz. He had studied with a disciple of Pablo Casals and had been a child prodigy on both piano and cello. Fred had performed with the National Symphony in Washington D.C. and had played the Saint-Saens cello concerto in New York’s Town Hall when he was just fifteen.
After Lena Horne’s booking Katz moved out to Los Angeles as a pianist backing singer Jana Mason and later when she needed a drummer Fred recommended Chico Hamilton. They began discussing forming a group together and because Chico wanted something new and different he considered Johnny Mandel on bass trumpet. He was busy so Chico’s thoughts turned to John Graas on French horn but he was about to leave town with Liberace. John mentioned that Jim Hall - a young guitarist from Cleveland - was rehearsing and staying with him while looking for work which is how the guitar chair was filled. The choice of a horn player was easy. Multi- instrumentalist Buddy Collette had been a friend of Chico’s since their days at Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles where they played in the school band with Dexter Gordon, Charles Mingus and Ernie Royal. Buddy’s singular abilities on flute, clarinet, alto and tenor made him a perfect fit for the group. The final piece of the jigsaw was bass player Carson Smith who had been working with Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan. Talking about Smith at the time Chico said, “I get everything I could possibly want from Carson. The only other bass player I can truthfully say I dig all the time is George Duvivier”.
After a series of rehearsals at his house in 1955, Chico approached Harry Rubin who owned a number of local jazz clubs. He gave them a booking at The Strollers, a small Long Beach venue about 20 miles south of Los Angeles. Bob Hardaway took Collette’s place for the first week because Buddy was working with ‘Scatman’ Crothers at The Tailspin in Hollywood so was not immediately available. Fed Katz initially played piano and only performed on cello as an intermission feature. The leader soon realised that persuading Katz to switch permanently to the stringed instrument would create the unique ensemble sound he was looking for. What really helped put the group on the map was Rubin’s decision to get local disc jockey ‘Sleepy’ Stein to broadcast a series of live performances from the club on KFOX. Their first album later in 1955 was notable for two contrasting examples of the quintet’s repertoire.
Buddy Boo is a cute and quite infectious examination of jazz music’s most basic harmony – the blues - while Free Form (a contradiction in terms) owes something to the earlier experimentations of the Lennie Tristano school. The session also included a haunting Fred Katz original – The Sage – which the group reprised when they appeared in the film Sweet Smell of Success.
Early in 1956 the quintet travelled East but without Buddy Collette. He was working with Jerry Fielding’s orchestra on the Groucho Marx TV show so was replaced by Allen Eager who was by then almost the forgotten man of the tenor. They appeared at Boston’s Storyville along the way and when they reached New York City Jerome Richardson took over for their engagement at Basin Street East. They worked opposite the Clifford Brown – Max Roach quintet which was something of an historic event as it was the first time an East Coast and West Coast group appeared together on the same bill in New York.
Collette returned to the group for the 1956 Chico Hamilton In Hi-Fi album which included a brilliantly executed arrangement of Fred Katz’s Gone Lover. As the title implies it is based on When Your Lover Has Gone and is a delicate piece of impressionism including a brief hint of Ravel’s Introduction And Allegro, rather than his Daphnis And Chloe as the sleeve suggests. There is also an unaccompanied performance – Drums West - by the leader. It is actually Chico’s extended Bark For Barksdale solo which had been edited from a 1954 concert performance with Mulligan. Unlike so many drum features it is not just an excuse for an extravagant technical display but is full of well- developed creative ideas interspersed with elements of subtle humour. Critic Ralph Gleason once summed up his approach best -“When Chico Hamilton took a drum solo it was probably the first time in history that a jazz drummer’s solo was so soft you had to whisper or be conspicuous.” Later that year he was centre-stage again on Mr. Jo Jones which is an amusing tribute to one of Chico’s inspirations.
In July they appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival where the quintet was the last act to appear before Duke Ellington closed the show. They climaxed their set with one of their most popular numbers – Blue Sands by Buddy Collette. He had written it a few years earlier as a flute exercise but the quintet’s performance was anything but academic as Chico’s repeated figure on mallets helped create a mystical, almost hypnotic mood. They received a standing ovation and Duke apparently said to Buddy as they left the stage, “Well, you sure made it hot for me”. A little later that night he unleashed Paul Gonsalves for his famous solo on Diminuendo And Crescendo In Blue.
