Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Can't We Be Friends?
2. This Can't Be Love
3. Elegy
4. Memories of You
5. Over the Rainbow
6. If You Hadn't Gone Away
7. Body and Soul
8. Man I Love
9. Makin' Whoopee
10. September Song
11. Begin the Beguine
12. Humoresque
13. Louise
14. Love for Sale
15. Judy
16. I'm Coming Virginia
17. Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams (And Dream Your Troubles Away)
18. Dixieland Band

Disc 2:

1. Embraceable You
2. Come Rain or Come Shine
3. Just A-Sittin' and A-Rockin'
4. There Will Never Be Another You
5. Tenderly
6. What Does It Take
7. You Took Advantage of Me
8. I've Got the World on a String
9. Yesterdays
10. I Hadn't Anyone Till You
11. Night and Day
12. Jitterbug Waltz
13. Someone to Watch Over Me
14. Very Thought of You
15. You're Driving Me Crazy
16. I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You
17. Stardust

Disc 3:

1. I Cover the Waterfront
2. Where or When
3. Stay as Sweet as You Are
4. Fine and Dandy
5. All the Things You Are
6. Have You Met Miss Jones?
7. In a Sentimental Mood
8. I'll See You Again
9. I'll See You in My Dreams
10. Ill Wind
11. Isn't This a Lovely Day?
12. Blue Skies
13. Without a Song
14. Stompin' at the Savoy
15. My Last Affair
16. I'm in the Mood for Love

Disc 4:

1. Taboo
2. Would You Like to Take a Walk?
3. I've Got a Crush on You
4. Japanese Sandman
5. Too Marvelous for Words
6. Aunt Hagar's Blues
7. Just Like a Butterfly (That's Caught in the Rain)
8. Gone With the Wind
9. Danny Boy
10. They Can't Take That Away from Me
11. Tea for Two
12. It's the Talk of the Town
13. Blue Lou
14. When a Woman Loves a Man
15. Willow Weep for Me
16. Ain't Misbehavin'
17. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
18. Mighty Like a Rose

Disc 5:

1. Stars Fell on Alabama
2. Blue Moon
3. There's a Small Hotel
4. Caravan
5. Way You Look Tonight
6. You Go to My Head
7. Lover, Come Back to Me
8. Sophisticated Lady
9. Dancing in the Dark
10. Love Me or Leave Me
11. Cherokee
12. These Foolish Things
13. Deep Purple
14. After You've Gone
15. I Didn't Know What Time It Was

Disc 6:

1. Somebody Loves Me
2. What's New?
3. Sweet Lorraine
4. Crazy Rhythm
5. Isn't It Romantic?
6. You're Blas�
7. You're Mine, You
8. (Back Home Again In) Indiana
9. That Old Feeling
10. Heat Wave
11. She's Funny That Way
12. I Surrender, Dear
13. Happy Feet
14. Mean to Me
15. Boulevard of Broken Dreams
16. Moonlight on the Ganges
17. Moon Song
18. When Your Lover Has Gone
19. Moon Is Low
20. If I Had You

Disc 7:

1. S'posin'
2. Don't Worry 'Bout Me
3. Prisoner of Love
4. Moonglow
5. I Won't Dance
6. I Can't Give You Anything But Love
7. Lullaby in Rhythm
8. Out of Nowhere
9. I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues
10. It's Only a Paper Moon
11. Everything I Have Is Yours
12. I Only Have Eyes for You
13. On the Sunny Side of the Street
14. Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me
15. So Beats My Heart for You
16. If You Hadn't Gone Away
17. Please Be Kind
18. Someone to Watch Over Me
19. Begin the Beguine
20. Willow Weep for Me
21. Humoresque

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #224196 in Music
• Released on: 1991-11-22
• Number of discs: 7
• Format: Box set

