Art Tatum, God Is in the House

Art Tatum, God Is in the House (HighNote Records, 1998)

Georgia On My Mind (Carmichael - Gorrell) 2:17
Beautiful Love (Van Alstyne - Gillespie - King - Young) 1:42
Laughing at Life (C. Kenny - C. Todd - B. Todd - N. Kenny) 1:03
Sweet Lorraine (Burwell - Parish) 3:03
Fine and Dandy (Swift - James) 4:07
Begin the Beguine (Porter) 3:53
Mighty Lak a Rose (Nevin) 3:35
Knockin' Myself Out (Green) 4:03
Toledo Blues (Tatum) 3:33
Body and Soul (Heyman - Green - Sour) 3:31
There'll Be Some Changes Made (Blackstone - Overstreet) 3:28
Lady Be Good (G. Gershwin - I. Gershwin) 4:30
Sweet Georgia Brown (Pinkard - Casey - Bernie) 7:18

Art Tatum (piano and vocal), with occasional support from Reuben Harris (whiskbrooms), Frankie Newton (trumpet), Ebenezer Paul (bass), Ollie Potter (vocal), and Chocolate Williams (bass and vocal)

Fats Waller, upon seeing Art Tatum enter the joint: "Ladies and gentlemen, I play piano, but God is in the house tonight."

I've been listening to this music for years — as an LP borrowed from the Hackensack Public Library, as a cassette made from that LP, as a CD — and it continues to delight me. God Is in the House is a gathering of 1940–1941 performances recorded by Jerry Newman, a Columbia University student whose portable recording equipment has given us a priceless supplement to Tatum's studio recordings. Cutting discs in his apartment and in Harlem after-hours clubs, Newman caught Tatum in congenial circumstances, in performances that are endlessly inventive and remarkably relaxed, with appreciative laughter in the background now and then.

Tatum is for me an enigma. The one biography that I've read let me understand that he liked beer and cards. The few minutes of filmed performances show a musician who seems to execute the impossible without strain or even evidence of engagement. Tatum's version of Jerome Kern's "Yesterdays," for instance, became a set piece whose details might vary only slightly, if at all, from one performance to another.

But in the informal performances collected in God Is in the House, Tatum is inspired. On "Beautiful Love," for instance, a rubato statement of the melody is followed by a chorus that begins with an exhilarating lift, as if Tatum has decided to pick up this tune and make it swing. Here and elsewhere, the idiosyncratic resonance of an out-of-tune piano adds a strange beauty to the sound (and somehow makes it easier to recognize Tatum's influence on Thelonious Monk).

The most unexpected performances here are two vocals, "Knockin' Myself Out," with Tatum and bassist Chocolate Williams singing, and "Toledo Blues," with Tatum accompanying himself. "Knockin' Myself Out" is a tribute to reefer and its local supplier:

If you want to get high, get high kind of quick,
just fall on up to the Gee-Haw [nightspot]
and pick up on old Frank Martin's sticks

Williams sounds as if he is indeed "knockin' hisself out, gradually by degrees." On "Toledo Blues," Tatum acquits himself as a plausible blues singer, sounding like an older, tired version of Leroy Carr.

The most exciting music here comes in two performances by Tatum, trumpeter Frankie Newton, and bassist Ebenezer Paul: "Lady Be Good" and "Sweet Georgia Brown." Tatum's ability to play well with others often seems suspect: on the small group recordings he made for Verve in the 1950s, for instance, his accompaniments for soloists sound like Tatum solos with the recording level turned down. Here though he's fully engaged with his fellow musicians. On "Lady Be Good" he sounds like the Benny Goodman quartet riffing behind Newton. And on "Sweet Georgia Brown," he and Newton inspire and imitate one another in one of the most exciting musical performances ever recorded — by Newton, by Tatum, by anyone.

Operators are standing by: God Is in the House (Amazon)

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"Working, hard-working Americans"

Last night on PBS, a discussion of the media, the primaries, and the words used to describe black and white voters. And this morning, Hillary Clinton speaks of her broad appeal to "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans."

Can she go any lower? Yes, she can.

Related post
Yes, they can

Keith Woods on media and race

Keith Woods, Dean of Faculty at The Poynter Institute, in a PBS NewsHour discussion of how race has figured in media coverage of the current primaries:

You know, when you look at a lot of the reporting coming out of the primaries in the Democratic race, and you see the number of times that we break things down by racial categories in determining how people voted, we are in some ways abetting what I would regard as a fairly narrow and superficial discussion about race. And I think particularly when you look at the way that we have talked about the demographic groups, the degrees to which we have divided up particularly black and white America in the conversation, we reveal, I think, in some ways both the media's limitations in how it talks about it and the country's.

So you see a full vocabulary for talking about white Americans in this debate, from "bluecollar" — a euphemism for white bluecollar workers. We talk about "lunchbucket Democrats"; we talk about "the soccer mom" and "the NASCAR dad," all of which are euphemisms in the national discourse for white Americans. And then we talk about "black people," as though they are all the same, with pretty much all the same views. And Latinos and Asians haven't fared much better. And we don't talk at all about Native Americans.

Listen to the rest as an MP3:

Media and Race (Online NewsHour, 5.2 MB download)

Technorati is broken

Notice the line of words and/or phrases at the bottom of each Orange Crate Art post? Those words and/or phrases are Technorati tags, meant to help readers interested in a subject find relevant content online. Technorati, a free web service, is also meant to help bloggers keep track of links to their blogs. In some circles, link count— one's Technorati number or (ahem) "authority" — is a matter of great anxiety.