1957 saw some significant changes in personnel. By now Buddy Collette was so well established in the Los Angeles studios he was no longer prepared to travel with the quintet. He was replaced by Paul Horn who had been working with the Sauter-Finegan orchestra. Jim Hall left to join the Jimmy Giuffre Three so John Pisano who later went on to fame and fortune with Peggy Lee and then Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass took over on guitar. Carson Smith and Fed Katz remained and this was the group that played such an integral part in the film Sweet Smell Of Success starring Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick it was one of the really great film-noirs along with Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep and The Postman Always Rings Twice. The group appear in numerous night-club scenes with actor Martin Milner taking John Pisano’s place on screen. Elmer Bernstein incorporated much of the music by Katz and Hamilton into the movie score and when I interviewed Chico in 1994 at London’s Jazz café he had this to say about the production, “It really was a dynamite film and we had a ball making it. Tony hung out with Paul Horn a lot because he wanted to learn the flute and Burt really was a funny dude with a hell of a sense of humour. He had a special edition of the Los Angeles Herald printed with the headline: Chico Hamilton- Busted! which he showed to the entire cast.”
The timing of the quintet’s next album featuring songs from the 1949 Broadway hit – South Pacific - could hardly have been better. A successful film version of the show was released in 1958 and the group spent much of January that year recording the Rodgers and Hammerstein material for Pacific Jazz. Several selections like Dites Moi, Happy Talk, A Cockeyed Optimist and I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair are quite short. They were possibly intended by producer Dick Bock to achieve some valuable radio air-play for the group. Part of Chico Hamilton’s appearance at Newport that year was captured in Bert Stern’s film Jazz On A Summer’s Day and the concert represented Eric Dolphy’s debut with the quintet. Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler’s Biographical Encyclopaedia Of Jazz incorrectly claims that Fred Katz performed with the group but it was actually Nate Gershman on cello who had been recruited from the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. One of the most evocative scenes in the film finds him alone practising Bach’s Cello Suite Number 1, almost enveloped by clouds of smoke from the cigarette he was smoking.
The group’s 1959 album – The Ellington Suite - represented a reunion of the original quintet with Paul Horn added. Carson Smith arranged the material taking full advantage of Paul and Buddy Collette’s expertise on no less than six horns between them. It is noticeable by this stage of the quintet’s evolution that the cello was used more for ensemble colour than as a solo voice. This became even more apparent on the quintet’s final recording in 1960 – The Chico Hamilton Special – which is yet to be released on CD and was Charles Lloyd’s first album as a recording artist [Ed. Note: Since this writing, Chico's Columbia LPs have been made available on CD.] He had been studying with George Coleman and had joined the group on the recommendation of Buddy Collette. Bassist Bobby Haynes and guitarist Harry Polk were the other new members while Nate Gershman was held over from the earlier quintet.
Early in 1960 the quintet appeared at The Cloister in Hollywood opposite Dinah Washington. In his enthusiastic Downbeat review John Tynan called the group, “ A sure-fire crowd-pleaser for the quasi-hip set frequenting this Sunset Strip room.” The somewhat forgotten Carrington Visor was on tenor and flute but by the mid- sixties he seemed to disappear from the jazz scene. Chico carried on working with the group until around 1962 when he decided to drop the cello and replace it with George Bohanon’s trombone.
There was though to be one last hurrah for the cello/flute combination. In 1989 Chico re-formed the quintet with Buddy Collette, Fred Katz, John Pisano and Carson Smith for a European tour of festivals at Verona, Bolzano, Vienna, Nice, North Sea and Montreux.”
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
The Complete Pacific Jazz Recordings Of The Chico Hamilton Quintet (Mosaic MD6-175).
Jazz From The Sweet Smell Of Success (Fresh Sound FSRCD 514).
Chico Hamilton Quintet Reunion (Soul Note 121191-2).
The Chico Hamilton Quintet featuring Eric Dolphy Fresh Sound FSCD-1004. The insert notes indicate that these recordings were made on May 19th/20th, 1959 in Hollywood, CA
The Chico Hamilton Quintet with Strings Attached with the orchestra under the direction of Fred Katz.[Warner Brothers B-1245]
Cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, who died in 1931 at the age of twenty-eight, has been the subject of so much glorified writing that it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between what actually happened in his short life and what is hagiography.
In its purest sense, hagiography is used for the purpose of writing about saints, holy people or ecclesiastical leaders usually in the form of an admiring or idealized biography.
The word comes from the Greek “hagios” meaning holy and the Greek “graphy” which means writing.
Hagiographies often focus on the miracles brought about by those imbued with sacred powers.
Bix Biederbecke’s career has often been the stuff of hagiography but leave it to Whitney Balliett, the long time Jazz critic for The New Yorker to debunk the mythology long associated with Bix as he does so eloquently in this essay from Dinosaurs in the Morning: 41 Pieces on Jazz [Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Company, 1962].
Whitney’s essay on Bix was first published in 1961. The occasion for this piece was prompted by the issuance of The Bix Beiderbecke Legend - fourteen tracks on RCA Victor.
