Welcome to Sound Projections

I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.

Thus this magazine will strive to critically question and go beyond the conventional imposed notions and categories of what constitutes the generic and stylistic definitions of ‘Jazz’, ‘classical music’, ‘Blues.’ 'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual artists and ensembles do cretively to challenge and transform our ingrained ideas and attitudes of what music is and could be.

So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay homage to the endlessly creative and uniquely magisterial dimensions of MUSIC in all of its guises and expressive identities.

Saturday, September 29, 2018

Thomas “Fats” Waller (1904-1943): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, singer, songwriter, ensemble leader, producer, and teacher

SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR:  KOFI NATAMBU

FALL, 2018

VOLUME SIX       NUMBER ONE

SONNY ROLLINS
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

TEDDY WILSON
(July 14-20)

GEORGE WALKER
(July 21-27)

BILLY STRAYHORN
(July 28-August 3)

LEROY JENKINS
(August 4-10)
 
LAURYN HILL
(August 11-17)

JOHN HICKS
(August 18-24)

ANTHONY DAVIS
(August 25-31) 

RON MILES
(September 1-7)
 
A TRIBE CALLED QUEST
(September 8-14)

NNENNA FREELON
(September 15-21) 

KENNY DORHAM
(September 22-28)

FATS WALLER
(September 29-October 5)



https://www.allmusic.com/artist/fats-waller-mn0000162762/biography



Artist Biography by


Not only was Fats Waller one of the greatest pianists jazz has ever known, he was also one of its most exuberantly funny entertainers -- and as so often happens, one facet tends to obscure the other. His extraordinarily light and flexible touch belied his ample physical girth; he could swing as hard as any pianist alive or dead in his classic James P. Johnson-derived stride manner, with a powerful left hand delivering the octaves and tenths in a tireless, rapid, seamless stream. Waller also pioneered the use of the pipe organ and Hammond organ in jazz -- he called the pipe organ the "God box" -- adapting his irresistible sense of swing to the pedals and a staccato right hand while making imaginative changes of the registration. As a composer and improviser, his melodic invention rarely flagged, and he contributed fistfuls of joyous yet paradoxically winsome songs like "Honeysuckle Rose," "Ain't Misbehavin,'" "Keepin' Out of Mischief Now," "Blue Turning Grey Over You" and the extraordinary "Jitterbug Waltz" to the jazz repertoire.

Breakin' the Ice: The Early Years, Part 1
During his lifetime and afterwards, though, Fats Waller was best known to the world for his outsized comic personality and sly vocals, where he would send up trashy tunes that Victor Records made him record with his nifty combo, Fats Waller & His Rhythm. Yet on virtually any of his records, whether the song is an evergreen standard or the most trite bit of doggerel that a Tin Pan Alley hack could serve up, you will hear a winning combination of good knockabout humor, foot-tapping rhythm and fantastic piano playing. Today, almost all of Fats Waller's studio recordings can be found on RCA's on-again-off-again series The Complete Fats Waller, which commenced on LPs in 1975 and was still in progress during the 1990s.

Thomas "Fats" Waller came from a Harlem household where his father was a Baptist lay preacher and his mother played piano and organ. Waller took up the piano at age six, playing in a school orchestra led by Edgar Sampson (of Chick Webb fame). After his mother died when he was 14, Waller moved into the home of pianist Russell Brooks, where he met and studied with James P. Johnson. Later, Waller also received classical lessons from Carl Bohm and the famous pianist Leopold Godowsky. After making his first record at age 18 for Okeh in 1922, "Birmingham Blues"/"'Muscle Shoals Blues,"" he backed various blues singers and worked as house pianist and organist at rent parties and in movie theaters and clubs. He began to attract attention as a composer during the early- and mid-'20s, forming a most fruitful alliance with lyricist Andy Razaf that resulted in three Broadway shows in the late '20s, Keep Shufflin', Load of Coal, and Hot Chocolates.

