Announcer: The production and presentation of this program is made possible in part by a grant from the Ohio Arts Council.

Jack Jackson: This friend was going through town and he stopped in Toledo.

And.

He stopped in one in anthologized news in that plane, and it was buying him drinks and everything and.

He said some guy walked up to him, attacked him on the shoulder, say, listen, he said, I have a blindfold on here with you, my plan.

In the guy thought line, he says, no, this is a hollow mining claim.

You finally got to sit down.

And he says everything.

He did, he started at the bottom in an opinion, saying, look through it like this and feed it with the right hand, and we don't do that in Vienna.

And then it reached the angry that you guys got his head around.

Anyway, this is like really getting really plays on it.

So this guy said he looked at it.

Is it, my god, is it back, though?

Even then, you don't know.

There is that when you guys started playing is the jig is there.

I knew there were no place for this city.

Come on out and win another call, a train coming back on.

And he told me to Jack.

I'm telling you to say, Listen, if you.

Ever live here, you will know it.

(Piano Playing) Narrator: He was a man Who sent more than one piano player packing for home in an encyclopedia of jazz musicians, musicians poll 68 out of 100 voted for him.

Yet the name Art Tatum is less well known than the names of the men who admired him.

Even in his hometown, Toledo.

Horseless carriages were beginning to appear, but bicycles and wagons were the main transportation at the turn of the century.

The time when Arthur Tatum senior moved from the Carolinas to settle in Toledo, an asterisk was placed next to his name in the city directory.

It signified that he was black.

On October 13, 1910, Art Junior was born.

Mildred Tatum encourage her children to play, but Art's perfect year was not always appreciated by his sister, Arlene.

Arline Taylor: My mother and she would tell me, right, it's time to practice.

Come on in.

So I would forget that I was upstairs in the bed, you know, so wanting to go out and play, you know, I'd come in and practice a little bit, you know, and I'd run through it real quick.

And mom, she would say, Oh, OK, now take the next one.

And I think the next thing that I would have done if you got to the first one yet you'd be upstairs in the bed, probably sleep.

But I mean, he just thought of music that, well, you know.

Narrator: Flower Hospital represented a landmark to young art tatum blind since infancy.

A series of operations there gave him partial vision in one eye.

Arline Taylor: So anyway, that led them and get him to see scene in one eye, and he used to go and play pool, and he liked to play cards that he'd hold the cards up real close, you know, and he could see sometimes some of the boys would buy cards with large numbers on them and things, you know, for him, you know, because they liked to play with each other, to play cards.

Russel McCown: I probably had partial vision downward.

And when he walked down the street or be on the basketball floor, he would always elevate his head so he as far back as he could.

So he whatever vision he had, it came from that direction and he would attempt to play basketball like shoot marbles, and you'd even try throwing the ball to you, things like that and walking down the street.

I never saw him with a cane.

You take long steps reaching out as if he was anticipating and carrying something he gets to check himself.

Arline Taylor: They played marbles, shooters, the shooters, and they played over in the alley over there.

There was a little area there where they played it and they played football in baseball and he'd be right.

He left with be right in them with the football.

Russel McCown: He was accepted as any other fella in the crowd.

He did everything address them that at least he tried.

And no one ever accused him of being backward.

Narrator: Though he loved sports, music continued to be his main interest.

The musical activities at the Frederick Douglass Center were an early influence, still legally blind.

Tatum attended special classes of the Toledo Public Schools, where he took piano lessons from Overton Raimy several years later.

Bill Okumura became one of Raimi's pupils.

Bill Cummerow: I was taking a piano lesson and I happened to be beating my foot and he he said, Boy, you don't beat your foot.

He said.

You've got to count 12, 34, and he was kind of mad about that.

And he said, You know what, you remind me of Art Tatum?

And he said all the blacks beat their feet.

And I said, he said, Did you ever hear of art Tatum?

And I said, No, I haven't.

And he said he has wonderful technique.

Wonderful, but he always had it.

But he likes jazz.

(Piano Playing) Narrator: I thrived on jazz, and Toledo during prohibition was a fertile place for jazz players.

Despite an occasional raid, the clubs did well from the respectable speakeasies like the Green Mill and Chateau La France to the after hours bootleg joints, downtown chicken, charlie's waiters and Belmonts.

Harry Gregory: I used to be just one bootleg joint after another up and down an Illinois street, and Tatum would go in and the crowd would just go mad.

Is in the house, you know drinks would be fine, you know, get him a picture of beer.

Miklos Fulop: They are waiting for a Tatum because he worked at the Chateau, a French, and after he calls up over there, you show up every night.