“LEGENDARY FIGURES are blessed properties. They enliven us by defying life and death. They are what, one morning, we hope to see in the glass. They are imaginary pied pipers forever summoning us from the crown of the next hill. Yet the best legendary figures are not legends at all; they are what they seem. Such is Bix Beiderbecke, the great cornetist, who died in 1931, at the age of twenty-eight. Archetypical, the Beiderbecke legend tells of a gifted small-town boy (Davenport, Iowa) who makes the big time in his early twenties, starts drinking, becomes frustrated by the chromium surroundings he must endure to make a living, drinks more heavily, loses his health, and dies, broke, of pneumonia in a baking August room in Queens.
But this lugubrious chronicle, true though it is, soft-pedals the very thing that gives it backbone — Beiderbecke's extraordinary skills. For he was, unlike the majority of short-lived "geniuses," already just about complete. Had he lived, he would probably — in the manner of his close friend and peer Pee Wee Russell, who is only now reaching a serene perfection — have simply refined his playing past reproach. The adulation that encases Beiderbecke began soon after the start of his career. (Professional adulation, that is; it has been estimated that Beiderbecke was praised in print just twice during his life. Nowadays, musicians are fitted out with a full set of adjectives before making their first record.)
Beiderbecke was the sort of jazz musician who provokes vigorous imitation. Andy Secrest, Sterling Bose, Leo McConville, Jimmy McPartland, Red Nichols, and Bobby Hackett were or are faithful copies, while Rex Stewart, Frankie Newton, Buck Clayton, Joe Thomas, and Roy Eldridge appear to have divided their formative years between Louis Armstrong and Beiderbecke, who also studied each other. (Why certain jazz styles are imitable and certain are not is altogether mysterious. Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and Charlie Christian have countless facsimiles, who, in turn, have their facsimiles.
At the same time people like Thelonious Monk, Pee Wee Russell, Sidney Catlett, Billie Holiday, Vic Dickenson, and Django Reinhardt appear inimitable, and not because they are any more individualistic. But good musicians do not copy their elders. They use them only as primers — both kinds of primers. Thus, Count Basie out of Fats Waller, Dizzy Gillespie out of Roy Eldridge, and Teddy Wilson out of Earl Hines.) Despite their assiduousness, none of Beiderbecke's disciples have matched his unique purity. They have approximated his tone, his phrasing, and his lyricism, but his mixture of these ingredients remain secret. They've had little trouble, however, in emulating his faults, which were chiefly rhythmic.
As a result, Beiderbecke's surviving followers sound disjointed and dated; he doesn't. Ample proof of this freshness is provided in a new set of reissues, "The Bix Beiderbecke Legend" (Victor), which brings together fourteen numbers (two of them alternate takes) made by Beiderbecke between 1924 and 1930 with Jean Goldkette, Paul Whiteman, Hoagy Carmichael, and a group of his own.
Beiderbecke's recordings seem almost wholly wasted. They were generally made with second-rate Dixieland bands, or with small, tightly regulated oompah groups, or with the full Goldkette or Whiteman ensemble. For the most part, the musicians involved are his inferiors. The arrangements are starchy and overdressed, and, in true neo-Gothic spirit, probably sounded dated at first playing. The rhythm sections suffer from stasis. The materials include offensive Uncle Tomming and items like "There Ain't No Sweet Man That's Worth the Salt of My Tears" and "I'll Be a Friend (with Pleasure)."
Indeed, these recordings have a dumfounding insularity when one considers the contemporary output of King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Fletcher Henderson, and Duke Ellington. Beiderbecke's failure to record with his peers (there are a few exceptions) was apparently due to the rigid color line that prevented mixed sessions, as well as to his own celebrated waywardness; other people generally set up his recording dates, which he simply attended. Too bad, for Beiderbecke often jammed with the great Negro musicians, and the results, reportedly, were awesome. (This last notion rings true; almost all Beiderbecke's records suggest that he was playing with his throttle only two-thirds open. The scattered exceptions emphatically prove the point.) On the other hand, the desultory groups that Beiderbecke trailed into recording studios have taken on a backhanded value. They obviously made him work.
In many of his Dixieland recordings, he single handedly plumps the ensembles into shape, covers up for the rhythm sections, and solos brilliantly. Moreover, his accompanists set him off in an exhilarating fashion. The effeminate vocals, the fudgelike saxophones, the trick-dog muted trumpets, and the glacial drummers all point up and magnify his solos. He is the jewel in the cabbage. Some Beiderbecke aficionados hold that the ideal Beiderbecke record date would have included the likes of Frank Teschemacher, Eddie Condon, Joe Sullivan, and Gene Krupa. But what of a Beiderbecke session attended by, say, Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, Coleman Hawkins, Earl Hines, and Chick Webb?
Like all supreme stylists, Beiderbecke never bared his muscles. Not once did his uncanny tone — a carillon playing on a dry morning, an August moon over the water — go soft or sour. And it must have been close to blinding, for it shines right through the cramped, tinny recordings of the time, Beiderbecke did not play his notes; he struck them, as Hoagy Carmichael has pointed out. Each note hung three-dimensional in the air before being replaced by the next. He had almost no vibrato (a vibrato, in jazz, reflects either laziness or genuine emotion), and often used the whole-tone scale. Despite this affection for the hearty, all-American notes, he usually conveyed a minor, blues like feeling. The dominant impression of Beiderbecke's work, in fact, was a paradoxical combination of the legato and the clenched, of the lackadaisical and the on-time, of calm and exuberance.
