The legendary atmosphere of Harlem's after-hours clubs, circa 1940-41, is captured in this album. Jerry Newman, then a student at Columbia, recorded a number of great black musicians on their home turf with a primitive spool recorder. His "tapes" are now being issued for the first time by Onyx, an up-and-coming new label devoted to classic jazz and affiliated with Muse, which concentrates on more contemporary sounds.

Tatum was certainly the greatest of the Harlem pianists, and probably the most accomplished keyboard virtuoso in jazz history. His studio recordings are amazing, but the aptly-titled God Is in the House surpasses the best of them. "Sweet Georgia Brown" and "Georgia on My Mind" are unprecedented displays of pianistic brilliance, and Tatum inserts some tricky runs, suspensions and dissonances which suggest that many of the later stylistic developments in jazz—bop, even the atonal school and free-form—were at least broached in the convivial, informal surroundings of Warera clubs like Minton's.

This is a choice memorial to a superlative musician. (RS 147)

B.P.