And when he walked in the column, he called him the boss.

So when he walked in.

And he's trying to play.

Nobody will follow him.

Narrator: Like Roasties Jazz Cafe today, the after hours clubs of prohibition were a gathering place for musicians who wanted to play pure jazz.

Tatum was drawn to the after hours spots throughout his career.

one of his favorites was found in the Alley, a Cleveland club.

Hollywood gave us their version of an after hours spot in the fabulous Dorsey's, the only theatrical film Tatum appeared in.

The real thing was not quite so slick.

Ed Ryan: It was a little cottage.

There was a big coal stove or potbelly stove that sat in one corner of 11 door in and out the front door and you'd sit there, and every time anybody opened the door, there's no baby coming in.

And so you're sitting in these circumstances, and it seemed that nobody inhaled.

I mean, the room just filled with smoke and the smell of that coal burning and everything, you had the like.

I mean this this was an intriguing place.

I mean, it was, yeah, it wasn't, you know, all crawl in that sort of thing.

And every time that door opened or whether the snow and in would come, some musician with a music case, you know, and I've been in there on Saturday nights.

When you look up there and here's Tatum and there may be seven guys up there and they're all playing, you know, the meantime, there's other people coming in and they're unpacking their instruments, said it was nothing by 2:30 3:00 in the morning that that corner of the room where the piano was and where all these musicians were , there be 1520 people standing up there waiting their turn or they had just gotten through or whatever it was.

But this little room you could just imagine and these fellows, there were no amplifiers or anything like that.

You played wide open.

And when those 15 or 20 guys would cut loose, you've seen those Mickey Mouse cartoons where they're having a fight in the walls of the building, just pulsating throb and expand.

That's just the way you could almost feel.

This little building in your eardrums was like somebody walking around in your eardrums with golf shoes on or something.

It was just it.

It was.

It almost hurt.

Believe me, it almost hurt.

(Music) Narrator: Through his after hours plane, Tatum became known to many name musicians passing through Toledo, but his late hours also led to a tragic encounter.

Arline Taylor: My mom was sleep because I was sleep, you know, and Mr. Adams, he said.

And then how?

Oh, Mr. Taylor misstated Mr. Tatum.

And so Ben and my dad went to the wind and asked me, What's the matter?

And he said, I thought, Here, lay in here, come out here right away, and then they'd put a real gun.

She was out, said, You know, with that.

And my mother and dad ran outside.

Natalie added to, you know, we went out there and I was sort of hanging out with the guy at the end and probably ended with blackjack.

At least that's what they think was the blood you ran robbing.

But you only got a little change of putting because I usually would hide his money so he didn't get the money.

You know, he just got a little changed.

Maybe a couple of with something like that that I had in his pocket, Luth.

So they brought him in the house and brought him in uniform.

And the mom said the woman called out let them until she called that Leatherman, and that said, I'll be over in a few minutes.

So he came over and he taken out eye or something out of the ball or something out in there and did something to it and put it back in.

They've been held up until the next day.

Then I went to him, you know, but he never did see any more of that.

So he didn't want to go under anymore Operation Fire Brigade.

Narrator: Unwilling to face more surgery, Tatum continued to concentrate on his plane as he waited for the right moment to move.

WSPD featured him on a radio program that was eventually picked up by the NBC blue network.

But his big moment came in 1932, when singer Adelaide Hall came to the Rivoli Theater.

one of her pianist, Joe Turner, had been told to look up Tatum.

He did, but the result of his piano duel with Tatum was not the kind he was likely to report to Adelaide.

She was staying with Doc Stuart and his wife, LRP, above the Stewart Pharmacy, and she was concerned about Frances Hill, her other pianist who was ill. Ella Stewart: When Adelaide came in the second night she was here, she had two pianos and her husband was her manager, Bert, and he stayed there at the house.

And so that night they were talking after the show and he said, Well, we just have to find somebody.

Do you know anybody?

They can play a piano.

And right away, I thought about art.

Narrator: An audition was set up at the All Saints Episcopal Church.

Hill recovered in time to play the reveille job.

But Adelaide was impressed with Tatum's playing, and a few months later, she called the Stewarts to make arrangements to hire.

Ella Stewart: Tatum was the steward and I got together.

Of course, I was the person that always wanted something on paper and had a fleet of Gibson, who is attorney Slater Gibson here in Toledo to write up the contract, and we wrote up a contract for our team to go with Adelaide Hall.

Narrator: Some people said that Tatum left too soon, but many people tried to convince him to leave sooner, including Duke Ellington.