In the way that winter summons up summer and summer winter, his hottest attack implied coolness, and vice versa. He might start a solo by sounding several clipped on-the-beat notes, allowing the tones from each note to wash at the next one. Then he would float into an air-current phrase and hang motionless for a second or two, like a dragonfly; abruptly start pumping again with a pattern of declamatory staccato notes, each behind the beat; slide into a brief, side-of-the-mouth run, executed with such nimbleness that it seemed made up of three or four closely related notes instead of an octave-jumping dozen; and fashion an abrupt concluding upward gliss— troops being ordered to pop to. His short solos have a teasing preview quality, while his immaculately structured long statements ("Singin’ the Blues" and "I'm Coming Virginia") offer overwhelming repletion—a compositional repletion, at that.
Primarily a melodist, Beiderbecke moved steadily toward the kind of improvisation that was later achieved by Lester Young, who also liked to linger over melodic fragments, switching them this way and that to see how much light they would catch. But Beiderbecke lacked Young's rhythmic tricks and simply pushed the beat before him, like a boy in a peanut race, or stomped directly on it. (Whenever Krupa worked behind him, Beiderbecke's rhythmic stiffness disappeared, and he gained some of the flow of his Negro colleagues.)
Beiderbecke's most successful recorded solos invite immediate and unerasable committing to heart. Best of all, they have a jaunty, sun's-up quality — a declaration of fun—that is not an accident of technique. Many jazz musicians use their instruments to repay life's lumps; Beiderbecke always seemed to be turning the other cheek. Although the content of Beiderbecke's cornet work remained constant, it was increasingly overshadowed by his dabbling on the piano. Somewhere along the line, Debussy and Hoist, among others, had infected him, and he began composing and playing — on piano — cloudy impressionistic pieces that he supposedly felt were his most important work. But these pieces have a sentimental, paunchy cast — despite their harmonic exploration — that uncomfortably suggest that perhaps self-pity had begun to set in.
The Victor set of reissues is spotty. Three of the numbers are from the Goldkette period, and are notable mainly for the long-lost "I Didn't Know," made in 1924, in which Beiderbecke plays a brief and inconclusive solo. In the other selections, he can be heard in the ensembles, beckoning the sheep after him. The seven items from Beiderbecke's Whiteman days are considerably more interesting. There are two takes of "Changes" (muted) and two of "Lonely Melody" (open-horn). Beiderbecke is gorgeous in all four, flashing out of the mire like a snowy egret. He demonstrates his hot-coolness in the brisk "From Monday On," as well as in "San," both of them made with Whiteman splinter groups.
The last two sides, though, are invaluable. In "Barnacle Bill the Sailor" Beiderbecke is accompanied by a curious pickup band that includes Bubber Miley (not heard), the Dorsey brothers, Benny Goodman, Bud Freeman, Eddie Lang, and Krupa. There is some dreadful novelty singing, but in between Beiderbecke delivers a short, furious uptempo explosion that reveals what he must have sounded like in the flesh. The second record, "I'll Be a Friend," has many of the same men and some equally sappy singing. However, it suddenly slips into gear when Beiderbecke appears — a derby over his horn — for a short, superbly built solo full of legato windings, gonglike notes, and casual harmonic inversions. There is a new subtlety in the solo, along with an unmistakable sense of melancholy. But this isn't surprising, for eleven months later he was dead.”
“Genius is an overworked word in this era of thunderous hyperbolic press agency. Still, when one considers Arthur Tatum, there is no other proper descriptive adjective for referring to his talents. I have purposely pluralized them, for Tatum possessed several gifts—most of which remained unknown to all but a few of his best friends—his prodigious memory, his grasp of all sports statistics and his skill at playing cards.”
“At the piano, Art seemingly delighted in creating impossible problems from the standpoint of harmonies and chord progressions. Then he would gleefully impro-
vise sequence upon sequence until the phrase emerged as a complete entity within the structure of whatever composition he happened to be playing. Many is the time I have heard him speed blithely into what I feared was a musical cul-de-sac, only to hear the tying resolution come shining through. This required great knowledge, dexterity and daring.”
“Perhaps Art Tatum would have been assured a firmer place in musical history if he had not alienated too many of the self-righteous aficionados who preferred their piano sounds less embroidered, less imaginative and more orthodox. Therefore, it follows that Tatum would never be their favorite pianist. Posterity tends to prove that Art requires neither champion nor defense, since the proof of his genius remains intact and unblemished. The beauty within the framework of his music transcends the opinions of critics, aficionados, fans and musicians themselves. History is the arbiter. For the truly great, fame is not fleeting but everlasting.”
