Known for his
piece "Tea for Two," Art Tatum was a virtuoso pianist who was a great improviser. He
also set a higher standard for manual dexterity, marveling such greats as Count Basie, who
called him the "eighth wonder of the world," and Conductor Leopold Stokowski, composer
Sergei Rachmaninov and pianist Vladimir Horowitz, who was both impressed with Tatum's dexterity
and his creative powers.
Because of his marvelous skills, there were those
who did not classify Tatum as a jazz musician. Perhaps, with his impressive imagination, he is
best described as playing variations of the stride piano style, in which the left hand usually
plays a four-beat pulse with a single bass note, octave, seventh or tenth interval on the first
and third beats, then a chord on the second and fourth beats. On occasion, this pattern is
reversed by putting the chord on the downbeat and bass note(s) on the upbeat. Tatum used to
enjoy adding more complex harmony into his jazz.
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