The Art of Discarding

For many serious jazz fans, no pianist has ever approached the technical mastery of Art Tatum, though his virtuoso skills usually meant he was at his best unaccompanied. Many of his recordings from the 1930s and '40s were limited by the deficiencies of recording methods at the time. Piano Starts Here, long considered one of Tatum's definitive albums, combined four solos from a 1933 studio session (his first as a soloist, aside from a test pressing a year earlier), and a fabulous solo concert at the Shrine Auditorium in 1949 (the latter issued as an Armed Forces Radio Service 16" transcription disc), which has been reissued many times over the decades…

Principal Edwards Magic Theatre were one of those support bands you’d encounter in the colleges and town hall venues of the UK in the early 1970s…