Editing Art Tatum (section)

==After hours and repertoire==
Tatum was said to be more spontaneous and creative in free-form nocturnal sessions than in his scheduled performances.{{sfn|Lester|1994|pp=13, 93}}{{sfn|Schuller|1989|p=481}} Whereas in a professional setting he would often give audiences what they wanted – performances of songs that were similar to his recorded versions – but decline to play encores, in after-hours sessions with friends he would play the blues, improvise for long periods on the same sequence of chords, and move even further away from a composition's melody.<ref name="GroveJazz">{{cite encyclopedia |entry=Tatum, Art(hur, Jr.) (jazz) |encyclopedia=Grove Music |last=Howlett |first=Felicity |title=Tatum, Art(hur, Jr.) (Jazz) |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=2002 |doi = 10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.J441700|isbn=978-1-56159-263-0 }}</ref> Tatum also sometimes sang the blues in such settings, accompanying himself on piano.{{sfn|Schuller|1989|p=488}} Composer and historian [[Gunther Schuller]] describes "a night-weary, sleepy, slurry voice, of lost love and sexual innuendos which would have shocked (and repelled) those 'fans' who admired Tatum for his musical discipline and 'classical' [piano] propriety".{{sfn|Schuller|1989|p=488}}

In after-hours performances, Tatum's repertoire was much wider than in professional appearances,{{sfn|Howlett|1982|p=xii}} at which his staples were American popular songs.{{sfn|Lester|1994|p=205}} During his career, he also played his own arrangements of a few classical piano pieces, including [[Antonín Dvořák|Dvořák]]'s ''[[Humoresques (Dvořák)|Humoresque]]'' and [[Jules Massenet|Massenet]]'s "[[Élégie (Massenet)|Élégie]]",{{sfn|Schuller|1989|p=485}} and recorded around a dozen blues pieces.{{sfn|Schuller|1989|p=478}} Over time, he added to his repertoire – by the late 1940s, most of the new pieces were medium-tempo ballads but also included compositions that presented him with harmonic challenges, such as the simplicity of "[[Caravan (Juan Tizol and Duke Ellington song)|Caravan]]" and complexity of "[[Have You Met Miss Jones?]]"<ref name="Williams" /> He did not add to the classical pieces he had used earlier.<ref name="Williams" />