page_title: Art Tatum
section_title: 1927–1937
hierarchical_section_title: Art Tatum / Later life and career / 1927–1937
caption_attribution_description: Kodachrome transparency of en:52nd Street (Manhattan) Per Liefbop: This photo is from around May 20, 1948. Harry the Hipster closed at the Onyx in the second half of May. (“Jazz Names Start Street Revival As 2 Ops Nix Girls, “ Down Beat, June 2 1948: 1) Erroll Garner opened at the Three Deuces c. May 20. (“Goings on About Town,“ New Yorker, May 22, 1948). Famous Door reopened with Art Tatum on May 7. (“Music–As Written", Billboard, May 8, 1948: 28).
context_page_description: Arthur Tatum Jr. was an American jazz pianist.
  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. Throughout his career, Tatum also played in after-hours venues at which he was said to be more spontaneous and creative than in his regular paid performances. Tatum drank large quantities of alcohol when performing; although it did not negatively affect his playing, it damaged 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. Granz recorded Tatum extensively in solo and small group formats in the mid-1950s, with the last session occurring only two months before the pianist's death from uremia at the age of 47.
  Tatum is widely regarded as one of the greatest jazz pianists. His playing encompassed the styles of earlier greats, while adding harmonic and rhythmic imagination and complexity.
context_section_description: In 1927, after winning an amateur competition, Tatum began playing on Toledo radio station WSPD during interludes in a morning shopping program and soon had his own daily program. After regular club dates, Tatum often went to after-hours clubs to be with other musicians; he enjoyed listening to other pianists and preferred to play last, after all the others had finished. He frequently played for hours on end into the dawn; his radio show was scheduled for noon, allowing him time to rest before evening performances. During 1928–29, the radio program was re-broadcast nationwide by the Blue Network. Tatum also began to play in larger cities outside his home town, including Cleveland, Columbus, and Detroit.
  As word of Tatum spread, national performers passing through Toledo, including Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson, dropped in to clubs to hear him play. They were impressed by what they heard: from near the start of the pianist's career, "his accomplishment [...] was of a different order from what most people, from what even musicians, had ever heard. It made musicians reconsider their definitions of excellence, of what was possible", his biographer reported. Although Tatum was encouraged by comments from these and other established musicians, he felt that he was not yet, in the late 1920s, musically ready to relocate to New York City, which was the center of the jazz world and was home to many of the pianists he had listened to when growing up.
  By the time that vocalist Adelaide Hall, touring the United States with two pianists, heard Tatum play in Toledo in 1932 and recruited him to play in her band, he took the opportunity to go to New York City. On August 5 that year, Hall and her band recorded two sides ("I'll Never Be the Same" and "Strange as It Seems") that were Tatum's first studio recordings. Two more sides with Hall followed five days later, as did a solo piano test-pressing of "Tea for Two" that was not released for several decades.
  After his arrival in New York, Tatum participated in a cutting contest at Morgan's bar in Harlem, with the established stride piano masters – Johnson, Waller, and Willie "The Lion" Smith. Standard contest pieces included Johnson's "Harlem Strut" and "Carolina Shout" and Waller's "Handful of Keys". Tatum played his arrangements of "Tea for Two" and "Tiger Rag". Reminiscing about Tatum's debut, Johnson said, "When Tatum played 'Tea for Two' that night I guess that was the first time I ever heard it really played." Tatum thus took over as the king of jazz piano players. He and Waller became good friends, with similar lifestyles – both drank prodigiously and lived as well as their incomes permitted.
  Tatum's first solo piano job in New York was at the Onyx Club, which was later reported to have paid him "$45 a week and free whiskey". The Onyx was one of the first jazz clubs to open on 52nd Street, which became the city's focal point for public jazz performance for more than a decade. He recorded his first four released solo sides, for Brunswick Records, in March 1933: "St. Louis Blues", "Sophisticated Lady", "Tea for Two", and "Tiger Rag". The last of these was a minor hit, impressing the public with its startling tempo of approximately 376 (quarter note) beats per minute, and with right-hand eighth notes adding to the technical feat.
  Tatum's only known child, Orlando, was born in 1933, when Tatum was twenty-four. The mother was Marnette Jackson, a waitress in Toledo; the pair were not married. It is likely that neither parent had a major role in raising their son, who pursued a military career and died in the 1980s.
  During the hard economic times of 1934 and 1935, Tatum mostly played in clubs in Cleveland, but also recorded in New York four times in 1934 and once in the following year. He also performed on national radio, including for the Fleischman Hour broadcast hosted by Rudy Vallee in 1935. In August of the same year, he married Ruby Arnold, who was from Cleveland. He began a residence of about a year at the Three Deuces in Chicago the following month, initially as a soloist an
caption: Clubs on 52nd Street in New York, where Tatum often played.
exif: {}