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Track List

1 I Would Do Anything for You 02:31
    by Alexander Hill, Claude Hopkins, Bob Williams (Joe Davis, Inc.)
2 Cocktails for You 02:40
    by Arthur Johnston, Sam Coslow (Famous Music Corporation)
3 Moonglow 02:35
    by Will Hudson, Irving Mills, Eddie DeLange (Mills Music, Inc.)
4 I Got Rhythm 02:17
    by George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin (New World Music Corporation)
5 I Ain't Got Nobody 02:33
    by Spencer Williams, Roger Graham (Mayfair Music Corp.)
6 After You've Gone 02:27
    by Turner Layton, Henry Creamer (Broadway Music Corporation)
7 Deep Purple 03:03
    by Peter DeRose, Mitchell Parish (Robbins Music Corporation)
8 Liza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away) 01:56
    by George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, Gus Kahn (New World Music Corporation)
9 Tea for Two 02:04
    by Vincent Youmans, Irving Caesar (Harms, Inc.)
10 Honeysuckle Rose 02:21
    by Fats Waller, Andy Razaf (Santly Bros., Inc.)
11 The Man I Love 04:11
    by George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin (Harms, Inc.)
12 I Know That You Know 04:18
    by Vincent Youmans, Anne Caldwell, Otto Harbach (Harms, Inc.)
13 On the Sunny Side of the Street 04:33
    by Jimmy McHugh, Dorothy Fields (Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., Inc.)
14 Boogie 03:46
    by Art Tatum
15 Flying Home 04:13
    by Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Sid Robin (Regent Music Corp.)
16 Dark Eyes (Ochi Chernyia) 04:44
    by Traditional Russian melody, commonly attributed to Florian Hermann; lyrics by Yevhen Hrebinka
17 Body and Soul 04:36
    by Johnny Green, Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, Frank Eyton (Harms, Inc.)
18 Topsy 04:11
    by Edgar Battle, Eddie Durham
19 If I Had You 03:26
    by James Campbell, Reginald Connelly, Ted Shapiro (Campbell Connelly & Co., Robbins Music Corp.)
20 Soft Winds 03:54
    by Fletcher Henderson (Jewel Music Publishing Co., Inc., Twenty-Eighth Street Music)

Total Time: 66:19

About Trio Work

The recordings gathered here document one of Art Tatum's most distinctive small-group collaborations: the trio he formed with guitarist Tiny Grimes and bassist Slam Stewart during the early 1940s.

Tatum had already been established as one of the most individual pianists in jazz long before these sessions. By the early 1940s he had developed a reputation among musicians for his extraordinary technique, harmonic command and ability to transform familiar songs through improvisation. The trio with Grimes and Stewart offered him a different setting from his solo work, allowing the piano to interact continuously with guitar and bass.

The collaboration was already underway by 1943. Contemporary and later sources place Grimes and Stewart with Tatum during 1943–1944, and the trio became a regular working unit rather than a group assembled solely for recording. Tiny Grimes had developed under the influence of Charlie Christian and was one of the early jazz guitarists to establish a distinctive electric-guitar voice. Stewart, meanwhile, was already known for his strong rhythmic sense and for his distinctive ability to sing along with his bass lines.

The trio was heard in a variety of New York settings. One of the most important was the Three Deuces at 72 West 52nd Street, where Tatum and his trio worked during the summer of 1944. The trio had already appeared at the club earlier, and contemporary visual material also documents Tatum, Grimes and Stewart performing there. The engagement listed for 1944 extended from June 2 through August 23.

The period was relatively brief. The first Tatum–Grimes–Stewart trio was disbanded in August 1944, after roughly a year and a half of activity. Grimes subsequently began recording as a leader, including the September 1944 sessions that famously brought him together with Charlie Parker. Stewart continued with other groups and later formed his own piano trios.

The studio recordings presented here come from three New York sessions in 1944, made for different companies.

