Art Tatum behind Adelaide Hall
Art Tatum's first records are accompaniments. In August 1932 he went into a Brunswick studio in New York to back the singer Adelaide Hall, and he was not the only pianist on the date. Francis J. Carter was at a second piano.
Four songs survive in two takes each. Brunswick issued the A takes in 1932; the B takes sat unissued for decades and reached collectors on Meritt 24, so you can hear the same arrangement twice and listen for what the pianists changed.
The two dates are different bands. On August 5, Hall has a full group behind her: a trumpet, Jimmy Dorsey on clarinet and alto, Larry Gomar on vibraphone, Dick McDonough on guitar and probably Artie Bernstein on bass. On August 10 it is Hall and the two pianos, and the stems bear that out. Pull the voice and the pianos off those sides and what remains is silence.
The trumpet is disputed. Lord names Bunny Berigan, following Bozy White's 2013 book on him, while the booklet for the Affinity set names Charlie Teagarden. That booklet also leaves out the bass and the vibraphone, and the bass is audibly there.
Every take is pitch-corrected to A440 by resampling, which moves pitch and tempo together the way a turntable would. The August 5 sides split into pianos, voice, bass, horns, guitar and vibraphone. The horns share one fader because they would not come apart cleanly: a model asked for saxophone returns a stem that is sometimes Dorsey and sometimes the trumpet, so either label would be wrong. The piano fader carries both pianists.
The eight takes
Matrix and issue number, how much of the record the piano stem covers, and the speed correction applied. Click a title to load it in the mixer; the waveform plays the piano on its own.