- Rex Stewart, Jazz trumpet player and author
In his impeccably written American Masters: 56 Portraits in Jazz, the esteemed author Whitney Balliett observed:
“Great talent often has a divine air: it's there, but no one knows where it comes from. Tatum's gifts were no exception; his background was plain and strict….
“Tatum was a restless, compulsive player who abhorred silence. He used the piano's orchestral possibilities to the fullest, simultaneously maintaining a melodic voice, a harmonic voice, a variety of decorative voices, and a kind of whimsical voice, a laughing, look-Ma-no-hands voice. The effect was both confounding and exhilarating.
Tatum had two main modes—the flashy, kaleidoscopic style he used on the job, and the straight-ahead jazz style, which emerges in fragments from his few after-hours recordings and from some of the recordings made with his various trios (piano, guitar, and bass), which seemed to galvanize him. (Tatum did not have an easy time playing with other instruments; he tended to compete with them, then overrun them.) He offered the first style to the public, which accepted it with awe, and he used the second to delight himself and his peers….”
“Tatum did not fit comfortably in jazz, for his playing, which was largely orchestral, both encompassed it and overflowed it. He occupied his own country. His playing was shaped primarily by his technique, which was prodigious, even virtuosic. Tatum had an angelic touch: no pianist has got a better sound out of the instrument. He was completely ambidextrous. And he could move his hands at bewildering speeds, whether through gargantuan arpeggios, oompah stride basses, on-the-beat tenths, or single-note melodic lines. No matter how fast he played or how intense and complex his harmonic inventions became, his attack kept its commanding clarity. The Duke Ellington cornetist Rex Stewart, who turned into something of a writer in his later years, said of Tatum in his Jazz Masters of the Thirties:”
“At every dance that Fletcher Henderson's band played, there'd be someone boasting about hometown talent. Usually, the local talent was pretty bad, and we were reluctant to take the word of anyone but a darn-good musician, such as alto saxophonist Milton Senior of McKinney's Cotton Pickers, who was touting a piano player.
"Out of this world," Milton said. We were persuaded to go to the club where this pianist was working.
The setting was not impressive; it was in an alley, in the middle of Toledo's Bohemian section. I 'm not sure if the year was 1926 or 1927, but I am sure that my first impression of Art Tatum was a lasting one. As a matter of fact, the experience was almost traumatic for me, and for a brief spell afterward, I toyed with the idea of giving up my horn and returning to school.
Looking back, I can see why Tatum had this effect on me. Not only did he play all that piano, but, by doing so, he also reminded me of how inadequately I was filling Louis Armstrong's chair with the Henderson band.
To a man, we were astonished, gassed, and just couldn't believe our eyes and ears. How could this nearly blind young fellow extract so much beauty out of an old beat-up upright piano that looked like a relic from the Civil War? Our drummer, Kaiser Marshall, turned to Henderson and said it for all of us:
"Well, it just goes to show you can't judge a book by its cover. There's a beat-up old piano, and that kid makes it sound like a Steinway. Go ahead, Smack, let's see you sit down to that box. I bet it won't come out the same."
Fletcher just shrugged his shoulders and answered philosophically, "I am pretty sure that we are in the presence of one of the greatest talents that you or I will ever hear. So don't try to be funny."
Coleman Hawkins was so taken by Tatum's playing that he immediately started creating another style for himself, based on what he'd heard Tatum play that night—and forever after dropped his slap-tongue style.
To our surprise, this talented youngster was quite insecure and asked us humbly, "Do you think I can make it in the big city [meaning New York]?" We assured him that he would make it, that the entire world would be at his feet once he put Toledo behind him. Turning away, he sadly shook his head, saying, kind of to himself, "I ain't ready yet."
However, as far as we were concerned, he was half-past ready! I can see now that Tatum really thought he was too green and unequipped for the Apple, because he spent the next few years in another alley in another Ohio city — Cleveland—at a place called Val's.
It was probably at Val's that Paul Whiteman "discovered" him a year or so later, when Art was 19, and took him to New York to be featured with the Whiteman band. But insecurity and homesickness combined to make him miserable, and after a short time, he fled back to Toledo. This is a good example of a man being at the crossroads and taking the wrong turn.
After returning home, Tatum gradually became confident that he could hold his own. When Don Redman was passing through Toledo a year or so later, Art told him, "Tell them New York cats to look out. Here comes Tatum! And I mean every living 'tub' with the exception of Fats Waller and Willie the Lion."
At that time, Art had never heard of Donald (the Beetle) Lambert, a famous
young piano player around New York in the '20s, and he came into the picture too late to have heard Seminole, an American Indian guitar and piano player whose left hand was actually faster than most pianists' right hands. In any case, to Tatum, Fats was Mr. Piano.