The first session took place on January 5, 1944. It produced ten recordings, including I Would Do Anything for You, Cocktails for Two, Moonglow, I Got Rhythm, I Ain't Got Nobody, After You've Gone, Deep Purple, Liza, Tea for Two, and Honeysuckle Rose. All were performed by Tatum, Grimes and Stewart. The January material circulated through the World Jam Session transcription series and was subsequently associated with Brunswick releases.

A second session took place on May 1, 1944, producing The Man I Love, Dark Eyes, Body and Soul, I Know That You Know, On the Sunny Side of the Street, and Flying Home. These were issued by Comet Records, and later by Dial and other labels. The session is particularly notable for the contrast between familiar American standards and Dark Eyes, a Russian melody that had long circulated in jazz and popular music.

The third session took place on June 21, 1944, when the trio recorded for Moses Asch. Four titles survive from this session: Boogie, If I Had You, Topsy, and Soft Winds. The recordings were issued on Asch 452 and subsequently became part of the reissue history of the Tatum trio material.

Together, these sessions provide a particularly useful picture of the trio. Tatum's piano remains the dominant voice, but the guitar and bass create a different rhythmic and harmonic environment from his solo performances. Grimes does not simply fill the role of a second rhythm instrument: his guitar interacts with Tatum's lines and adds another melodic voice. Stewart provides the harmonic foundation while also contributing a highly individual rhythmic character.

The repertoire shows how freely the trio could move between different musical worlds. Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Vincent Youmans, Fats Waller, Hoagy Carmichael and other songwriters appear alongside material such as Deep Purple, Dark Eyes and Tatum's own Boogie. The songs were familiar to contemporary listeners, but Tatum approached them as structures for improvisation, reharmonisation and rhythmic invention.

The collaboration also belongs to an interesting moment in jazz history. The swing era was still dominant, but musicians in New York were experimenting with increasingly personal approaches to harmony and improvisation. Tatum's music did not belong to bebop in the narrow stylistic sense, yet younger musicians regarded his harmonic and technical ideas as fundamental. His trio with Grimes and Stewart occupied a position between the established swing-era small group and the more linear, rhythmically transformed language that would emerge in the following years.

The recordings also preserve something that can easily be lost when Tatum is discussed only as a solo pianist: his ability to work within an ensemble. His solo recordings demonstrate the extraordinary range of the piano, but the trio recordings show how he responded to other musicians and how his lines could occupy a conversational space rather than functioning entirely as a self-contained orchestral texture.

For Tiny Grimes and Slam Stewart, the association with Tatum was one of the important experiences of their early careers. For Tatum, the trio provided a working ensemble in which his ideas could be developed repeatedly in clubs and then transferred to recordings.

The partnership did not last long. By August 1944 the trio had come to an end, and Tatum's later small-group work would involve other musicians, including guitarist Everett Barksdale. Yet the Tatum–Grimes–Stewart recordings remain a concentrated document of this particular period: a working trio active in New York during 1943–44, appearing at clubs such as the Three Deuces and recording a substantial body of music during 1944.

These recordings therefore offer more than a collection of standards. They preserve a short chapter in Art Tatum's career in which one of the most technically accomplished pianists of his generation worked within a compact ensemble with two musicians from the younger generation. The result is a body of performances that combines Tatum's highly individual piano language with the guitar of Tiny Grimes and the bass of Slam Stewart.

EU Public Domain Notice
The historical sound recordings included in this release are in the public domain in the European Union. Blue Music Group has created a new digital restoration and mastering of these historical recordings. The digital restoration and mastering by Blue Music Group are protected by applicable copyright and related rights. Rights may differ in other territories, including the United States. This release is not intended for distribution in the United States.

Credits

Art Tatum – piano
Tiny Grimes – guitar
Slam Stewart – bass

Tracks 1–10:
January 5, 1944 — New York

Tracks 11–13, 15–17:
May 1, 1944 — New York

Tracks 14, 18–20:
June 21, 1944 — New York