Waller started making records for Victor in 1926; his most significant early records for that label were a series of brilliant 1929 solo piano sides of his own compositions like "Handful of Keys" and "Smashing Thirds." After finally signing an exclusive Victor contract in 1934, he began the long-running, prolific series of records with His Rhythm, which won him great fame and produced several hits, including "Your Feet's Too Big," "The Joint Is Jumpin'" and "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter." He began to appear in films like Hooray for Love and King of Burlesque in 1935 while continuing regular appearances on radio that dated back to 1923. He toured Europe in 1938, made organ recordings in London for HMV, and appeared on one of the first television broadcasts. He returned to London the following spring to record his most extensive composition, "London Suite" for piano and percussion, and embark on an extensive continental tour (which, alas, was canceled by fears of impending war with Germany). Well aware of the popularity of big bands in the '30s, Waller tried to form his own, but they were short-lived.


Into the 1940s, Waller's touring schedule of the U.S. escalated, he contributed music to another musical, Early to Bed, the film appearances kept coming (including a memorable stretch of Stormy Weather where he led an all-star band that included Benny Carter, Slam Stewart and Zutty Singleton), the recordings continued to flow, and he continued to eat and drink in extremely heavy quantities. Years of draining alimony squabbles, plus overindulgence and, no doubt, frustration over not being taken more seriously as an artist, began to wear the pianist down. Finally, after becoming ill during a gig at the Zanzibar Room in Hollywood in December, 1943, Waller boarded the Santa Fe Chief train for the long trip back to New York. He never made it, dying of pneumonia aboard the train during a stop at Union Station in Kansas City.

While every clown longs to play Hamlet as per the cliche -- and Waller did have so-called serious musical pretensions, longing to follow in George Gershwin's footsteps and compose concert music -- it probably was not in the cards anyway due to the racial barriers of the first half of the 20th century. Besides, given the fact that Waller influenced a long line of pianists of and after his time, including Count Basie (who studied with Fats), Teddy Wilson, Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, Dave Brubeck and countless others, his impact has been truly profound.


Fats Waller




Jazz music's first organist and one of the giants of piano jazz Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller was born on May 21, 1904 in Harlem into a musical family. His grandfather was an accomplished violinist and his mother was the church organist. His family had moved to New York City from Virginia in the late 1880s and his father was the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. His first exposure of music was in the form of church hymns and organ music, an instrument that he was taught to play by his mother and the church musical director. The latter introduced him to the works of J.S. Bach which he played on and off for the rest of his life. When he was about 6 or 7, because he had expressed interest in playing the neighbor's piano, his mother hired a piano tutor for him. He learned how to read and write music from his piano teacher but he preferred to play “by ear.”

At age 14 he won a talent contest playing Carolina Shout by James P. Johnson, a song he had learned by watching a pianola play it. That year he left school and worked at odd jobs for a year. In 1919 he got his first regular job when he was hired by a movie theatre to play organ accompaniment to the silent films they showed.
His father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and go into a career in religion but he wanted to pursue his passion for music so in 1920, after his mother died, because of the disagreements he had with his father over this issue he moved out of his family's house and in with the family of pianist Russell Brooks where he met James P. Johnson and Willie “The Lion” Smith two of the giants of the Harlem stride. James P. Johnson took the young Waller under his wing and taught him the stride piano style and advanced his musical education in general. Smith also influenced the young man by introducing him to the works of the impressionistic composers of the 19th century.

In 1921 he was hired to play musical accompaniment on the organ at another silent movie theatre at a weekly salary of $50. A year later he made his recording debut for the Okeh label with a 78 of two of his own compositions. In 1923 he recorded a number of piano rolls for the QRS company in addition to additional sides both as a leader and as an accompanist to blues singers. For the next 4 years he recorded many sides for RCA Victor and became very popular.

According to one anecdote, one night in 1926 after finishing a performance, he was kidnapped by gangsters and forced to play at Al Capone's birthday party. In 1927 he recorded with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra and in 1928 he had his Carnegie Hall debut. He met the poet and lyricist Andy Razaf in 1927 and the two collaborated on musicals the most of popular of which “Hot Chocolates,” with the song “Ain't Misbehaving,” opened in 1929 off Broadway but shortly afterwards was transferred to Broadway. This brought him both critical and commercial success.
Waller was married twice, from his first unsuccessful one he had a son Thomas Jr and from his second two sons: Maurice and Ronald. 

