#tenderly

.. tenderly

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“Tenderly”

70 years ago today, December 29th, 1953, the brilliant piano man Art Tatum had an impressive recording session.

Tatum, who was universally seen as a genius pianist, never seemed to have a successful career commercially. He always worked, and is cited by most every other piano player of the era as being a teacher and an inspiration. But he just never had a career commensurate with that stature.

Tatum also had a terribly unhealthy lifestyle, drinking vast quantities of beer while only exercising enough to get himself from one club to the next. By 1953, Tatum’s kidneys had started to fail.

But the smart impresario producer Norman Granz decided to do right by Tatum, by at least immortalizing him forever on record. He signed Tatum to one of his labels, Clef Records, and on December 29th, 1953, booked Tatum a studio, open-endedly, put a few cases of Pabst on ice, and told Tatum he wanted to record his entire repertoire… or really just whatever the heck Tatum felt like putting down. Tatum obliged with recording an astonishing sixty-nine acceptable tracks - by midday.

One of the tracks was this one, “Tenderly”, which was composed as a waltz by Walter Gross, a pianist and a conductor at CBS Radio in the 30s and 40s. Years later, the lyricist Jack Laurence added the lyrics. But Gross always said the song was meant as “pianistic” and that Tatum’s performance of it was/is the ultimate interpretation ever.

This is classic Art Tatum, who really may indeed “own” “Tenderly”…

The album Granz made out of this day of tracks recorded, was titled “Tenderly”… and the whole album is sublime, all standards… each one outdoing the last… On the other tracks, Granz added in sidefolk - some drums and bass… But “Tenderly” needed none…