Harry Gregory: Duke used to come to Toledo in and do pretty well.

Also, Sonny Greer, and they used to ask me as about art, why didn't he leave and come to New York?

In fact, they talked with him, and then there were others, even Fats Waller.

Now he should have believed Fats Waller because Fats Waller took music from James P Johnson, who, as I say, the wise stride method of piano playing.

But Tatum kept saying he wasn't ready.

And I guess he wanted the assurance that he would be acclaimed as the greatest when he arrived in New York.

And this is what exactly happened.

(Music) Narrator: He was quickly proclaimed the greatest.

A fact that raises questions.

What was different about Art Tatum?

Bill Cummerow: We both started with the same teacher.

I beat my foot like Art Tatum.

I liked Fats Waller and I copied some of his music.

Apparently, he was an influence on Tatum, although he was far, far ahead of Waller.

When he finally finished and and then, of course, the Lee Simms thing.

And even to the having the beer on the end of the piano.

So there's five influences I had and why didn't I go as far as art?

Buddy DeFranco: I analyze a lot of players in this business.

Many players.

Function as a total unit.

I watched Artie Shaw, for instance, playing years ago, Coleman Hawkins.

Charlie Parker.

Art Tatum.

Mentally and physically.

And whatever it goes on with their nervous system.

It's one total unit, you see.

And it seems like their fingers go with their brain and their whole body.

Automatically.

Bill Cummerow: He also had he was blessed with a hand that had a tremendous reach, a big hand.

And I'm sure he had tremendous dexterity and he certainly must have had a lot of love for what he was doing.

He never hardly stopped playing.

Claude Black: His mind moves so fast while he was performing his music and stuff.

You could hear things going on.

And while he was playing in a.

But some of this going on so fast, you just wonder how you even thought that fashion was able to take his ideas and put them through his hands and onto the piano.

Bill Cummerow: He had perfect pitch.

He certainly had a tremendous sense of rhythm.

I don't know if beating his foot helped that or not.

Claude Black: He would carry the rhythm of the rhythm.

(Piano Playing) Narrator: Rhythm, reach and perfect pitch aside, it was Tatum's left hand that helped make him unique, able to play different songs with each hand simultaneously.

Tatum took the basic left hand techniques stride.

(Piano Playing) Walking bass.

(Piano Playing) And copying cords and was able to mix them with a speed that was unsettling to other musicians.

Jack Jackson: I thought the musician said, Jack, I know exactly what the guy doing this is, what the speed did.

He does it.

You know, it makes you give up.

Narrator: Well, talent enough to make other piano players want to quit.

Tatum did enjoy financial success and regular work, but his style was not always appreciated by the general public.

Stanley Cowell: Then I Tatum, you know, he listened, and then he sat down and played for me, and I remember my mother had to leave the room because he played just so much piano and I went back in the kitchen.

I said, Mother, what's what's wrong?

And he said, Man, that man just plays too much piano.

Buddy DeFranco: Now the thing about art Tatum was he played so many notes that it was mind boggling, and anything that's mind boggling turns off most people.

Jack Jackson: He plays too much piano for the average layman.

And I think.

If the average layman would try anything on piano, then he would be able to understand.

How far advanced this man is.

Buddy DeFranco: His playing to an average person was far out.

Was far up, but yet it was really far, and it was the the most contained and valid music I can think of is a.

But you always face the same kind of a problem with the public.

Years ago, I did when I was struggling.

I don't know how many years ago, but I played in Rock Island, Illinois, places like that, Moline.

I played a club when I was.

I had a backup group that was fairly good, but not great.

But.

I was playing some jazz.

I like to play and dying with it.

I mean, we emptied one house after another, you know?

So in desperation, on a Saturday night, it was kind of a noisy bunch, people drinking, getting juiced, you know?

I happened to see backstage I had an old top hat.

And just to pass the time and get through the job, I grabbed the top hat and came out with a top hat on and I played like Ted Lewis.

I don't know if you ever heard Ted Lewis, which was ridiculous, you know?

It was a joke, except that the audience liked it.

And the boss came to me and he said, Boy, I heard you were good, but I didn't know you was that good, right?

But that's a good example.

I mean, it just hits you right in writing ahead.

It's a clear example of what a musician like Art Tatum had to contend with.

Narrator: Tatum had more than one problem to contend with.

An unknown piano player once said, Thank God he's black or none of our jobs would be safe.

But Tatum wasn't one to accept the status quo.

Harold Payne: But anyhow, he said he wouldn't play the club unless his own people could come in the hearing.

