Duke Ellington: Music is my Mistress

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

169-170

text excerpt

I first met Art Tatum in Toledo, Ohio, which was his home and base at the time. Friends had been talking about him, telling me how terrific he was, yet I was unprepared for what I heard. I immediately began telling him that he should be in New York. Quite a lot of what he was doing was taken right off the player-piano rolls, and I felt that the action and competition would do much good in helping to project that part of himself which was covered up by the carbon-copy things he did so perfectly. Also, I knew that once in New York he would be drawn into the Gladiator Scene with some real bad cats. I could just see The Lion, cigar in the corner of his mouth, standing over him while he played, and on the verge of saying, "Get up! I'll show you how it is supposed to go."

Tatum agreed with me and said he was going to hit the Apple one day, but he wasn't going to rush it, nor, as Ben Webster used to say, "run out there and get all skinned up."

[…]

His first visit to New York stirred up a storm. In a matter of hours, it got around to all piano players--and musicians who played other instruments, too --that a real Bad Cat had arrived and was threatening the position of The Lion, James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, etc. Though he challenged them, they loved him, and this kind of association with fellow musicians is a big and profound subject that is impossible to explain.

excerpt from 'Duke Ellington: Music is my Mistress' pp. 169-170 (266 words)

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