AOTW - March 19th-25th - Art Tatum Trio

[Alexander Hawkins]

Art Tatum - Pablo Group Masterpieces vol. 6 (click to buy)

Just an advanced warning - on gigs for a few days, so might not have been able to give enough warning otherwise - my choice for Album of the Week will be one of the trio sessions from the Art Tatum Group Masterpieces recorded for Pablo. The antipenultimate volume, IIRC, featuring Red Callender and Jo Jones. More in a week's time!

Edited April 11, 2006 by Jim Alfredson

[Alexander Hawkins]

Just an advanced warning - on gigs for a few days, so might not have been able to give enough warning otherwise - my choice for Album of the Week will be one of the trio sessions from the Art Tatum Group Masterpieces recorded for Pablo. The antipenultimate volume, IIRC, featuring Red Callender and Jo Jones. More in a week's time!

Just bumping this up! I'll post some comments on this after my gig this evening or tomorrow morning. All I'll drop in at the moment: 'If' is the single greatest piano trio performance I know. Difficult to pinpoint why: it's one of those essentially irrational musical judgements we all have/make, but I never fail to be absolutely astonished by it.

[Alexander Hawkins]

Apologies, first of all, if these notes are error-ridden...I've had a couple of stabs at writing some thoughts already, and each time have been thwarted by my computer shutting down with no notice. I'm now writing on some other application so I can copy and paste, but nonetheless..!

The first thing which occurs to me listening to an album I love so much is that my critical faculty goes out of the window. It's very difficult, talking about an album so dear to me, not to devolve into superlative-laced blathering. So, with renewed admiration for those of you who do write about music(!):

Leave Tatum himself aside for one moment. What a rhythm section on board here! Playing with Tatum must have been one of the most treacherous gigs around. Offhand, the only similarly hazardous jobs would have been playing with Earl Hines, or some of the Tristano-school musicians, I'd have thought. What's a player to do? Keeping time is redundant with Tatum. I think of Tatum and Philly Joe in the same bracket here: should a recording featuring either ever fall out of synch with a metronome, I'd suspect the metronome, not the musicians. But if simply keeping time is not a terribly exciting option, how does one go about elaborating it in this context? Tatum not only has one of the most dizzying imaginations I know of, but, unlike a horn player, he's got 10 fingers worth of it. There are, usually, multiple lines executing impossible rhythmic pirouettes. And how is a player to anticipate a mind like Tatum's? In any case, even if marking time is not an option, is elaborating it any more viable? Isn't this decking-out a baroque edifice with balloons and streamers? I'm not necessarily a great fan of Benny Green's liners to the set this album is from, but he puts the problem well:

'...if Armstrong usurped the role of the other soloists, and Bechet usurped the role of the trumpeter, Tatum usurped everybody's role. He was his own rhythm section; he was his own front line; his own orchestrator, and at many exalted moments of inventive resource his own composer too. What could he ever do to make room for the other players..?'

Now, I suppose it's the thinking of many people who regard Tatum as a solo musician, and his group projects as markedly less successful as a result of this, that the rhythm player's dilemma is unresolvable. I'm not one of these people: these group masterpieces are just that (and the earlier trios are also successful, by and large, to my ears).

I have no clue exactly how Red Callender and Jo Jones negotiate Tatum here, but it works. If Callender does more than mark time, nevertheless the key is his simplicity, I think. He stays low down in the register, and really anchors proceedings - perverse that 'anchoring' should seem to be a good thing alongside a player such as Tatum! Jo Jones - well: what to say? I really don't know. His brush-work is commented on rather a lot. It is simply astonishing on the opener, for example.

Now, Tatum. The usual observations apply: the phenomenal pianisim; the prismic harmonic mind (a lot of very modern substitutions - including some things you only really hear elsewhere in Monk and Dolphy, IMHO); the extraordinary melodic sense - is this paraphrase improvising? Is it almost motivic melodic development as Rollins would arrive at? I suppose at face-value there's embellishment going on, but embellishment suggests something too superficial. Every last detail of every run seems to me to be musically essential. In this way, I think the comparisons between Tatum and Cecil Taylor make sense: the excursions all over the keyboard are not elaboration, but vital substance.

We also get Tatum in a real range of situations: up/down tempo; striding; and playing lines which remind me of nothing quite so much as Bud Powell's headlong double-timing.

