At an early age pianist Stanley Cowell experienced the power of jazz legend Art Tatum’s playing up close.

Tatum was a friend of Cowell’s father Stanley, and in 1947 on one of the piano great’s visits back to
Toledo, he stopped by to visit his old friend.
Cowell’s father asked Tatum to play something for them. Knowing that young Stanley, 6 at the time, was
taking lessons, he asked him to play first. Cowell recalled in a recent telephone interview that he did
something out of Book 3 of the Thompson piano method. He doesn’t remember what if anything Tatum said
after he got up from the piano, but he remembers Tatum launching into the standard “You Took Advantage
of Me.”
“I do remember vividly the power and speed that he played with,” Cowell said.
His mother had left the room during the song. Her son followed her to the kitchen where she was washing
dishes. “Her hands were shaking,” Cowell remembers. She told her son: “‘That man plays too much piano.’”

As far as the young pianist was concerned: “I was indelibly stamped.”
Some 52 years later Cowell will return to the area to pay tribute to his fellow Toledo native Tatum, who
died in 1956, for the 100th anniversary of his birth on Oct. 13, 1909. Cowell will present his “Tribute
to Art Tatum” Oct. 11 at 7 p.m. in the Mainstage Theatre of Owens Community College’s Center for the
Fine and Performing Arts. The concert is being presented by the African American Legacy Project. Tickets
are $35 to $100. Call (567) 661-2780.
Tatum, Cowell said, “stands at the apex of pianism.”
In classical playing, the gold standard for technique is “if you can play more notes than Liszt.” Tatum,
who studied classical piano, could do that. “He was the first person technique to jazz.” That praise is
more than a matter of hometown pride.
Dave Brubeck said: “I don’t think there’s any more chance of another Tatum turning up than another
Mozart.” Count Basie called him the eighth wonder of the world.
Fats Waller, who was Tatum’s early model, famously said when Tatum walked into a club: “I only play the
piano, but tonight God is in the house.”
That admiration extended to such classical luminaries as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Vladimir Horowitz and
Arthur Rubenstein.
Tatum “crystallized all the previous jazz styles,” Cowell said, and absorbed the styles of his
contemporaries and even modernists like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, who drew inspiration from
his harmonic innovations.
Tatum constantly varied the melody, shifted the rhythm, decorated the music with “fantastic arpeggios,”
all the while keeping a supple beat going with his left hand.
“He was an orchestrator at the piano,” Cowell said.
Cowell will play six transcriptions of actual Tatum performances as part of the tribute concert. “That’s
the really hard part. He played so many notes,” he said.
He also will perform several selections from Tatum’s repertoire in the master’s style; a solo piano
version of the concerto he wrote in honor of Tatum, which he premiered with the Toledo Symphony in 1992;
and several duets with his daughter Sunny, a senior at Swarthmore College, who sings and plays viola.

Despite that early exposure to Tatum, Cowell’s own piano style fell more in line with the pared down
lyrical approach of most contemporary jazz pianists. After Tatum, there “have been reductions that have
taken place” in jazz piano technique. It was more an ensemble style with the right hand playing melodies
like those a horn player and the left hand adding occasional chordal punctuations.
“I never wanted to play like Tatum,” Cowell said. But when he started presenting solo piano recitals, he
found himself reverting to his earlier studies.
Like Tatum, he had extensive classical training including degrees in piano from Oberlin and the
University of Michigan.
Cowell grew up playing a variety of music — classical in recitals and gospel in church, and jazz in
combos as well as studying pipe organ.
Toledo was “a very supportive atmosphere” to grow up in as a musician, he said. He had plenty of
opportunities to perform, including social functions like the Ebony Fashion Show, musicals, concerts by
the Scott High choir which he accompanied, recitals and dances.
He went on to an extensive career in jazz both as a solo artist and performing with such notables as Max
Roach, Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz and others. For 10 years he was a member of the Heath Brothers Band. In
the early 1970s he began teaching in college and now heads the jazz program at Rutgers University in New
Jersey.
He first delved into Tatum in a 1988 solo recital in Washington D.C. “That kind of precipitated this
whole journey,” Cowell said. “He’s a tough mountain to climb.”
More Tatum celebrations planned
Other celebrations planned to mark Art Tatum’s centennial include:
¥ "Toledo Son: The Life and Music of Art Tatum" will be broadcast throughout the month on WGTE
FM 91 on Saturdays at 8 p.m. The five-part series follows the legendary pianist from his early
appearances in Toledo clubs and on radio, billed as Arthur Tatum, Toledo’s Blind Pianist, through the
height of his popularity
¥ The Toledo-Lucas County Public Library will present a celebration of Tatum, Oct. 10 from 7 to 11 p.m.
on at Main Library, 325 Michigan St.
The event features pianist and vocalist Johnny O’Neal, who portrayed Art Tatum in the film
"Ray" as well as Charles McDaniel, and Keith Bernhard & More Jazz Messengers. Tickets
are $30 per person and $50 per couple available at the library.