An unusual issue in the American
Classics Series from Naxos is this selection
of improvisations by Art Tatum (1909-1956).
Tatum together with Thomas "Fats"
Waller became the leading exponents
of Harlem Stride.
Anyone who loves solo piano
music, frankly of any genre, cannot fail to
be amazed at what Tatum did with classic tunes
such as "Tea for Two", embellishing
them with an intoxicating cocktail of fantastic
note-spinning. Whether or not you’re a jazz
fan I can almost guarantee that you could
hardly find it within yourself not to enjoy
and indeed be carried along by the sheer life-enhancing
feel of it all. That Tatum was blind from
his early childhood (like Ray Charles) makes
his achievements even more incredible.
Steven Mayer is a worthy
inheritor of this music as pianist and is
one of those all too rare musicians who has
successfully carved out a career playing both
classical music and jazz. The tunes on this
disc are by the two greatest composers of
this style of music, Tatum himself and "Fats"
Waller. However we also hear music by Sigmund
Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein, Harold Arlen
and W.C. Handy. But a man such as Tatum can
take almost any tune and give it his special
treatment, and, whilst the tune is pure Harlem
Stride in style, the original is still totally
recognisable – just listen to what he does
with Dvořák’s
“Humoresque” and Massenet’s “Elegy”!
At Naxos’s wonderful bargain
prices this is another disc that anyone interested
can easily afford to try, even if they don’t
know the style, without worrying about the
cost. Do so and be thoroughly enchanted!
Steve Arloff
Jonathan Woolf has
also listened to this disc
“Improvised
and embellished (jazz-style) versions of classic
tunes in the exact way that Art Tatum made
famous.” Thus runs the rubric that introduces
this disc. It would take me several paragraphs
to unpick that sentence, from the concept
of embellishing an already embellished tune,
through the nature of improvisation and its
application here through the use of the curiously
old-fashioned parenthetical phrase jazz-style
to that perilous word “exact.”
A lot of conceptual baggage then before we
get going. But let’s not get bogged
down. I will, in any case, have a few words
along the way about Mayer’s homage to
Art Tatum, giant of 52nd Street of whom it
was always claimed - when he descended to
the basement depths – “God is
in the House.”
Given that we all know the
stories of pianistic titans frozen in their
tracks by Tatum’s coruscating facility
– doubtless the Abbé Liszt himself
retired quaking from a basement dive –
we need to work out what Steven Mayer is doing
here. I’ve heard his admirable Ives
– very different from others’
performances – but this is the first
time I’ve encountered his improvisations.
Tatum is one of the few jazz musicians genuinely
guaranteed to split listeners down the middle.
Errol Garner’s introductions were teasing
and often maddening but the locked hand swing
he generated overcame doubters; Earl Hines,
a big influence on Tatum, was a garrulous
one-man band – but he was also an innovator
of incendiary brilliance whose single note
trumpet style pianistics gave the instrument
a front-line imperative. But Tatum. Well Tatum
was prolix and technically astonishing and
teasing and infuriating and much more besides.
Aficionados adore his harmonic complexity
and command; those less easily seduced pronounce
his trademark descending runs repetitious
and predictable, that he lacks the bon viveur
warmth of Waller, the taste and subtlety of
Teddy Wilson and so on.
The fact is that Tatum was
an adaptable band pianist, as records show,
but his solo work is the heart of him. Mayer
has been accorded a rather reverberant acoustic
that tends to highlight the higher end of
the keyboard; there’s little here, in
the end – and perhaps there shouldn’t
be - of Tatum’s steak-rich tone, his
meaty middle voicings and the dark-as-teak
depth of tone. The raison d’être
of the disc tends to elongate and prolong
the original Tatum conception, piling bravura
on bravura to bursting point. In Tea for
Two we can hear how Mayer lacks Tatum’s
razor sharp rhythm and how he introduces just
a hint of the Zez Confreys into the performance.
Similarly those volcanic Tatum dynamics are
missing in Tiger Rag and also something
only an initiate could convey – how
Tatum utilises Harlem Stride and converts
it to the medium of his playing, whereas with
Mayer it sounds like a stylistic quirk or
humorous appendage. Tatum’s musical
arrogance was colossal and Mayer doesn’t
have the gall to follow him.
Tatum was also, whether it’s
acknowledged or not, a vulgar player –
in the best sense. His St. Louis Blues
– the recording where he utilises (and
then ditches) Hines’ trademark boogie-woogie
– is a vortex of vulgarity; Mayer by
contrast is slower and sleeker and doesn’t
make those Tatum runs organic. Repeated the
number of times he repeats them they sound
just plain wearisome. I’m sorry to say
that the Tatum purist in me rebels against
Mayer’s Elegie (from Massenet and here
misspelled Elegy). Yes, he jazzed the classics
and yes, he was not alone in that. And no,
I’ve no objection. But the thing about
Tatum’s recording was his warmth, his
affection. With Mayer it sounds rather too
trivial. And acknowledging, as Mayer does
in his notes, that Tatum was a witty player
of the classics perhaps Mayer’s Humoresque
could have been a mite more affectionate.
Clearly one can pose the
obvious question – what is this disc
for? Why listen to Mayer’s homage to
Tatum’s improvisations when you can
listen to Tatum? Especially a Tatum shorn
of excessive girth - concise and pithy. Still,
Mayer is a fine musician who has immersed
himself pretty well in the virtuoso Tatum
style. It’s just that it doesn’t,
in the end, have much point.
Jonathan Woolf
CD Reviews
Steven Mayer (piano) 
