The discovery and release of Art Pepper Live at Fat Tuesday's is a surprising and welcome event that has some precedence in jazz reportage. "Art Pepper, 1926-1982" is a much anthologized obituary on Pepper by jazz writer Gary Giddins, originally published in his book Rhythm-a-ning (Da Capo Press, 1985) written shortly after the saxophonist's death. In that requiem essay, Giddins remarks of these shows:

"He was living on borrowed time, and he knew it. The last time I saw him, at Fat Tuesday's a few months ago, his face was bluish white, and his lower legs—he pulled up is trousers to demonstrate—were as bloated as beer barrels. He told me he couldn't shake hands because he had cut himself that afternoon, and not feeling any pain, didn't know it until he saw the streaming blood. He was obsessed with the miracle that he was still ambulatory and breathing: difficult to be around."

Doubtless these are the performances to which Giddins refers. From stark chronology, the material on this recording was captured on April 15, 1981. Pepper's last recorded performance was a year later in Los Angeles, May 30, 1982 at the Kool Jazz Festival and captured on Art Pepper Last Concert 1982 -Final Art (Widow's Taste, 2007). Two weeks after that, on June 15th, Pepper succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage and silence came to the last great alto saxophone stylist. Pepper out-lived them all: