Arthur Tatum Jr. (, October 13, 1909 – November 5, 1956) was an American jazz pianist who is widely regarded as one of the greatest ever. From early in his career, fellow musicians acclaimed Tatum's technical ability as extraordinary. Tatum also extended jazz piano's vocabulary and boundaries far beyond his initial stride influences, and established new ground through innovative use of reharmonization, voicing, and bitonality.

Tatum grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where he began playing piano professionally and had his own radio program, rebroadcast nationwide, while still in his teens. He left Toledo in 1932 and had residencies as a solo pianist at clubs in major urban centers including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In that decade, he settled into a pattern he followed for most of his career – paid performances followed by long after-hours playing, all accompanied by prodigious alcohol consumption. He was said to be more spontaneous and creative in such venues, and although the drinking did not hinder his playing, it did damage his health.

In the 1940s, Tatum led a commercially successful trio for a short time and began playing in more formal jazz concert settings, including at Norman Granz–produced Jazz at the Philharmonic events. His popularity diminished towards the end of the decade, as he continued to play in his own style, ignoring the rise of bebop. Granz recorded Tatum extensively in solo and small group formats in the mid-1950s, with the last session only two months before Tatum's death from uremia at the age of 47.

Early life

Tatum's mother, Mildred Hoskins, was born in Martinsville, Virginia, around 1890, and was a domestic worker. His father, Arthur Tatum Sr., was born in Statesville, North Carolina, and had steady employment as a mechanic. In 1909, they made their way from North Carolina to begin a new life in Toledo, Ohio. The couple had four children: Art, the oldest surviving child, was born in Toledo on October 13, 1909; his sister, Arline, was born nine years later; followed by his brother, Karl, two years after that. Karl went to college and became a social worker. The Tatum family was regarded as conventional and church-going.

From infancy, Tatum had impaired vision. Several explanations for this have been posited, most involving cataracts. As a result of eye operations, by the age of 11, Tatum could see objects close to him and perhaps distinguish colors. Any benefits from these procedures were reversed, however, when he was assaulted, probably in his early twenties. The attack left him completely blind in his left eye and with very limited vision in his right. Despite this, there are multiple accounts of him enjoying playing cards and pool. A second major biography entitled "God is in the House - A Biography of Art Tatum" was written by Mark Lehmstedt and was published by Woke Verlag in 2024. This lack of detailed coverage may be attributable to Tatum's life and music not fitting any of the established critical narratives or frameworks for jazz: many historians of the music have marginalized him for this, so "not only is Tatum underrepresented in jazz criticism but his presence in jazz historiography seems largely to prompt no particular effort in historians beyond descriptive writing designed to summarize his pianistic approach".

Critics have expressed strong opinions about Tatum's artistry: "Some applaud Tatum as supremely inventive, while others say that he was boringly repetitive, and that he barely improvised."

Other forms of recognition

In 1989, Tatum's hometown of Toledo established the Art Tatum African American Resource Center in its Kent Branch Library.

In 1993, Jeff Bilmes, an MIT student in the field of computational musicology coined the term "tatum" in recognition of the pianist's speed. It has been defined as "the smallest time interval between successive notes in a rhythmic phrase",

In 2003, a historical marker was placed outside Tatum's childhood home at 1123 City Park Avenue in Toledo, but by 2017 the unoccupied property was in a state of disrepair. In 2021, Art Tatum Zone, a nonprofit organization, was awarded grants to restore the house and improve the neighborhood. Also in Toledo, the Lucas County Arena unveiled a 27-feet-high sculpture, the "Art Tatum Celebration Column", in 2009.

Discography

Notes

References

Bibliography

Further reading

  • Williams, Iain Cameron. Underneath a Harlem Moon: The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall. Bloomsbury Publishers,
  • Tatum's profile at NPR
  • 1955 radio broadcast by Voice of America, in which Willis Conover interviews Tatum