Amazon.com
This box set is a stunner: the ultimate Art Tatum collection. Virtually every well-known jazz composition is included, as well as many of the show-stopping ballads of Rogers and Hart, Jerome Kern, and the Gershwins, all played in Tatum's lavish, swinging style. While a box set of this size is almost impossible to cover in brief, it reaches a peak for stride piano enthusiasts with "Taboo," which reeks of 1920s Harlem rent parties. In addition, the last two choruses freely reveal the Thomas "Fats" Waller image so loved and adopted by Tatum. Aside from the bustling all-over-the-keyboard Tatum, there's an immeasurable tender side to him, as well. He plays the ballad "My Last Affair" in the silken, smooth rhythm that so distinguished his style, a style and technique never equaled in its sophistication and brilliance. It is virtually impossible to select a more impressive jazz and swing piano treasure for the neophyte or seasoned collector. Historians note that Norman Granz, the original promoter of the Tatum series, recorded the pianist in a sort of musical Napoleonic charge to get every selection down on wax for the ages. It was as if Granz knew that Tatum would be dead in 1956, three years after the first of these recordings. --Daniel Bartlett Jr.

Customer Reviews

Greatest pianist who ever lived
The history of jazz piano after Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton -Earl Hines, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Al Haig, Herbie Nichols, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Cecil Taylor, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Keith Jarrett- is an orphan without Art Tatum. Tatum was the greatest piano player jazz ever produced.

His weakness for sentimental standards became immaterial in the light of his phenomenal technique and seemingly infinite capacity for intricate improvisation. He would explore all the imaginable ramifications of a simple idea with flamboyance, and then delicately embellish them with elaborate ornaments. The sheer density of his notes led cynics to regard his playing as excessive and the result of an overdeveloped formula, and sceptics to doubt everything they were told until they saw him perform.

Tatum's first recording of "Tiger Rag" in 1933 completely subverted the song's original rhythmic structure, introduced new harmonies, and built complex ornaments around the melody... at twice the original tempo. Stéphane Grapelli heard the song in France in the year of its release and asked who the "pianists" were; the record dealer told him "Art" and "Tintin". Toscanini was once an hour late to his own performance in New York because he was stupefied listening to Tatum in a club.

Tatum was a gregarious introvert and an alcoholic. He spent almost all his time in the company of others, playing in small clubs until the early hours of the morning. Norman Granz had the insight in the early fifties to record Tatum in a series of group settings and on his own. The seven discs that make up the Pablo solo recordings contain some of the most astonishing piano playing anyone is ever likely to hear. And some of the most beautiful.

Masterpieces is right.
These recordings are remarkable. Art Tatum's mastery of many styles is awe inspiring. I remember my father, who was a pianist, saying that he wanted to cut his hands off every time he heard Art Tatum. Mr. Tatum is one of those rare artist who truly transcends his instrument. It seems like he can do anything he wants to, and he wants to do a lot. I would like to warn prospective buyers, though. These recordings are not the kind that you can just put on as background music (although why anyone does that I'm not sure). This music DEMANDS your attention. It is very dense and the musical references fly fast and furious. Sometimes I think that the music would improve with some simplification, but then I listen a few more times and I get more out of it. This is not for the faint of ear.

A true source of modern piano jazz
It is the bible of piano jazz playing. The effect of Tatum is lasting and stunning. You cannot listen to all seven discs in a concentrated manner for it is too dense in start. He is playing a song in different ways simultaneously as if he is testing the ideal way of presenting it. The recordings of Tatum documented here are the peak of his evolutionary career. Although his style stayed almost the same in its basics you could listen to his early radio transcriptions of the thirties and then to this final fifties notes and understand how the same old tunes developed and became in a few years a perfect sonatas improvised in a surprisingly gracious new interpretations and with unsurpassed virtuosity. Tatum took all that was in jazz piano playing of his time and combined it with his classical wisdom. The result is something so unique that till this day he is considered the most inspiring and revolutionary between jazz pianists (beside Cecil Taylor). Musical genius is tangible in every second of this set.