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Art Tatum - Someone to Watch Over Me. Although Gershwin’s authoritative rendition of this song is strongly connected in my mind with Woody Allen’s Manhattan, Tatum’s virtuosic performance is my favorite, possibly as it counteracts its sentimentality with technique.
One has to do whatever is required to avoid being maudlin. And Tatum is customarily astounding; in addition to his various accolades from Horowitz, Waller, Gershwin, and more or less everyone who’s heard him, he is also honored -I just learned- to have “the smallest perceptual time unit in music” named for him: the Tatum.