In 1931 he toured Paris and upon his return to New York he formed his small combo “Fats Waller and His Rhythm” with whom he would perform and record until his death. He recorded for RCA hundreds of sides and also performed on radio broadcasts and starred in movies. In the mid 30s he regularly performed on the West Coast and in 1938 returned to Europe this time for a tour of the British Isles. The outbreak of war forced him to return to the US in 1939. He performed one more time at the Carnegie Hall and for the remainder of his life he toured the US especially the west coast.

In 1943 he starred in the film Stormy Weather and in December of that year while playing the Zanzibar Room in Hollywood he suffered a bout of influenza. He had to cut his engagement short in order to return home. Years of excessive drinking, overwork and his obesity took a toll on his health and the severe influenza led to complications. On December 15 1943, on the train back to New York, Thomas “Fats” Waller passed away near Kansas City from pneumonia.

In 1993 Waller was posthumously recognized by the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. 



Fats Waller



Fats Waller was one of the consummate entertainers during the early years of Jazz into the swing era. Born in Harlem on May 21st 1904, he grew up surrounded in music. His family was involved in music in the church and his mother secured a piano teacher for him: he learned how to read and write music but relied on his ear. He also learned how to play the music of Bach. As a teenager, he won a contest playing the “Carolina Shout” by James P. Johnson. Waller’s father wanted him to have a religious career, but he opted for music instead.


Waller began a job playing organ in a silent movie theater and in 1921 followed with a similar job. In 1922, Waller recorded for the popular Okeh label, and also for QRS, and recording several piano rolls. He accompanied other musicians and recorded a string of sides for the RCA label which have since been issued on CD. Waller was rumored to be forced to perform for Al Capone after being kidnapped, recorded with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra in 1927, and played Carnegie Hall in 1928.


Waller’s recordings consisted of briskly swinging numbers, where he played stride piano, singing in a rich slightly nasally voice, he frequently accented lyrics with humor as he does on “Hold Tight, Mama (I Want Some Seafood)” and also tinting them with the risque. He could play flowery ornamented piano, and recorded some of the first Jazz organ recordings on pipe organ. A prolific song writer, he wrote so many compositions that he sold many of them, and was unable to perform them due to others claiming credit. He met Andy Razaf in 1927 who became his most notable writing partner, where they wrote music for the play “Hot Chocolates” and some of their most known compositions include “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Honeysuckle Rose”.


He formed a small combo, “Fats Waller and His Rhythm” and recorded sides somewhere in the hundreds for RCA. He toured Europe, played Carnegie Hall in 1938 and due to war returned to the US in 1939. He was in a featured role for the film Stormy Weather, and contracted influenza during an engagement at the Zanzibar in Hollywood, passing away around Kansas City on his way back to New York. Many Jazz artists have paid tribute to Waller, as his style was highly influential. In 1962, Jimmy Smith recorded “Plays Fats Waller” for Blue Note, a heartfelt, soulful, lightly swinging tribute, and Count Basie had studied organ with Waller. Listening to his music today provides a joyful experience. 

Fats Waller


by


Sometimes referred to as 'the greatest comedian who ever played jazz,' Fats' appeal was as much visual as it was musical.
Fats Waller's jazz legacy is an unlikely combination of pianist, composer, singer, and comedian. Sometimes referred to as "the greatest comedian who ever played jazz, Fats' appeal was as much visual as it was musical. From his physical presence (he had a huge girth and wore a size 15 shoe) and wildly arched eyebrows to his appetite for life and boisterous showmanship, Fats was an irresistible performer. Foremost, he was a master of stride piano playing. His recordings represent some of the most dazzling and inventive music of any jazz era. Waller's technique and attention to decorative detail influenced countless jazz pianists including Art Tatum, Count Basie, and Thelonius Monk.