I've sometimes used tags for comic effect — here, for instance, and here. I've tagged mostly in earnest. But after two-and-a-half years, I've come to the conclusion that tagging is not worth the effort and that Technorati is broken. My posts sometimes register, sometimes fail to. My tags sometimes bring up my posts, sometimes fail to. Links to Orange Crate Art often go uncounted. Technical support is spotty. And Technorati tags bring in few if any visitors. (How do I know that? Through the free and hugely reliable web service StatCounter.)

So Technorati itself will be the subject of my last tag.

[Update: "Notice the line of words and/or phrases at the bottom of each Orange Crate Art post?" No, you don't, as I've been removing them.]

Related post
Two tales of tech support

Tag Technorati

Professor threatens to sue students

"My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful. They'd argue with your ideas."

Priya Venkatesan, who taught English at Dartmouth College, is "threatening to sue her students because, because, she claims, their 'anti-intellectualism' violated her civil rights." She has also accused her students of "'fascist demagoguery.'" Read all about it:

Darmouth's "Hostile" Environment (Wall Street Journal)

Children and the animal kingdom

If you want to tell a small child a story with a moral, it is likely to communicate all the more readily if the tale concerns a frog or a pig. Apparently children are instinctively aware that they are members of the animal kingdom, while adults instinctively distance themselves from it.

Allen Shawn, Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life (New York: Penguin, 2007), 58

Quelle nuit!

[For people of the future (as the poet Ted Berrigan called them) wondering what this post is about: it's from the night of the Indiana and North Carolina presidential primaries.]

Mildred Loving (1939-2008)

From this morning's New York Times:

Mildred Loving, a black woman whose anger over being banished from Virginia for marrying a white man led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling overturning state miscegenation laws, died on May 2 at her home in Central Point, Va. She was 68. . . .

The Supreme Court ruling, in 1967, struck down the last group of segregation laws to remain on the books — those requiring separation of the races in marriage. The ruling was unanimous, its opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, who in 1954 wrote the court's opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional.

On June 12, 2007, the fortieth anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia, Mildred Loving issued a public statement, "Loving for All." The final paragraphs:

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Read more:

Mildred Loving Dies at 68 (New York Times)
Loving for All, Mildred Loving's 2007 statement (Positive Liberty)

A Mother's Day card with damn on it

When Elaine brought this item to my attention in the card aisle last night, I wondered, "Who would buy a Mother's Day card with damn on it?" And I realized: I would.

There's more to this Mother's Day card than meets the eye — literally. Open it, and you'll hear a "violin" playing "Home, Sweet Home." The music comes from a chip in the card, not from the deep emotion the card stirs in the reader. The card's inner message pays tribute to the kindness and thoughtfulness of the maternal addressee, affirming that she is "special as all hell." And then: "Happy Mother's Day!"

I'm fairly certain that in getting a card with damn on it, I'm getting my mom something that she doesn't already have. My mom does have a fine sense of humor, so I'm also fairly certain that she'll enjoy this card. Hell, I'm sure of it.

The Red Leather Diary

Lily Koppel. The Red Leather Diary. New York. Harper. 2008. $23.95.

As a teenager, Florence Wolfson (now Howitt) kept a Mile Stones Five Year Diary from 1929 to 1934. She began on her birthday, four lines a day: "This is my first entry in this beautiful diary 'cause today I'm fourteen years old!"

The Red Leather Diary is a book of three stories: of Florence Wolfson's early life, of the unlikely events that reunited writer and diary in 2006, and of the poignant encounter between the diarist (who turns 93 later this year) and her younger self. Wolfson grew up in Manhattan, the child of a doctor and dress designer. She skipped three grades, was rejected by Barnard ("Too brilliant and individual"), studied at Hunter, and did an M.A. in English at Columbia. She appears in her diary entries as a young woman of tremendous energy and imagination, intellectually and sexually precocious, devoted to art, literature, and music, loving both men and women:

The museum all day — then Molière and again those damned études — it irritates me to practice them, but I cannot stop — what provoking technique — so tricky.

I went to see "Hedda Gabler" straight from school. It was marvelous.

Have stuffed myself with Mozart and Beethoven — I feel like a ripe apricot — I'm dizzy with the exotic.

Nat finally kissed me! It was pretty bad, but he was so utterly delightful about it that I didn't care. He's sweet.

She is so sympathetically identical — Why are not men like her?

Koppel, a New York Times reporter whose doorman retrieved the diary from a dumpster and gave it to her, provides choice bits of detail to put us in touch with the lost New York of Wolfson's youth. Koppel's account of finding Florence Howitt is pure serendipity, involving a typewriter repair shop and an investigative attorney with a collection of vintage phonebooks. And Florence Howitt's encounter with Florence Wolfson involves the reckoning we all must make as our dreams run up against circumstance: "I don't feel like a heroine in my own life," Howitt tells Koppel, "but I have to tell you, I've come to terms with myself."

One reservation: I've quoted the diary entries above as they appear in the book. But here is the third, as seen in the New York Times slideshow about the diary:

Have stuffed myself with Mozart and Beethoven & music & Huysmans — I feel like a ripe apricot — I'm dizzy with the exotic

Yes, music is redundant, and Huysmans not a household name, but diary entries don't seem fair game for this kind of editing. Does it run throughout the book?

And if you're wondering — yes, there's already talk of a movie.

The Red Leather Diary (HarperCollins)
Speak, Memory (New York Times article)
Speak, Memory (New York Times slideshow)