If you’ve seen the Ken Burns documentary on jazz, or just about any other film related to jazz history, you’ve probably seen part of this footage of the Art Tatum Trio playing “Tiny’s Exercise.” 33 seconds of it was produced for a “March of Time” film that also featured Benny Goodman, Eddie Condon, and George Gershwin, and the Tatum excerpt has been in circulation for years. But there’s more, and with trio bassist Slam Stewart’s centennial birthday anniversary on September 21, this longer piece of film has lately been prominent on the internet. The widely-seen “March of Time” segment begins around 3:25, and shows Tatum from the left; the rare footage preceding it is from the right. Tiny Grimes is the guitarist. It was shot on December 5, 1943.
Tatum astonished everyone, of course, and his extraordinary technique and harmonic inventiveness influenced most of the pianists (and other players) who emerged in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s. But it was Nat King Cole who first enjoyed success with the trio format of piano, bass, and guitar, and Cole’s prototype was adopted not only by Tatum, but Lennie Tristano, Oscar Peterson, Ahmad Jamal, Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers, and Ray Charles. Moore’s combo featured pianist Charles Brown, who may have been Charles’s biggest influence, but here Ray talks about Tatum with Clint Eastwood in an excerpt from the series on blues that Martin Scorsese directed for PBS. I like how Ray adds, “But at least it was true, man,” as Eastwood mentions the appellation that Fats Waller reputedly applied to Tatum when the latter appeared at a venue where Waller was playing. “I play piano, but God is in the house tonight.”
I’m featuring Tatum’s Group Masterpiece (Volume 5) with Lionel Hampton, Harry “Sweets” Edison, and Buddy Rich in tonight’s Jazz a la Mode. From it, here’s the vibraphonist singing a blues he introduced years earlier as “Hamp’s Blues.”