He was the last of the great stride pianists, a rhythmic two-beat motion with one hand while the other supports the all-important melody. Stride playing was a relative of ragtime. Tin Pan Alley writing meets barroom piano phrasing. Waller balanced the left hand's roaring boom with the right hand's sprightly embellishments. Ever present were his vocal effects—mock accents, Bronx cheers, falsetto howls, and staccato diction, delivered as ad-libs to fellow musicians or listeners. Though Waller could sing straight first-rate if needed be. When presented with his jovial expressiveness it was all wildly entertaining.
Born Thomas Wright Waller in New York, May 21, 1904, he started playing piano and harmonium at age six. By 15 he was playing downtown Harlem for $23 a week. With the death of his mother in 1920, Waller moved in with a school mate and started hanging with pianists Willie 'the Lion' Smith and James P. Johnson. They tutored him and saw his potential as a born showman. Smith even advised Waller to make faces while playing piano to attract attention.
By his early 20s, Fats was already composing and recording his own songs, giving organ pointers to Count Basie, and studying with pianist and composer Leopold Godowsky. He lent his composing skills to three Broadway productions which included such classic songs as "Ain't Misbehavin and "Black and Blue. Waller began an abundance of recording for the Victor label in 1934 under the moniker Fats Waller & His Rhythm. These were small-band sides, mostly limited to three minutes that swung hard and put him front and center in the jazz scene. He scored hits like "Jitterbug Waltz , "Honeysuckle Rose , and "The Joint is Jumpin , By 1938 Fats was as big a star as Louis Armstrong.
Waller toured all over the country relentlessly between recordings, but never cared for the road or its discriminations. Like his persona, he lived life big and fast. He had a monstrous appetite for food and alcohol. A bottle was a mainstay under or on the piano, but it never got in the way of his playing. Instead it became a built-in joke, a part of his act. By the early 40s Waller was earning a comfortable living. He wrote the first non-black musical for Broadway by a black, "Early to Bed , took a role in the film "Stormy Weather and appeared regularly on radio.
The fast-paced, indulgent lifestyle eventually caught up with Waller. His gusto for food and booze most likely lowered his resistance. A bad cold evolved into bronchial pneumonia and Fats died in his sleep on a train ride between Los Angeles and New York in 1943.
Stride piano became less popular following Waller's death, though his virtuosity and innovation continued to influence jazz pianists. The styles of both Count Basie and Art Tatum grew out of Waller's achievements. To this day, listening to Fats reminds one of the man and his exuberance for life through music.



Archives | 1978


He Was the ‘Clown’ Prince of Jazz



by ANTHONY CALABRESE


More than anyone else, Fats Waller captured the spirit of the Golden Age of Harlem, the 20's and 30's. He was there, part of the scene, playing the rent parties, playing at Connie's Inn or the Apollo, writing for Connie's or the black revues at Daly's 63d Street Theater. That's what we hear in his music today, the glory of Harlem. Fats was Harlem, and now, 35 years after his death, he is being rediscovered. “Ain't Misbehaving,” a revue that is also a tribute, opens on Tuesday at the Longacre Theater.

“Ain't Misbehavin',”which made its debut earlier this season at the Manhattan Theater Club, is a parade of Fats Waller's greatest hits presented by five singers who step forward and deliver “Honeyusuckle Rose,” “Black and Blue,” “Your Feets Too Big,” the title song and a dozen or so other exuberant numbers. There is some narration devoted to Fats's life, but the music is the show.

Fats, a rare phenomenon in his lifetime, has become a legend since he died. He was a pianist with a style that influenced jazz and pop music, a composer for Broadway and records, and a zesty, zany performer. He was a man of great ability, who could have been a concert artist, but publicly he was the clown—the black singer with the witty remarks, the man who was forced to record some of the most banal tunes ever written. In his lifetime, jazz critics dismissed him.

Fats was Wright in the newly formed community of Harlem on May 21, 1909. His father, Edward, was an assistant pastor of the Fats Waller Abyssinian Baptist Church, and his mother, Adeline, was an organist and singer. His grandfather, Adolph Waller, was a noted violinist in Virginia. The religious Wailers, however, had little time or money for music lessons, and so Fats learned to play with the help of his friend Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Fats practiced and learned on the organ at the Abyssinian Baptist Church.

