One night in Los Angeles I sat with Art Tatum and listened to a very-
trained, technically proficient pianist play transcriptions of the
Tatum recordings of “Elegie” and “Tea for Two.” I was very impressed
by the fact that the pianist had transcribed and executed the solos
so accurately, but Tatum just laughed and said, “Well, he knows WHAT
I did on the record, but he doesn’t know WHY I did it.”
— Billy Taylor
Billy Taylor’s “Jazz Piano – a jazz history” (1983), page 13.