The month of April is Jazz Appreciation Month in the United States. Each year during this period, Jazz is celebrated throughout the United States in Communities, Schools, Concert Halls, and Night Clubs and in the street.
Lectures are given, Concerts are held,
Films are shown and many activities are staged to promote and nurture the
appreciation of Jazz. The history of Jazz is endless and its influence has
reached all corners of the globe. Here in the Gambia, we continue to do our
little bit to promote jazz music and jazz appreciation.
In previous notes we observed that the
piano is the fundamental instrument of jazz, and its use in the making of this
music has become standard and structured. The relationship of the piano to the
evolution of jazz music was more glaring and significant in Harlem, N.Y than
any other place during the development of jazz.
Harlem in the late 20’s was a society
balancing between two extremes. Only a few years back, Harlem was predominantly
a white neighborhood of European immigrants mainly of the Lutheran church. They
were descendants of the early Dutch settlers, and the name Harlem comes from a
city in the Netherlands with the same name.
In the years following the end of the
Second World War, the demographics of the neighborhood began to change with
African- American migrants from the south joining refugees from the overcrowded
tenements in midtown Manhattan.
Earlier on, in the late 20’s, 70% of the
real estate in Harlem was under black control and this bustling little city
within a city gave birth to what we now know as the Harlem Renaissance.
However, this development also brought
about another Harlem less glamorous and less fortunate. It is true that the
Harlem Renaissance created an ideology and a cultural context for jazz, but
what is greatly underrepresented, is the Harlem of “rent parties” and the
underground economies which created music.
Rent parties were a special passion for the
community but their very existence was avoided or barely acknowledged by most
writers of the Harlem Renaissance. The emerging black middle and upper classes
were ambivalent about vernacular elements of African-American culture and at
times explicitly hostile towards it.
Many great jazz notables such as Duke
Ellington and Cab Calloway got their start in the business in the so-called
speakeasies of Harlem which was the battleground of two visions of black
artistic achievement. For while there was the Harlem of literary aspirations,
there was also the Harlem of Jazz and Blues.
The piano was oftentimes the battleground
of these visions of black artistic achievement, and was to Harlem what brass
bands had been to New Orleans. The Harlem stride piano was the instrument of
choice and stood as a bridge between the ragtime idiom of the turn of the
century and the new jazz piano styles that were evolving. The development of
boogie-woogie in the 20’s and 30’s which became more popular in the 40’s,
expanded the vocabulary of African-American piano and propelled the style to
its highest pitch as unaccompanied keyboard music.
One of the most lauded masters of the
Harlem stride piano and indeed of boogie-woogie was a guy called Art Tatum. He
was a complex and controversial figure who was in many ways ahead of his time.
His vision of jazz music was initially inspired by the Harlem stride tradition,
which served as a foundation on which more complex musical superstructures
could be built.
He represented the finest flowering of the
Harlem stride tradition, but was also responsible for bringing the death knell
of this movement. For while developing his mature and unique style, he also
exhausted all the possibilities of the stride piano movement, forcing other
modern piano players that came later to move into other directions in order to
work their way out of the massive shadow of this seminal figure.
As a result, much of the musical vocabulary
that was developed by Tatum remains unassimilated by later jazz pianists.
Unlike the influence of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, Tatum’s legacy
still sits in probate waiting for a new generation of pianist to lay claim to
its many riches. His role and contribution to the history of jazz is clouded by
his virtuosity as he was often criticized for his showmanship and gratuitous
displays of technique.
Tatum’s importance to jazz is due to his
advanced musical conception and also to his finger dexterity. His speed and
clarity of execution was unmatched and the harmonic components of his playing
were exceptional.
He was born in Toledo, Ohio, on October 13,
1910, far away from Harlem and the other centers of jazz. He was afflicted with
cataract in both eyes and underwent several operations in his youth which
eventually restored sight to one eye. Throughout his life, he only enjoyed
partial sight to his right eye and remained totally blind in his left eye.
However, as in the case with most blind musicians, Tatum compensated for his
blindness with an acuteness of hearing that at times seem preternatural. He
amazed his mother at the age of three when he picked out melodies on the piano
that he heard her sing at a choir rehearsal. Soon after that, he was imitating
jazz pieces he heard on radio and from other piano players. He attended the
Toledo School of Music, and while there, his mother and his teacher at the
school tried to steer him towards a career in classical music. He demonstrated
an extraordinary talent for playing concert music , but was already attracted
to jazz, and by the age of sixteen, he was busy working around Toledo while
performing on a local radio station.
The news of Tatum’s piano prowess was
starting to reach other parts of the jazz world, but the musicians in Harlem
were not prepared for the impact he made when he travelled to New York as an
accompanist to singer Adelaide Hall in 1932.
During those days in New York, the local
piano titans decided to test the mettle of the newcomer from Toledo. He was
invited to a nightspot in Harlem where the greatest masters of stride including
Fats Waller, James P. Johnson and Willie the lion Smith were ready to do
battle. They took turns playing and when it was Tatum’s time to play, he
dazzled them with a rendition of the famous song “Tea for Two” full of
harmonies and sweeping runs which left the audience speechless. He was followed
by James P. Johnson with his favorite song “Carolina Shout”, and then came
Waller with his song “Handful of keys”. After a few takes, the final verdict
was no longer in doubt. Waller would later say that Tatum was just too good and
had too much technique which made him sound like a brass band all by himself.
Johnson would also remark that when Tatum played “tea for two” that night, it
was the first time he ever heard it really played.
A few months later Tatum made his first
records which included two pieces he had played at that Harlem contest. Over
the next three decades, Tatum recorded frequently putting down over six hundred
tracks as soloist and bandleader.
However, despite the many virtues of his
music in the 1930’s and 40”s, Tatum is best remembered for a massive recording
project he did under the direction of producer Norman Granz towards the close
of his career. He recorded over two hundred tracks, mostly done in a single
take over the course of several marathon sessions.
In this body of work, he was featured both
as a soloist and in collaboration with other jazz greats including Ben Webster
and Roy Eldridge. In the early 1940’s, Tatum did some informal sessions with a
guy called Jerry Newman which showcased him in a more relaxed and uninhibited
mood at various nightspots in Harlem. Here, he could be heard playing,
accompanying and even singing the blues.
Those performances were playful but
majestic and breath -taking, giving credence to the view that Tatum was at his
best when playing “after hours”. In 1949 Tatum performed at the Shrine
Auditorium in a memorable concert where he astonished the audience doing
double-time work on the song “I know that you Know” playing at a tempo of well
over four hundred beats per minute.
Tatum was often criticized for having a
limited repertoire of mainly sentimental and popular ballads with preference
for ornamenting the melody of the piece rather than constructing original
improvisations. In spite of all the criticism, Tatum’s legacy is rich and full
of accolade. In November 1956, a short while after finishing the recording
project with Granz, he died in Los Angeles.
In 1985 a survey of jazz pianist, placed
Tatum comfortably on top, suggesting that despite the passing of decades, and
the changing tastes with the emergence of new masters of the keyboard, Tatum
had lost none of his power to astonish, inspire and at times dismay other
practitioners of the art.
We hope you enjoyed reading this article as
we look forward to celebrating Jazz Appreciation Month this April. You can also
listen to Jazz on the radio on City Limits Radio every Saturday at 10pm. This
piece is in memory of the late Bishop Telewa Johnson who was an avid jazz lover
and a supporter of this column.