The admiration was reciprocated. The story goes that Fats, the cheerful little earful, was in great form while appearing in the Panther Room of the Sherman Hotel in Chicago. Fats was in orbit that night, slaying the crowd, singing and wiggling his behind to his hit "Honeysuckle Rose."
Suddenly he jumped up like he'd been stung by a bee and, in one of those rapid changes of character for which he was famous, announced in stentorian tones: "Ladies and gentlemen, God is in the house tonight. May I introduce the one and only Art Tatum."
I did not witness this scene, but so many people have related the incident that I am inclined to believe it. At any rate, before Tatum did much playing in New York, he spent a period of time with vocalist Adelaide Hall as part of a two-piano team, the other accompanist being Joe Turner (the pianist). Miss Hall, then big in the profession, took them with her on a European tour.
In appearance, Tatum was not especially noteworthy. His was not a face that one would pick out of a crowd. He was about 5 feet, 7 inches tall and of average build when he was young but grew somewhat portly over the years. Art was not only a rather heavy- drinker but was also fond of home cooking and savored good food. As he became affluent, his favorite restaurant was Mike Lyman's in Hollywood, which used to be one of Los Angeles' best.
An only child, Tatum was born in Toledo on Oct. 13, 1910. He came into the world with milk cataracts in both eyes, which impaired his sight to the point of almost total blindness. After 13 operations, the doctors were able to restore a considerable amount of vision in one eye. Then Tatum had a great misfortune; he was assaulted by a holdup man, who, in the scuffle, hit Tatum in the good eye with a blackjack. The carefully restored vision was gone forever, and Tatum was left with the ability to see only large objects or smaller ones held very close to his "good" eye.
Art had several fancy stories to explain his blindness, and a favorite was to tell in great detail how a football injury caused his lack of sight. I've heard him go into the routine: he was playing halfback for his high school team on this rainy day; they were in the huddle; then lined up; the ball was snapped... wait a minute—there's a fumble! Tatum recovers... he's at the 45-yard line, the 35, the 25! Sprinting like mad, he is heading for a touchdown! Then, out of nowhere, a mountain falls on him and just before oblivion descends, Tatum realized he has been tackled by Two-Ton Tony, the biggest follow on either team. He is carried off the field, a hero, but has had trouble with his eyes ever since.
The real stories about Art are so unusual that one could drag out the cliche about fact being stranger than fiction. When Art was three, his mother took him along to choir practice. After they returned home, she went into the kitchen to prepare dinner and heard someone fumbling with a hymn on the piano. Assuming that a member of the church had dropped by and was waiting for her come out of the kitchen, she called out, "Who's there?" No one-answered, so she entered the parlor, and there sat three-year-old Art, absorbed in playing the hymn.
He continued playing piano by ear, and he could play anything he heard. Curiously, there was once a counterpart of Tatum in a slave known as Blind Tom. Tom earned a fortune for his master, performing before amazed audiences the most difficult music of his time after a single hearing. But Tom couldn't improvise; he lacked the added gift that was Tatum's.
Tatum played piano several years before starting formal training. He learned to read notes in Braille. He would touch the Braille manuscript, play a few bars on the piano, touch the notation, play... until he completed a tune. After that, he never "read" the song again; he knew it forever. He could play any music he had ever heard. One time, at a recording session, the singer asked if he knew a certain tune. Art answered, "Hum a few bars." As the singer hummed, Art was not more than a half-second behind, playing the song with chords and embellishments as if he had always known it, instead of hearing it then for the first time.
His mother, recognizing that he had an unusual ear, gave him four years of formal training in the classics. Then the day came when the teacher called it halt to the studies, saying, "That's as far as I can teach you. Now, you teach me."
Tatum carried his perception to the nth degree, Eddie Beal, one of Art's devoted disciples, recalls their first meeting, which happened at the old Breakfast Club on Los Angeles' Central Avenue at about 4 a.m. The news had spread that Tatum was in town and could be expected to make the scene that morning. Just as Tatum entered the room, as Beal tells it, "Whoever was playing the piano jumped up from the stool, causing an empty beer can to fall off the piano. Tatum greeted the cats all around, then said, 'Drop that can again. It's a Pabst can, and the note it sounded was a B-flat.'" Rozelle Cayle, one of Tatum's closest friends, tops this story by saying that Tatum could tell the key of any sound, including a flushing toilet.
Genius is an overworked word in this era of thunderous hyperbolic press agency. Still, when one considers Arthur Tatum, there is no other proper descriptive adjective for referring to his talents. I have purposely pluralized them, for Tatum possessed several gifts — most of which remained unknown to all but a few of his best friends — his prodigious memory, his grasp of all sports statistics and his skill at playing cards.