Every night Adam Clayton Powell Jr. would sneak Fats into the church through a ‘basement window, and he'd pump the pedals so Fats could practice. The young musician also bought the piano rolls of James P. Johnson and practiced by copying the fingering.

For a while, Fats attended DeWitt Clinton High School, but at 15 he quit. “There wasn't any rhythm for me in algebra,” he explained. He got a job playingIthe organ at the Lincoln, a Harlem moyie theater owned by Frank Schiffmeii, who would later open the Apollo. Quickly, Fats realized that. his selftaught style limited his ability. Harlem was loaded then with “professors of the keyboard,” among them James P. Johnson, composer of the “Charleston” and the acknowledged master of stride piano. Fats wanted to learn stride, and so he turned to Johnson. The Harlem musicians were leading a revolution in music and Fats would be a major part of it. Johnson taught him that boisterous style that was born out of a strange wedding of ragtime and the rent party.

People who couldn't pay their rent hired pianists like Johnson, Lucky Roberts or Willie “The Lion” Smith and then got the word around that they were having a party. Admission was 25 cents and that entitled you to listen to the music. The good food and bathtub gin were extra. Piano was the only entertainment, and it had to be loud and full; it was how stride developed.

In stride, the left hand plays the bass note on the beat and the chord on the afterbeat. This leaves the right hand free to play the melodic line. The left hand took the place of a bass and drum, and freed the right to function as an orchestra instead of a percussion instrument. Fats used stride because of its melodic and improvisational possibilities.

“Concentrate on the melody,” he later advised. “If it's good, you don't have to shoot it out of a cannon. Jimmie Johnson taught me that. You got to hang onto the melody and never let it get boresome.”

Besides the rent parties and the ragtime style of Scott Joplin, stride came out of the “shout” music of the South. Willie the Lion, Waller's contemporary, explained that “shouts came about because of the Baptist Church and the way black folks sang or shouted their hymns. They sang them a special way and you played them a special way, emphasizing the basic beat to keep everybody together.”

Johnson and Willie the Lion both took a hand in teaching Fats, and soon he was cutting up with the other pianists. The rent parties were fantastic improvisational competitions, with each pianist trying to outdo or “cut” the other. Soon, Fats, Johnson and Willie the Lion were the top trio of stride, the men one had to have to throw a great rent party. Downtown musicians like George Gershwin, Paul Whiteman and Irving Berlin came to them to learn the latest developments in black music. And it was at these rent parties that Fats developed his insatiable appetites for booze, women and food.

Simultaneously, there were “race” ‘ records, disks recorded by black talent for black listeners. Ralph Peer organized Okeh records to showcase the early jazz greats and blues singers, and many of these “race” records became hits downtown. Soon the major companies were rushing to get out their own versions.

Fats made his first record for Okeh in 1922, and even today, listening to an 18year‐old Fats accompany blues singer Sara Martin, one can hear the clean touch, inventiveness and spontaneity that is part of the Waller magic. R.C.A. Victor eventually purchased Okeh, and Fats continued to record on that label, but it wasn't until 1934 that R.C.A. signed him to an exclusive contract.

Fats, however, knew that recording and playing was not enough: He had to write music. In 1923 he had his first song published, and he. composed until his death 20 years later. His lyricist was the legendary Andy Razaf, a man so facile with words that Eubie Blake claimed that all he had to do was play a new melody twice and Andy would hand him the completed words. Then they'd hop the subway to the Brill Building downtown, where they would sell their latest effort.

For years, music publishers took unfair advantage of black musicians on royalties and advances. Fats and Andy had their own way to get even. They would sell the same song, with different words, over and over again to various publishers. But often Fats was flat broke and sold a song outright. In 1929, he sold to Mills Music all rights and the title to “Ain't Misbehavin',” “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Black and Blue.” It's been claimed that many of the tunes that Fats sold were later credited to other composers. In the program of his 1942 Carnegie Hall debut, Fats added a little note:

“Some of the best of Mr. Waller's popular songs are not credited to him simply because he sold all rights to them to unscrupulous Tin Pan Alley authors.”

