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Teddy Wilson once said this about a fellow jazz pianist:
“That man had the most phenomenal musical gifts I’ve ever heard. He was miraculous. It’s like someone hitting a home run every time he picks up a bat. We became such fast friends that I was allowed to interrupt him anytime he was playing at the house parties in Toledo we used to make every night. When I asked him, he would stop and replay a passage very slowly, showing me the fingering on some of those runs of his. You just couldn’t figure them out by ear at the tempo he played them.”
Who is the pianist he is describing?
Bud Powell
Art Tatum
Oscar Peterson
Fats Waller
James P. Johnson
Willie “The Lion” Smith
Jelly Roll Morton
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