Art was a formidable opponent in all types of card games, although bid whist was his favorite. There are a few bridge champions still around who recall the fun they had when Tatum played with them. According to one's reminiscence, Art would pick up his cards as dealt, hold them about one inch from the good eye, adjust them into suits and from then on, never looked at his hand again. He could actually recall every card that was played, when, and by whom. Furthermore, he played his own cards like a master.
He had an incredible memory not only for cards but also for voices as well. One account of his aptitude in catching voices has been told and retold. It seems that while playing London with Adelaide Hall hack in the late '30s, he was introduced to a certain person and immediately swept along the receiving line. Six years later, when he was playing in Hollywood, the person came to see Tatum. He greeted him with, "Hello, Art. How are you? I'll bet you don't remember me." Tatum replied, "Sure I remember you. Gee, you're looking good. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to talk to you at that party in London, Your name is Lord So and So.'”
I realize that nature has a way of compensating for any inaccuracy, but Tatum's abilities transcended ordinary compensation. With only a high school education, he was a storehouse of information. His favorite sports were baseball and football, followed by horseracing. Tatum could quote baseball pitchers records, batting averages for almost all players in both big leagues, names and positions for almost all players, the game records any year, and so forth. Rozelle Gayle, one of Tatum's closest friends, recalls back in Art's Chicago days (the '30s) that all the musicians frequented the drugstore on the corner of 47th Street and South Park. Art became so respected as an authority on any subject (and that included population statistics) that the fellows would have him settle their arguments, instead of telephoning a newspaper.
Despite impaired vision, he was a very independent man. He had little methods to avoid being helped. For example, he always asked the bank to give all his money in new $5 bills, which he put in a certain pocket. When he had to pay for something, he gave a $5 and then counted his change by fingering the $1 bills and feeling the coins. The 1’s then went into a certain pocket and the coins into another. He had a mind like an adding machine and always knew exactly how much money he had.
One of the most significant aspects of Tatum's artistry stemmed from his constant self-change.
At the piano, Art seemingly delighted in creating impossible problems from the standpoint of harmonies and chord progressions. Then he would gleefully improvise sequence upon sequence until the phrase emerged as a complete entity within the structure of whatever composition he happened to be playing. Many is the time I have heard him speed blithely into what I feared was a musical cul-de-sac, only to hear the tying resolution come shining through. This required great knowledge, dexterity and daring. Tatum achieved much of this through constant practice, working hours every day on the exercises to keep his fingers nimble enough to obey that quick, creative mind. He did not run through variations of songs or work on new inventions to dazzle his audiences. Rather, he ran scales and ordinary practice exercises, and if one didn't know who was doing the laborious, monotonous piano routines, he would never guess that it was a jazzman working out.
Another form of practice was unique with Tatum. He constantly manipulated a filbert nut through his fingers, so quickly that if you tried to watch him, the vision blurred. He worked with one nut until it became sleek and shiny from handling. When it came time to replace it, he would go to the market and feel nut after nut — a, whole bin full, until he found one just the right size and shape for his exercises. Art's hands were of unusual formation, though just the normal size for a man of his height and build. But when he wanted to, he somehow could make his fingers span a 12th on the keyboard. The average male hand spans nine or 10 of the white notes, 11 is considered wizard, but 12 is out of this world. Perhaps the spread developed from that seeming complete relaxation of the fingers — they never rose far above the keyboard and looked almost double-jointed as he ran phenomenally rapid, complex runs. His lightning execution was the result of all that practice, along with the instant communication between his fingers and brain. His touch produced a sound no other pianist has been able to capture. The method he used was his secret, which he never revealed. The Steinway was his favorite piano, but sometimes he played in a club that had a miserable piano with broken ivories and sour notes. He would run his fingers over the keyboard to detect these. Then he would play that night in keys that would avoid as much as possible the bad notes. Anything he could play, he could play in any key.
With all that talent, perhaps it is not strange the effect that Art had on other pianists. When he went where they were playing, his presence made them uncomfortable. Some would hunt for excuses to keep from playing in front of the master. Others would make all kinds of errors on things that, under other circumstances, they could play without even thinking about it. There was the case of the young fellow who played a great solo, not being aware that Tatum was in the house. When Art congratulated him later, he fainted.
This sort of adulation did not turn Tatum's head, and he continually sought reassurance after a performance. Any friend who was present would be asked, "How was it?" One couldn't ask for more humility from a king of his instrument.
A little-known fact is that Art also played the accordion. Back in Ohio, before he had gained success, he was offered a year's contract in a nightclub if he would double on accordion. He quickly mastered the instrument and fulfilled the engagement, but he never liked the accordion and after that gig, he never played it again.
Tatum always liked to hear other piano players, young or old, male or female. He could find something kind to say even about quite bad performers. Sometimes his companion would suggest leaving a club where the pianist could only play some clunky blues in one key. But Art would say, "No, I want to hear his story. Every piano player has a story to tell."