For years, Fats struggled along—recording for Okeh, playing at Connie's Inn, writing for black musical revues like “Hot Chocolates” and selling tunes to Tin Pan Alley. He also taught Count Basle to play the organ and he met George Gershwin. The meeting was important.

“I was one of the entertainers at a party given by Mrs. Harrison Williams in honor of George Gershwin,” Fats said, “and one of the guests was William Paley, the CBS boss. Gershwin told Paley to get hold of me. So Paley comes over to me at the piano and says: ‘Drop over to the office and see me.'”

Mr. Paley gave Fats his own show on WLW in Cincinnati, an all‐jazz station. His music, his clowning and his charming, raspy voice made him a hit and his records started to sell. But Fats climbed onto a treadmill. R.C.A. frequently told him to record the most inane songs, material no one else would touch. Fats would satirize them, making parodies of the lyrics. The records sold. People wanted to hear the Clown Prince of Music.

Fats introduced “E‐Flat Blues” with, “She was the daughter of a butterfly and he was a son of a bee.” In 1936, on his best seller, “It's a Sin to Tell a Lie,” he cautions, “If you break my heart, I'll break your jaw.” “Somebody Stole My Gal” was another Waller hit. On this he interrupts the session to call Sherlock Holmes to find his missing womao. Sometimes his remarks were loaded with double entendres, which caused no end of trouble for RCA executives.

Jazz critics attacked Fats for the material he recorded and felt he couldn't be ‘taken seriously as a musician. And as he became more successful with the material he recorded, the more he recorded the same material. It was an endless merry‐go‐round. Today, we realize that Fats was an artist, who played more than stride and therefore survived the stride era while his contemporaries faded away.

In spite of his cloWning, heavy drink ing and image as a clown, Fats was a sophisticated musician. There was an underlying seriousness and self‐respect in his work. In his later music, we can hear the seriousness and perhaps a trace of sadness, particularly in his “London Suite” and in the score of “Early to Bed,” his 1943 hit Broadway musical.

Fats was complicated. There Nils the sense of humor that always managed to get a laugh, but the humor was subtly pointed at the basic deceits he saw around him. There was also the sensuality. Fats had a gargantuan capacity for life, and it is captured in his music.
“You've got to hang onto the melody.”

A version of this archives appears in print on May 7, 1978, on Page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: He Was the ‘Clown’ Prince of Jazz. Order Reprints| Today's Paper





FATS Waller's rise to lasting fame as an entertaining singer with a witty twist on the popular songs of his day was still several years off when, in November of 1926, the Victor Talking Machine Company invited Waller to a recording session at its Camden, New Jersey, studio. Victor, like other record companies, had only recently made the remarkable discovery that "hillbilly" and "race" music could be big business, and Waller was one of many Harlem musicians whom Victor was eager to record.

Waller was then twenty-two years old, and already well known in Harlem as a pianist on the party and nightclub circuit, but he had made only a few recordings, mainly accompanying blues singers or playing in pickup ensembles. The Camden studio was a deconsecrated church that Victor had bought for its admirable acoustics, and with the building came a church organ, which the recording company overhauled and expanded with many new ranks of pipes. The plan for the November session was that Waller would accompany a black vocal group singing the spiritual "All God's Chillun Got Wings." But to warm up Waller rattled off two tunes on the 2,000-pipe instrument: W. C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" and a piece of his own, "Lenox Avenue Blues," also known as "The Church Organ Blues." The Victor engineers recorded those performances, and company executives were sufficiently impressed that over the next three years they brought Waller back for a half dozen more sessions, recording two dozen other pipe-organ solos.

None of the resulting records sold particularly well, however, and as Waller's fame as a singer and an entertainer grew in the 1930s, and Victor pressed him to crank out far more commercially appealing jazz-band treatments of hundreds of Tin Pan Alley standards, these earlier solos faded into obscurity. 

