Art Tatum - Tiger Rag

Art Tatum plays Tiger Rag. This version was recorded on March 21, 1933 in New York for Brunswick Records.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Art
• Tatum
• Piano
• Jazz
• Genius
• Insane
• Fast

[polymath7]

I've been toying with he idea of, relatively late in life, taking up serious practice of the piano -but every time I hear Art Tatum I think, "Meh; fuck it".

[Parkour250]

Quite possibly the best pianist ever recorded.

[Santosificationable]

@16yearoldwhiteboy I'm not sure about what notes exactly correspond to those runs, but I think the runs in this video are very close, it's just missing some more black keys. This, I think, is done chromatic style (see how Steven Mayer does it, but I doubt if he's that accurate). It's a technique found in many Art Tatum recordings, I think you press one white key then quickly use two of your free fingers to tap down on the 2 black keys adjacent to the white key, and so forth. Something like that.

[16yearoldwhiteboy]

@Santosificationable runs from 1:55-2:04. See, Dick Hyman was right, but he was talking about about the run at 2:05 - 2:07 of this video. Now I know your MIDI is like the sheet music i have for this song, so I just figured that was right on the 32nd runs (and the subsequent sextuplets after the first 3 sets of 32nd runs),u know from 1:55-2:04. But when i play with the real song, it does sound different. Well if you ever do get that transcribed please tell me, I've tried to but I couldn't.

[Santosificationable]

@16yearoldwhiteboy Those "crazy thirty second runs" are NOT impossible to transcribe. It's just that it was wrongly transcribed in my midi file. I think that kind of a run is done by the thumb doing a "downward gliss" while the other fingers do a pentatonic figure. At least that's how Dick Hyman described it.

[16yearoldwhiteboy]

I honestly think he made five versions because there's a version by j734ndksd9 that says it's the 1933 version, but sounds a little different than this video, but then again, it was done with some kind of MIDI sequencer, and you can't always trust those.

[16yearoldwhiteboy]

This is the 1933 version, and the one by Q344 is the 1940 version. Well im pretty sure this is the 33 version, I heard somebody say that this was the 1940 version, but i really know this vid's the 1933 version, because I have the sheet music for this version (1933) it and its exactly the same all the way, well except for those crazy thirty-second runs at the end, which is practically impossible to transcribe anyway lol.

[Santosificationable]

Am I mistaken, because I think that the other famous Tiger Rag video (by Q344) seems a bit faster and more energetic. (?) Is this the later or earlier version than the one by Q344?

[kyokushinfighter78]

@polymath7 dont worry, even Oscar Peterson thought the same.