His intimates (two of whom—Eddie Beal and Rozelle Gayle—I thank for much of this information) agree that Tatum's favorites on the piano were Fats Waller, Willie (the Lion) Smith and Earl Hines. He also liked lots of the youngsters, including Nat Cole, Billy Taylor and Hank Jones.
In the days when most musicians enjoyed hanging out with each other, Art and Meade Lux Lewis palled around; Two more dissimilar chums could hardly be imagined. Tatum was a rather brooding, bearlike figure of a man, and Meade Lux was a plump, jolly little fellow. They kept a running joke going between themselves, Meade Lux cracking that Art was cheap, even if Tatum was paying the tab.
Tatum's leisure hours began when almost everyone else was asleep, at 4 a.m. or so. He liked to sit and talk, drink and play, after he finished work.
There was a serious and well-hidden side to the man. His secret ambition was to become known as a classical composer, and somewhere there exist fragments of compositions he put on tape for orchestration at some later date.
Tatum also wanted, very definitely, to he featured as a soloist accompanied by the Boston or New York symphony orchestras, which he considered among the world's best As a matter of record, this admiration for the longer-haired musical forms was mirrored; he had numerous fans among classical players, who were astonished at his skill, technique and imagination. To them, his gifts were supernatural. Vladimir Horowitz, who frequently came to hear Art play, said that if Tatum had taken up classical piano, he'd have been outstanding in the field.
It's been said that Tatum forced today's one-hand style of piano into being because after he'd finished playing all over the instrument with both hands, the only way for the piano to go was back, until the people forgot how much Tatum played.
Another of Art's ambitions, also unrealized, was to be a blues singer! He loved to relax by playing and singing the blues. He knew he didn't have much of a voice, but when he was offstage, he'd sing the blues. He had a feeling for the form but kept that side of himself well hidden from the public. He really adored Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bessie Smith and, especially, Big Joe Turner. Most musicians could never guess what Art was going to play from one moment to the next, which made the group he had with guitarist Tiny Grimes and bassist Slam Stewart unquestionably the best combo he ever had. The trio played on New York's 52nd Street around 1945. These three communicated, anticipated and embellished each other as if one person were playing all three instruments. It was uncanny when it's considered that they never played it safe, never put in hours of rehearsal with each sequence pinpointed. On the contrary, every tune was an adventure, since nobody could predict where Art's mind would take them.
Tatum loved to go from one key to another without his left hand ever breaking the rhythm of his stride. Even in this, he was unpredictable, since he never went to the obvious transpositions, like a third above. No, Art would jump from B-flat to E-natural and make the listener love it.
While Art was alive, and as great as he was, there were still a few detractors. One such critic had been trained as a classical pianist hut was trying desperately to apply his academic training to jazz. This fellow said, during one of Tatum's superb performances, "Sure, Art's great, but he fingers the keys the wrong way."
How sour can grapes get?
Another compatriot who used to haunt every place that Art played, night after night, made the public statement: "Good God! This Tatum is the greatest! Thank God he's black — otherwise nobody's job would be safe." I suspect there was a lot of truth in that remark.
Art never seemed to let the inequities of his situation bother him. Still, in the early morning when he had consumed a few cans of beer and was surrounded by his personal camp followers, he would unburden himself, asking, "Did you hear so-and-so's latest record? What a waste of wax, for Christ's sake! There must be over 2,000 fellows who can play more than this cat. But you see who he's recording for? It will probably sell half a million copies while Willie the Lion just sits back smoking his cigar, without a gig. When will it end?"
Tatum was a great crusader against discrimination, but in his own quiet way. He used to cancel engagements if he found that the club excluded colored persons. Loyalty to his friends, even when it was not advantageous to his career, was another strong point. (I recall the time I went to catch him at a club called the Streets of Paris, in Los Angeles. After a period of superlative enjoyment, I went to the piano to pay my respects and leave. But just as Art said, "Hello, how long have you been in the joint?" Cesar Romero and Loretta Young walked up. So I stepped back to let Art converse with the movie royalty. Art said, "Come on back here. I want to introduce you. Cesar, Loretta, I want you to meet Rex Stewart," and went on to build me up, undeservedly, till they asked for my autograph!)
Art was no glad-hander. He was polite, reserved, affable but not particularly communicative unless the conversation was about one of his hobbies. A more self-effacing person would be hard to find, and he was generous to a fault with his friends. Yet he could summon up a tremendous amount of outraged dignity when it was called for.
Perhaps Art Tatum would have been assured a firmer place in musical history if he had not alienated too many of the self-righteous aficionados who preferred their piano sounds less embroidered, less imaginative and more orthodox. Therefore, it follows that Tatum would never be their favorite pianist. Posterity tends to prove that Art requires neither champion nor defense, since the proof of his genius remains intact and unblemished. The beauty within the framework of his music transcends the opinions of critics, aficionados, fans and musicians themselves. History is the arbiter. For the truly great, fame is not fleeting but everlasting.