 Waller's vocal performances of "Ain't Misbehavin'," "The Joint Is Jumpin'," "Your Feet's Too Big," and dozens of other songs have never gone out of print, but his organ solos were unavailable for decades; they resurfaced only in 1964 -- on a British LP -- and even then were known primarily to aficionados. The Camden performances became more widely available in the 1970s, as French RCA began releasing a complete set of Waller's recordings on thirty-six LPs, and most of the organ solos are now out on a 1998 Jazz Archives CD (Fats Waller Vol. 3: Young Fats at the Organ, EPM 159262) as well. It is safe to say, however, that they hardly rank among his most popular recordings. 

 THAT is a shame, because they are brilliant proof of a side to Waller's musical genius that has often been ignored, or even denigrated, in the years since his untimely death from pneumonia, in 1943. If nothing else, Waller's organ performances are technical tours de force that reveal an almost wizardly mastery of what is surely the most ungainly instrument ever pressed into the service of jazz. It would be hard to invent a musical instrument less well suited to jazz performance than the pipe organ. The rhythmic emphasis to which the piano lends itself so naturally is not even part of the organ's musical vocabulary. Stroke a key, bang a key -- it's all the same to the organ. The instrument's sound-generating mechanism has two modes, on or off, wind flowing through the pipe or wind stopped, and there is simply no way to swing a beat by making one note of a measure louder than any other. Adding to this difficulty is the fact that even with modern organs, which use pneumatic or electrical (as opposed to purely mechanical) linkages to connect the keyboard with the valves that admit air into the pipes, the player experiences a tiny delay between the depression of a key and the emergence of a sound. Any hall big enough to hold a pipe organ has a natural reverberation of as much as several seconds, which adds to this disorienting sensation. It's hard enough to play Bach when your fingers are doing one thing and your ears are telling you another; trying to play a swing rhythm under such conditions must be like juggling on a unicycle while watching your reflection in a fun-house mirror. 

 Somehow Waller did make the pipe organ swing. (There is a great moment during his recording of "Sugar" on the Camden organ, accompanying the blues singer Alberta Hunter, when she chimes in during his solo, "Plonk that thing, Fats!") Waller's organ technique was almost entirely self-taught, acquired by hanging around the musicians at Harlem's Lincoln Theater and ultimately wangling his way into filling in when the regular organist took a break. By age seventeen Waller was giving Bill "Count" Basie lessons on the Lincoln Theater organ. He was also doing things that classically trained organists would say are almost impossible to pull off artistically: playing staccato, playing slurs and slides, playing clustered chords and arpeggios. All these effects require split-second judgment and an incredible sensitivity to tone and touch. 

 But the pieces are more than vehicles for Waller's technical flash; they are compositional gems, flights of melodic and harmonic invention that reflect Waller's musical genius in its purest and most concentrated form. Many of the tunes, of his own composition and not, are fairly standard Tin Pan Alley formulas, but Waller subjected them to a theme-and-variations treatment that milked their possibilities to the utmost. He could take an ordinary folk tune like "Careless Love" (it appears as "Loveless Love" on Waller's recording) or a standard like "I Ain't Got Nobody" and dissect it in a series of improvisational inventions that are themselves the strongest answer to the criticism -- still sometimes heard from jazz historians who focus on Waller's later success and superficially buffoonish stage persona -- that Waller was formulaic and "commercial," not a true artist. 

 Such improvisational performances have not generally been thought of as "compositions"; jazz in the 1920s and 1930s was still evolving from a largely unwritten tradition, and the very spontaneity of performances would seem to argue against the idea of composition at all. But part of the tradition, especially for keyboard players, involved learning the performances of the masters, if for no other reason than to be able to "cut" them at the sort of free-for-all competitions that took place on the Harlem party circuit. Waller himself learned to play a number of pieces by the master of the "stride" piano style, James P. Johnson, by slowing down player-piano rolls that Johnson had made and placing his fingers over the keys as they dropped down. Although each stride pianist had his own style, and might never play the same piece exactly the same way twice, a few particularly well-known numbers became standards. Every stride pianist learned, for example, Johnson's classic rendition of "Carolina Shout" -- if only to out-Johnson Johnson at it. 