Tune selection is also interesting here. All absolutely wonderful standards, IMHO (although I'm not sure I could recognise a 'bad' tune if the only version I knew was Tatum's). What's also interesting here is the inclusion of a blues (and indeed, there are a few blues throughout these late group sessions). For those who think Tatum needed a 32-form with a strong melody to hang his flights of fancy on - think again, surely? The final cadence of this blues is a summation of everything great about the form.

I'm certainly not out of superlatives...but these are all subjective, so I'll spare everyone my gushing. It'd be interesting to hear from people who don't share my critical blindspot when it comes to Tatum. Perhaps even some positive Tatum detractors! I can almost imagine the lines of the criticism (although, of course, would be forced to tell you you were wrong ).

After my comments in the post above, I'm aware I haven't said anything about 'If'. I can't. I love it too much.

[Alexander Hawkins]

I can't be the only person crazy about this...

[Chuck Nessa]

Outstanding recording. I had it for 20 years but lost it in my vinyl "fire sale". Have not replaced any of the Tatum Verve/Pablo recordings on cd yet, but they are a priority.

This record was the last of the group I acquired, but it didn't let me down. Aces all around. Nice choice. Sorry I don't have it here to respond in detail.

[jlhoots]

I bought the entire Tatum Group Masterpieces really inexpensively from Zweit. a while back.

I'm one of the (seeming) minority that really likes Tatum in "group" settings.

This is one of the best.

[Alexander Hawkins]

Jo Jones is great here. I know I mentioned this above, but I was thinking about his contribution whilst listening to that of Bill Douglass on the Webster session. Douglass does just fine (and maybe is justified in staying out of the way that little bit more with the extra front line instrument), but Jones is a cut above IMHO.

[Alexander Hawkins]

Tatum does some downright frightening stuff at the end of 'Just One of Those Things'.

[mikeweil]

At last I will get me this thanks to Zweitausendeins adding this to their Fantasy sales list - I will comment here as soon as I had a listen.

[mikeweil]

I agree on the "extra" Jo Jones brings to a Tatum session compared to Bill Douglass. I always shied away from Tatum as his dazzling virtuosity is almost too much to bear, but now I can see what makes him so great. Thanks for the inspiration to buy this (the box set, that is.)

I like the natural sound the engineers gave the groups on these sessions - like it much better than the way RVG recorded similar lineups in the same year.

I understand this was mono, but the CD sounds like there is a noticeable difference between the channels - WTF is this? Anybody else noticed this - or is it remastered this way only on the box set?

Edited April 10, 2006 by mikeweil

[Alexander Hawkins]

I agree on the "extra" Jo Jones brings to a Tatum session compared to Bill Douglass. I always shied away from Tatum as his dazzling virtuosity is almost too much to bear, but now I can see what makes him so great. Thanks for the inspiration to buy this (the box set, that is.)

I like the natural sound the engineers gave the groups on these sessions - like it much better than the way RVG recorded similar lineups in the same year.

I understand this was mono, but the CD sounds like there is a noticeable difference between the channels - WTF is this? Anybody else noticed this - or is it remastered this way only on the box set?

Mike - I agree, I really like the sound too. I'll take a listen to see if I notice any discrepancy between the channels, although I've never noticed anything before.

[Stereojack]

I like the natural sound the engineers gave the groups on these sessions - like it much better than the way RVG recorded similar lineups in the same year.

I understand this was mono, but the CD sounds like there is a noticeable difference between the channels - WTF is this? Anybody else noticed this - or is it remastered this way only on the box set?

The sessions were recorded in mono. When Pablo acquired the material and released it in the 1970's, the music was "rechanneled" for stereo. This is not stereo, but a doctoring to create a stereo effect, and I find it really distracting. Both the Tatum boxes as issued by Fantasy on CD utilize the fake stereo masters. I haven't heard the individual CD's drawn from the boxes - are they also fake stereo, or have they restored them to mono?

[mikeweil]

The sessions were recorded in mono. When Pablo acquired the material and released it in the 1970's, the music was "rechanneled" for stereo. This is not stereo, but a doctoring to create a stereo effect, and I find it really distracting. Both the Tatum boxes as issued by Fantasy on CD utilize the fake stereo masters.

Thanks - that explains it. Not too distracting, methinks - just the bass moved slightly to the right and the drums or rather the high frequency brush sounds slightly to the left, but I think they left the frequency spectrum intact. Wish I had a mono switch on my amp ......