So the management said, OK, and they really do the crowd in there, too.

And I think I don't think they stop that after that because they have a nice clientele.

So.

So that was one thing he broke into.

Narrator: In the end, it was probably his sheer musical genius that kept Tatum on the edge of the spotlight.

Buddy DeFranco: He was like Bird.

They were both a genius, they had to do what they were doing and they had to develop their way of playing.

And there was no other way.

No other course, but they go in the opposite direction of the public.

Harold Payne: Well, nothing like rock and roll.

A lot of them, like one of the guards, but art was just outstanding.

And and mostly the musicians was really impressed with it.

Old Movie: Hey, are you guys going to take me to the jam session, Arcadian?

A night out, aren't you?

All right, I guess I get an oligarchy.

Let's go hear a real musician.

Narrator: Tatum's biggest fans were other musicians.

As for the piano players, their admiration was matched by their intimidation.

An incident at a club in New York was typical.

Miklos Fulop: The one night when I was there, Duke Ellington and his manager, he came in and they sat down and Tatum was already playing.

So after Tatum got done with the said, the manager came over and knocked over the P.A.

system.

And ladies and gentlemen, we have a guest in the house and a little applause we made got him to sit in and play the number, you know, so naturally, give the applause.

Because everybody knew who knew Duke Ellington, you of the big name.

So after the announcement, the applause subsided.

He got up and he says and.

It says in his contract and wherever it Tatum is playing, he does not play, so naturally he didn't play.

He thanked the audience for the recognition, all that, but he would not set in.

And like I say, that holds true for nearly everybody that I know him before he came and everybody was saying, You know what, when the ball's in, when he played, that's where you stayed right there and nobody paid him.

Itzhak Perlman: The first time that I really, absolutely fell in love with somebody was I once heard on the radio by accident, just turned on the jazz station and I heard some guy playing a human rescue, Dvorak.

And it was all jazzed up and it was absolutely incredible playing and I didn't know who it was.

And then the announcer said that it was Art Tatum.

And of course, that that just totally slew me because I've never had anybody with such incredible facility in that particular idiom.

Narrator: Itzhak Perlman was not the only classical musician who admired Tatum.

And in spite of his love of jazz, Tatum had a taste for the classics, too.

Harry Gre You play so beautifully said, but heartily, very heartily.

I was just wondering if you could manage to play any kind of Bach, anything from back, you know, Bach.

Who said, No.

I never.

Harry Gregory: So would you mind playing some for me?

And he said, Certainly true.

He sat down and started playing Bach, and an hour later he was still playing Bach.

And so then he stopped, Lady said.

She said, I never will open my big mouth again.

Not like that.

Narrator: Tatum respected many of the classical composers, especially Bach and Chopin.

His recording of Messina's Elegy, however, hints that he may have felt that some classical pieces were taken too seriously.

In that recording, he quotes from Dregos Serenade.

(Piano Playing) The stars and stripes forever.

(Piano Playing) Then brings the tempo up to piano roll pace (Piano Playing) in 1956, Tatum bought a white tie and tails anticipating a formal recital tour, but illness pledged to him that year.

He gave up the beer glass at the end of the piano.

But he also recorded a series of albums.

Buddy DeFranco remembers his sessions with Tatum.

Well.

Buddy DeFranco: He's playing along, and sometimes I'd be playing.

And watch his fingers, I'd be fascinated, I was fascinated the way to try to figure out how he played all those runs.

He put his thumb underneath his hand.

It was completely unorthodox, but it would come out.

It would really come out beautifully.

So.

I don't know if you knew art humor at all, but he he then middle of a solo, put one hand on his knee and then played and he looked he looked around laughing at me about this, you know, and you played a couple of courses, one NC Great trick.

You know, I forgot to come in because I was looking at him and he thought that was hilarious.

And.

Since I was maybe five or six, I heard Art Tatum records, but still is nothing like the experience of working with somebody like that to know then the fine.

You know that energy and I've often one of the another couple of shots at it, you know.

Narrator: Nine months after the Franco sessions.

Tatum died in Los Angeles.

The funeral book read like a who's who in jazz.

In his short career, he had redesigned jazz piano, and his success left a double challenge for young Toledo players.

Tatum proved that a local musician could rise to the top.

But does lightning strike twice?

Perhaps all piano players feel like Count Basie when he agreed to let a young blind man sit in.

He stood close to the piano so that he could jump in and save him if he had two years later, Basie said.

I'm still standing there.

(Piano Playing) Announcer: The production and presentation of this program was made possible in part by a grant from the Ohio Arts Council.