^{Photo of Billie Holiday and Art Tatum taken at the Downbeat Club in December 1946}

Today is the birthday of jazz great Art Tatum, born this day in 1909 in Toledo Ohio. What can we learn about small business from Art? Read on. Perhaps it was an omen that his parents named him Art–his work was just that. He was the indisputable master of Stride piano, with a style that has never been duplicated. How much art was in Art’s music? At age 19, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong would make it a point to come to hear him play at the Toledo Bellmen’s Club. And one evening when Tatum walked into a club where Fats Waller was playing, Fats famously announced, “I only play the piano, but tonight God is in the house.”

Lest you think you were somehow passed over in the distribution of advantages, you should know that Art was legally blind. Though born with normal sight he contracted diphtheria, measles, and scarlet fever at age three, resulting in severe visual handicap and severe cataracts. After many operations, doctors were able to restore a considerable amount of vision in one eye. But after all this, as a young man, he was victim of a brutal mugging, leaving his “good left eye” permanently damaged, and his lesser eye weakened. Did this discourage him beyond measure? Did he stop playing? He did not. He continued on to play with many jazz greats and compile many volumes of recordings.

While the loss of eyesight is always incalculable and grievous, his blindness may have added to his gift. Recent studies have shown that an early visual deprivation can lead to enhanced spatial hearing, and an increased sensitivity to sound frequencies.* The empirical evidence of the extreme gift of other blind musicians, as the likes of Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, and Jose Feliciano, would tend to support this. Art has been hailed one of the piano geniuses of all time, in any genre. Many people who hear him for the first time believe they are listening to two players. Tatum never wrote any original music, but it is said that he was so original, that he rewrote very song he ever played.

Small business is much harder than immediately meets the eye. But sometimes your biggest problems end up yielding valuable ideas that you never would have found without the problem. Sometimes the greatest difficulties bring out your personal best and gifts you never knew you possessed.

How it all turns out depends on your focus. Focus on your disadvantages, and they will own you. Focus on your strengths, and you will grow in ways you never dreamed, and you will become an unstoppable force.

That’s this week’s Imagination Hat.

Check out Art Tatum at work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Cs_zb4q14

“Maybe this will explain Art Tatum. If you put a piano in a room, just a bare piano. Then you get all the finest jazz pianists in the world and let them play in the presence of Art Tatum. Then let Art Tatum play … everyone there will sound like an amateur.”

-Teddy Wilson

Resources:

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/137/1/6.full

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC544930/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120508152002.htm