Monday, June 1, 2009

Jazz is Art and Art Was Jazz

A nice piece in the WSJ about my favorite jazz pianist, and one of the greatest musicians of all time, Art Tatum:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124286060905541009.html

2 comments:

Shag from Brookline said...

Fortunately there are many great jazz pianists. Some, like Tatum and Oscar Peterson (before his stroke), use all twenty (20) of their fingers and some, like Count Basie and Nat King Cole, use just a few (sometimes on just one hand). What they have in common is rhythm, a sense of swing, the ability to take even bland pop songs and make us want to dance even if we can't.

kevin quinn said...

As a certain genius of modern music, now memorialized on the DC quarter, put it: "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!"