The Music

Today's "Piano Starts Here" album has 13 tracks, played by Tatum at two different times.

Sony recorded re-performances of the four New York studio sessions, first recorded on March 21, 1933. As studio recordings, they were made in an acoustically small room, and Tatum uses lots of pedal throughout. These four tracks were originally made on 78 rpm masters for Brunswick.

1. Tea for Two (3:11)
2. St. Louis Blues (2:30)
3. Tiger Rag (2:17)
4. Sophisticated Lady (3:14)

Sony recorded re-performances of the nine live tracks from the "Just Jazz" concert on April 2, 1949 at The Shrine Auditorium. The Shrine is an enormous hall built in 1926, seating 6,300. Tatum, playing to audience in the room, plays "big," with sparing use of the pedal. Here's the new order of these nine live tracks.

1. Humoresque (3:48)
2. Tatum-Pole Boogie (2:28)
3. Someone to Watch over Me (3:08)
4. How High the Moon (2:28)
5. Yesterdays (3:23)
6. Willow Weep for Me (3:13)
7. The Kerry Dance (1:04)
8. Gershwin Medley (3:53)
9. I Know That You Know (2:30)

We corrected a number of flaws that have crept in over the years.

• We restored Tatum's authentic tempi from the night of the concert. Our research showed that during the transfer made for the current album, the tape playback speed was slower than it was while recording the concert. As a result, not only is the pitch of the current album slightly flat, but its tempi are too slow by the same ratio. (Remarkably, Tatum actually played even faster than you may be used to hearing!)

• We fixed problems with tape glitches. For example, in one spot, 80ms of time was lost in the midst of "Humoresque," disturbing the natural sense of pulse in the performance. Recognizing tape glitches and adjusting the code accordingly allows us to maintain the integrity of Tatum's playing.



• We restored what is believed to be the original concert order of the nine Shrine tracks, as shown above. Clues were provided by the original Columbia LP record GL 101, "Gene Norman presents an ART TATUM concert," which is a continuous recording of the entire concert, with no gaps between the tracks; it has all the audience noise.

• We restored lost material. The current album contains a track titled "The Man I Love," but that track had been spliced already by 1952, excising excerpts from Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" played in the original concert. We restored the omitted material (with thanks to Tatum discographer Arnold Laubich) -- you will hear two additional minutes of Tatum's remarkable playing.