The late James Earl Jones was a truly magnificent actor, as you know. I first saw him in the theater in The Great White Hope in late 1968 or early 1969—he was the talk of New York, starring as the legendary boxer Jack Johnson. (In 1970 he starred in the film version.) In 1987, I sat in the third row to catch his awesome performance in August Wilson's Fences. I also saw him in the comedy You Can't Take It With You in late 2014, and a year later in The Gin Game opposite Cicely Tyson.
But did you know that he appeared as a talented amateur pianist who plays like Art Tatum in the TV series Everwood? Even if you did know that, I will show you that one scene was released with two different piano soundtracks, in two different styles.
Everwood was a respected family drama starring Treat Williams that aired from 2002 through 2006. Jones’s character is introduced in Season 2, episode 7, “Three Miners From Everwood,” which first aired November 2, 2003. Will Cleveland, played by Jones, becomes the piano mentor to young Ephram Brown, played by Gregory Smith. This was a sub-plot that appeared in two later episodes, plus another that takes place after Jones’s character dies.
Let’s watch the first scene, where the two characters meet and where Will plays a Tatum recording for Ephram. The recording, contrary to the script, was not made “live” at the Crescendo nightclub in Hollywood. In fact, there were two albums on the Crescendo label, subtitled At the Piano, Volumes 1 and 2. The liner notes and the LP labels both stated, falsely, that they were recorded at the Crescendo club. The club and label were both owned by Gene Norman. (Thanks to subscriber Chris Hanna for reminding me of these details.) In fact, these LPs were not made at the club and were not even “live”—they contained studio recordings, mostly from the 1940s, with applause dubbed in. In any case, what we hear in this episode is “In a Sentimental Mood” from 20th Century Piano Genius, recordings made at a private home in Beverly Hills. (If you’ve followed my Tatum posts, which are among my most-read, you know that this is the set I recommend if you’re only getting one by Tatum. It’s on two CDs, and on all the streaming services as well.) The stated year of 1955 is, however, correct. Here is the complete track:
As is typical in such scripts, the dialogue doesn’t connect with what we hear. The teenager instantly thinks it’s more than one pianist, even though he has only heard a few chords with nothing virtuosic yet. Jones’s character comments on the “walking bass,” even though there isn’t one and that Tatum didn’t generally use walking bass. Here’s the scene:
Those hands at the piano do not belong to Jones. The soundtrack music, for example in the first seconds of this clip, was composed by Blake Neely, but it’s not specified who played the piano for Jones. Jazz historian Brian Priestley pointed out to me that at 4:20 the Cole Porter melody is played in the original key of C, and just after that Tatum’s introduction is heard in his chosen key of D.
But here’s something crazy—if you go to Amazon Prime today (or if you once bought the DVDs) to watch this episode, that recording is gone. At some point they re-did the scene with music that has nothing to do with Tatum. What happened? I assumed it was because the rights holder of the Tatum piece demanded a high price. (That might also be why the album was misidentified in the script—not to avoid the fee, but in hopes that they could ask for a lower price since they were not advertising the source.) I recently found an Amazon review by Dr. Michael Anthony Novak that confirms this to be the case. He wrote:
The licensing costs were prohibitive, fans were told, and the only way that this DVD set was apparently able to be produced was by replacing almost all the music (even cell phone rings) with unknown tracks by unknown artists… Worst of all is the removal of Art Tatum music…where they actually switched out specific music being DISCUSSED by the characters!
So they substituted “Be-Bopped” by someone named William Held, from a company called Rosenklang in Germany. (I used the app Shazam, which is amazing in its ability to identify recorded music.) Essentially this is music for sale for commercial use, so it must have been more affordable. Here is the complete track:
And here is the re-done scene, just the part with the recording. This music features a walking bass throughout, which is probably why it was selected—so at least that scripted comment now makes sense:
Crazy, yes? A few minutes later in this episode, there is a scene where Ephram shows up with a Tatum LP and we hear his actual recording of “What is This Thing Called Love.” In this one they could not replace the soundtrack, because Ephram then sits at the piano and plays his transcription of the Tatum recording’s beginning. But they only used a few seconds—the fees are based on the length of the excerpt—and it was owned by a smaller recording company that may have been much less expensive. Here is that scene:
Shazam was unable to identify this excerpt, but Tatum only once recorded this song as a piano solo, in late 1943 for Standard Transcriptions (recordings for radio broadcast). So I easily found it. They omitted the out-of tempo first chorus, which involved virtuosic runs, quite a bit of very inventive interaction between the hands, and, as always with Tatum, some hard-to-transcribe chords. Here are a few of those moments, one after the other, as one track. Be patient, as there are a few seconds between each fragment:
(Please do go to the Index and check out my previous Tatum essays, in order, to hear dozens of even more mind-boggling Tatum moments.)
The TV clip above begins when Tatum goes into tempo and plays relatively “straight.” To be fair, it’s a sensible choice. It would be difficult for us to believe that Ephram could immediately grasp some of Tatum’s more “out” moments. Ephram begins at 0:57 in this recording. Here is the whole piece:
I hope you enjoyed this essay. In any case, it’s always great to have an excuse to watch the masterful James Earl Jones in action.
All the best,
Lewis
RIP JEJ.
Thanks for this. I really enjoyed it.