![\"Tatum](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Tatum-facing-right.png\")
<\/a>One night in the late 1930s, Fats Waller And His Rhythm were playing at the Yacht Club on 52nd Street in![\"Waller](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Waller-Facing-Left.png\")
<\/a> Manhattan. Art Tatum, the other half of the Tatum-Waller mutual admiration society, came in to listen. When he first moved to New York, Tatum\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s almost superhuman virtuosity at the piano had bowled over every pianist in town, including Waller. Introducing his friend to the audience, Fats said, <\/p>\n\nI just play the piano, but God is in the house tonight.<\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe line became a part of underground jazz lore. Then in 1972, producer Don Schlitten used it as the title of a Xanadu LP of Tatum recordings from the early forties, since reissued as a High Note CD<\/a>. Tatum influenced virtually every pianist who came of age in the thirties and forties. Through the decades he has inspired or discouraged legions more. Among those who fell under his spell was Jimmy Rowles (1918-1996), who frequently heard Tatum in Los Angeles after Rowles moved there from Spokane in 1940. Tatum had a profound effect on Rowles: the young man determined not to be try to be like Tatum, which would have been impossible, but to find his own way. He did. Jimmy told me that, like nearly everyone else who listened to it, when he heard Tatum\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 1933 recording of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tea for Two,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he thought it was by two, possibly three pianists. <\/p>\n
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