Art Tatum -
"Cherokee" (1954)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQe9x0_RXu4
composed by Ray Noble (1938)
"I wish I could play like Tatum's right hand !" - Charlie Parker (jazz saxophonist). Parker took a job washing dishes in a New York club, just so he could hear Tatum play.
"Art Tatum is my all-time favorite. Yeah, he's my all-time favorite. He's the guy I put on when I want to feel really small [laughs]. When I want to feel really insignificant [laughs]. He's a good guy to play for any musician, you know. He'll make them want to go home and burn their instruments [laughs.] Art Tatum is absolutely the most incredible musician - what can you say?" - Jerry Garcia (guitarist)
Art Tatum was blind, and largely self-taught. His trademarks were cluster chords of four or even five notes in each hand, producing deep sonority in the bass and mid-range of the piano, "impossible" left-hand intervals of 11ths, even 12ths, lightning-fast runs - sometimes using just two fingers - which often extended over several bars, combining all of these into a majestic, joyous, incredible performance of any and every possible tune. He first studied music via Braille, but then developed a perfect ear for music. He could sit down and play anything, at frenetic speed, with all his "impossible" ornamentations, at the drop of a hat, entirely by ear. He often played until dawn, after his gigs, in after-hours joints, consuming vast quantities of beer, with seemingly no effect on his playing...
But Tatum was also harmonically decades ahead, with his chord extensions, chord substitutions, and daring reharmonisations, and hugely influential on the later generation of jazz musicians. "Cherokee" follows Tatum's usual formula - a lush rubato statement of the melody, followed by a jaw-dropping change-of-gear into up-tempo stride-piano fireworks...
When people first heard his recordings, they would debate: "Is that three or only two guys playing...?"