RSS

Contact us

Friday 9 January 2009

Unbridled talent

Peter Phillips on jazz

Watching Clint Eastwood’s Piano Blues at the NFT — originally a programme made for television in 2003, featuring archive and live footage of many of the leading piano blues players — I realised how fortunate Ray Charles was to have had any training at all. Few of the great jazz instrumentalists did, either because they couldn’t afford it or because they felt uncomfortable in what they saw as a stitched-up white world, or both. What one saw in Eastwood’s film was some of the most naturally talented keyboard players ever born, finding a way to express themselves. This led me to wonder how good they would have been in the classical context. Could Professor Longhair have come near a Mozart Piano Concerto, let alone a Rachmaninov one? His technique was laughable in one definition — wrists below the keyboard, hands cupped onto the keys, fingers splayed randomly. Almost as uncomfortable to watch was the great Thelonious Monk, whose jabbing motion at the keys with rigidly stiff fingers (while stroking the floor with his right foot) seemed to take eccentricity-with-genius to new heights. No conservatoire pianist would have got away with any of this — no audience would have taken them seriously in the classical repertoires — which does not prove they didn’t have the ability to play them.

This question is at its most pressing in the case of Art Tatum. He did have the advantage of some schooling, though born almost as blind and quite as poor as Ray Charles.Yet he had the most beautiful address at the keyboard I have ever seen. His fingers literally floated over the keys, as David Gower used to float above the ground, which gave Tatum the reputation among his peers of being God. A number of great practitioners are supposed to have acknowledged Tatum’s divine status, including Fats Waller and Oscar Peterson; but this story really needed no more confirmation than Charles simply adding on Eastwood’s film ‘at least it was true’. The result of this training and unparalleled natural ability was that Tatum could sound as though his two hands were playing music which needed four.

Was it ultimately all empty show? Ironically, the most famous footage of Tatum playing, which is currently on YouTube and was included by Eastwood, shows him embellishing a piece by Dvorak: he can play the music so easily that he has no trouble adding notes, and in doing so recomposes the piece. Perhaps he could have done the same with Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto but we will never know because he wasn’t bothered. He came from a different world which, fortunately, produced its own opportunities for men of supreme technical ability. I still don’t understand how most jazz is arrived at, but anyone can thrill to someone like Tatum. We are the more fortunate for Tatum and the others not having the background to play Rachmaninov.

More articles from: Peter Phillips | this section

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comments (2)

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved