Art Tatum

The English pianist Alan Clare was once intrigued with a workman who was carrying out some remodeling inside his house. Clare was playing some recordings, and he began to notice that the workman was whistling along with whatever music he put on – Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, it didn’t seem to matter. Even if he hadn’t heard it before, he had the natural musical ability to follow a melody closely and almost automatically. Clare decided to give him a real test and dug up his recording of Art Tatum doing Tea For Two, with the ground-breaking chord changes Tatum introduced into the tune. The workman never lost a beat nor did he lay out for a bar or two to figure out what was going on. He tracked Tatum flawlessly through all his changes, and when the record ended, he spoke for the first time. He glanced at Clare and with classic English understatement said, ‘Tricky f**ker, ain’t he?’

You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!

You’re just a little too hip for the room. It’s not good to be too hip because two hips make an ass.

Black and white players hadn’t appeared together in public before Teddy Wilson and I began working with B.G.

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I’m contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don’t come in with lyrics… I just go in and let it happen.

I’ve had a lot of things to be proud of in my life, but none more than the Jazz festival.

The word “jazz” means to me no category, but when you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the “jazz emblem” or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you keep fermenting the ‘fifties saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to me means no category, then I’ve got the green light And if it sounds like.. sounds like.. sounds like, and keeps crossing over, it’s what I wanted to do in the first place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed something, if not themselves. In fact, some people talk about expression, but expression really doesn’t mean anything to me because there’s a lot of work which goes into building a drama and then it’s up to other people to offer “expression.” Expression is such a nebulous thing.

My singing evolved with a feeling of intense relaxation, always using my diaphram and breathing specifically through my nose.

I remember Glenn Miller coming to me once, before he had his own band, saying, How do you do it? How do you get started? It’s so difficult. I told him, I don’t know but whatever you do don’t stop. Just keep on going.

A good bassist determines the direction of any band.

Anyone who doesn’t give [his debut album, The College Dropout] a perfect score is lowering the integrity of the magazine

I don’t like to look back because the whole point in Jazz is doing it now.

I’ve always wanted a C trumpet on top, to have that same kind of facility without shouting.

When I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.

It’s important to reflect on what made Jazz so special.

I’d like to feel that whatever I play is a result of whatever I’ve heard.

I’m not much on gimmicks. I never have been because they don’t last.