Tatum 13ths

The first time I really got into Tatum was through his recording of "I Surrender Dear" (1955).



I had the transcription, and I was fascinated mainly because he was actually playing 'live' all those wonderful arranging concepts I'd been interested in, but never really knew how it could be incorporated into jazz improvisation before. Maybe it sounds dumb to some people. It's hard to explain what exactly motivated me to explore Tatum, because as a piano player I had nowhere near the level of requisite technique usually associated with attempting anything Tatum-esque. Maybe it was because I was such a novice in comparison, I had nothing to lose, in a way: it's like a mountain peak that you're forever striving to reach. And I like an impossible challenge. There aren't too many musicians in history that we can say are close to perfection, but I think Art Tatum is one of them. If we had recordings of J. S. Bach or Chopin, we might all agree on that point.

But jazz is all about making whatever it is you like into your own, so that you own it. Whether I'm playing some Tatum-inspired phrase at 1/10 or even 1/100th the speed and accuracy he played, doesn't matter to me in the slightest. What matters to me is if I can use his concepts in my own playing, to make them mean something, truly incorporating them into my own playing. It can't sound forced. In the literature you will find many jazz commentators who'll tell you Tatum wasn't really 'jazz' because he played the same arrangement all the time. But these people have no idea what a working musician's life was like back then - and I mean a solo pianist's working life. You have to have a plan, a structure, some kind of edifice on which to build your sandcastles.

Tatum was legally blind, yet he mastered not only the 'licks' of the classical repertoire (to put it crudely), but also the whole gamut of jazz piano: so much so that he is a virtual compendium of the complete history of jazz piano, with foreshadowings of the future.

This track was recorded near the end of his life, in the marathon Norman Granz sessions for Verve Records in January 1955. But you gotta hear the mid-1930s Tatum to fully appreciate what he could do and what he meant for musicians of the time.

This was the lick that first got me - the D13 and how it resolved to the Dm in the key of C. The following excerpt is the first seven bars from Jed Distler's Art Tatum Jazz Masters Series, an invaluable book of Tatum's transcriptions. And with acknowledgements by the likes of Dick Hyman and Felicity Howlett (whose thesis I've yet to read), this is an authoritative document.

here is the D13 lick excerpted from bar 6:

the audio excerpt, from a bar before:



This is a great example of the famous 2-1 fingering for which he was famous:

How simple and beautiful!

Once you get the idea, you can expand the concept to the other 13ths.

The point being, the 13th chord is the quintessential jazz chord, the sound that is so captivating to the humans that are really awake out there. As I pointed out in earlier posts, this sound was first introduced through classical music, Ravel and Debussy, but I'm sure it can be traced back much further.

In our next post we'll look at the 13th chord conceptually, and the ridiculous attempts by Wickedpedia to muddy the issue, you can bet on purpose.

The 13th Chord

Today when we want to look up anything 'factual', we go to Wikipedia. It's touted as a "Free Encyclopedia" where anyone is meant to be able to contribute, but the reality is totally different. It's really a castle full of gate-keepers, where the only information that ever gets out is the information that they deem worthy. It's a one-world view.

Sure, if you want to know about the size of an emperor butterfly's wings or the type of soil encountered in the rainforests of Brasil, you can get pretty much the right info. But go to the Wikipedia page on the 13th chord and all you will find is a mish-mash of gobbledygook. Go to the 'Talk' page and read the thwarted attempts by musicians to get some sense into this article.

The particular individual responsible for this particular instance of gate-keeping our musical information is called "Hyacinth":

This is the person responsible for providing information that is meant to be for the benefit of humankind in general. Did you read the 'talk' page? It might take a few readings to understand what's going on. But this page sums up Wickedpedia, because like our whole society, it's a total sham. And they've got the gall to ask for donations every year, as if they're some struggling operation.

It's got a lot to do with 'academics'. These 'contributors' are often doing their wiki-editing in their spare time for free, most probably connected in some way with a tertiary institution. That means they think they're smart. They most probably either studied, or maybe taught (OMG) at some university. But if you've happened to come across any 'degree holders' in your life, or, God forbid, had to deal face-to-face with these people, you'll know that academic qualifications don't mean shit nowadays. Have you noticed the way they rely on 'peer review' so much? Your peers are your competition - in everyday terms. So to say something has been 'peer-reviewed' just means it's been OK'd by the gang, the club. How cosy.

Well, after having bagged the Wiki gatekeepers, I'd better come up with the goods myself.

So, what is a good description of a 13th chord?

In a previous post, I outlined the basics:

https://classicjazzarranging.blogspot.com.au/2016/10/jazz-chords-9ths-and-13ths.html

So many songs, from the most basic to the most sophisticated, end with their final melodic resolution going from the 3rd to the tonic (e.g., E to C in the key of C). That melody note E is on a G7 chord, which makes it a 13th, heading for the C on the tonic C major chord, a V-I progression:

Audio:



As I mentioned in my previous linked post, the 13th can be considered originally a suspension, an appoggiatura for the 5th (of G7, that is the D), which over time gradually became incorporated into the chord itself. It replaces the 5th. This to me is the most natural interpretation of the 13th in general practice.

But the important thing to realize, as I said previously, is that the 13th is the quintessential jazz chord. Not only in its most natural setting, but with different bass notes, the chord quality changes:

Audio:



You will recognize this sound everywhere in jazz. Its characteristics are the minor 2nd (maj 7th) and the tritone (b5th).

Next up: Tatum fingerings for 13th chords