Oscar Peterson vs. Art Tatum
Mosaic recently released a compilation of CDs entitled The Classic Oscar Peterson Trio Studio Sessions With Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen. In the opening notes Bob Blumenthal correctly writes that Peterson had "technique and harmonic fluidity to rival Art Tatum" and yet that fact has troubled me for years. Everything the trio played was well rehearsed. Nothing was left to chance. Anyone who ever went to hear the group live commented on how they played the same tunes, the same riffs, same everything night after night. This was a well staged act. I heard Stanley Turrentine in Chicago years ago and he covered some Coltrane things. It was uncanny and when I spoke with him he said "Oh yes, once someone shows me how to play a piece, I can play just about anything. The difference is that John can stand up there and think that shit up as he goes along. The difference between true genius and the rest of us mere mortals." And that is the difference between Oscar Peterson and Art Tatum. Don't get me wrong, Peterson is terrific and this set is well worth hearing. In my youth I wanted to be a drummer and learned to play brushes from Ed Thigpen. Wonderful stuff. Truly. Just keep it all in perspective. With total respect for everyone involved including Bob Blumenthal, who I grew up reading while I was a student at Berklee, when it comes to INVENTIVENESS, harmonic and otherwise, there is Art Tatum without equal. Oscar Peterson definitely had the chops, but he could not think that shit up as he went along. It has only taken me 60 years to figure this out, but then I am also a mere mortal.
Bill, great post. @acman3 Thanks for sharing the video. The admiration Oscar shows is obvious and demonstrates humility. The good news is we don’t have to choose just one. I saw Oscar once. He was touring with Joe Pass. March 1983, University of Victoria, B.C. Amazing and great acoustics - you could hear a pin drop as they say. Dad took me for my 19th birthday.
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Peterson is my favorite jazz pianist. My favorite album of his is We Get Requests. I have to admit I don’t know Tatum. I kind of like Peterson for playing within some kind of framework. I used to listen to Keith Jarrett but I began to tire of his very long stretches of what sounds like experimental noodling |
We Get Requests and Night Train are both great and good on vinyl. I did not know that Art was visually impaired and learned to read music with braille. Amazing. His "disability" almost certainly contributed to his ability to see the music in his mind and transpose it to the keys so fluidly as others have described. I’ve got Piano Starts Here tagged but I’ll be digging deeper into his catalogue. (Isn’t streaming great!) |
while we’re on the subject...I "accidently" picked up a mint, used Japanese pressing of TheGreatJazzTrioDirectFromLA (Hank Jones, Ron Carter, Tony Williams) from a local indy shop. East Wind EW-10005 $35. I only picked it up because it had a post it note that said "Japanese Pressing" and when I saw Hank Jones’s picture on the inside cover I scooped it. Otherwise, the cover art is terrible - I never would have picked up it based on that alone. But it’s fantastic! |
Hank Jones is another one of the very great ones. Let me share something about Art Tatum that is not well known. He was mostly blind, totally in one eye and had only partial vision in the other. So while other kids were playing baseball and such he was playing piano. Another kid in the neighborhood, named Jon Hendricks, became friends and Art taught Jon how to sing musical phrases. This became very important for two reasons. Look up Lambert, Hendricks & Ross for one reason you can learn about. The other less known is that Jon later became friends with a guy named Charlie Parker, who could not believe this young guy could sing musical phrases just like he could play on his saxophone. How did he learn to do that? Long story short, Charlie got a job washing dishes in the club where Art was playing so he could learn how the man was doing all those crazy things with harmony. And now you know where Bird started to launch his ideas that developed into BeBop. It is a crazy world after all. |