 The obvious care with which Waller worked out his organ pieces offers another good argument for treating them as genuine compositions. And a volume of seventeen transcriptions of Waller's organ, piano, and vocal performances, to be published later this year as part of the American Musicological Society's Music of the United States of America (MUSA) series, may go a long way toward establishing Waller as an important, even great, American composer. His organ works in particular have a balance, structure, and movement that can seem almost classical, with series of increasingly embellished variations, often in very different styles and forms, welded together into beautiful, coherent wholes by their carefully laid-out harmonic underpinnings and interlocking melodic themes. Call-and-response passages, witty countermelodies, and Waller's rich exploitation of the many different voices of the organ to orchestrate different passages all suggest a meticulously planned performance that nevertheless retains its improvisational quality. With the publication of the MUSA volume, called Fats Waller: Performances in Transcription, several of Waller's organ works will be available for the first time in a definitive written form for study -- and they may even become part of the classical organ repertoire, just as Scott Joplin's piano rags are now an established part of the classical piano repertoire. 

THE problematic difference between Joplin and Waller is that Joplin (like other ragtime composers) really did compose: he sat down at the piano, wrote out the notes, and published his pieces as sheet music. Although Waller's style of stride-piano playing was a direct descendant of ragtime, Waller rarely wrote out his pieces in full; not until the mid-1930s did he even write down so much as a skeleton of the parts for both hands. In general, he would write only a simple melody line and the most fragmentary additional notations of the overall dimensions of the piece. (All that was required to copyright an original tune was a melody and a title.) Waller did record some rolls for player piano, but these are considered unreliable sources, because rolls were often modified after they had been recorded, by having extra holes punched in them. A few of Waller's more popular piano pieces were published as sheet music during his lifetime -- but, says Paul Machlin, the author of the MUSA volume, these are "deeply simplified" versions cranked out by "some Tin Pan Alley hack" who listened to Waller's playing and came up with at best a rough approximation. The recordings of Waller's performances are thus the only authentic source for producing a written score. 

 Transcribing these musical sounds onto paper decades after they were recorded was a surprisingly difficult and exacting task. Machlin was motivated to try it, he says, in part because he was frustrated at how often Waller's work has been misunderstood by critics and historians who simply do not appreciate his formidable keyboard technique and his inventive genius. "You only really understand that when you write it down and look at it," Machlin says. 

 Machlin, a pianist and a graduate of Yale and the University of California at Berkeley, is a professor of music at Colby College, in Maine. He wrote his Ph.D. thesis on Richard Wagner's opera The Flying Dutchman. He became interested in Fats Waller in 1976, when he offered to teach a course at Colby on American music to mark the Bicentennial. That led to a course on jazz, and then to a year off, in 1980, when he began some serious research on Waller. His book Stride: The Music of Fats Waller was published in 1985. (When Machlin shifted his research from Wagner to Waller, a librarian friend remarked, "I couldn't help noticing you haven't moved out of the WAs yet.") 

 Like many pianists, Machlin realized that Waller's keyboard works were something exceptional. He was dismayed by critics who said that Waller had "wasted his talent" or wasn't serious about his music. "There's a particular kind of white jazz historian who sees jazz as an expression of oppressed people," Machlin says. "And so when they see a commercially successful African-American, it somehow 'lessens the authenticity.'" Waller managed to get very rich. But Machlin insists that in Waller's case originality and authenticity were not at all incompatible with commercial success; even when Waller recorded "trivial" tunes, he managed to mark them with his genius, and his onstage antics were often a sophisticated and subtly sarcastic commentary. Waller had a way of mocking the saccharine lyrics of the popular songs that Victor wanted him to record ("I'm crazy 'bout my baby" became "I'm exasperated about my offspring" in one take) while turning even the most fatuous tunes into raw material for his "endlessly inventive melodic imagination," in Machlin's words.

The rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic complexity of the stride style is part of the challenge in reducing these performances to paper. In both ragtime and stride the left hand alternates low bass notes with chords near the middle of the keyboard. But in stride the bass figures are usually harmonically rich tenths rather than simple octaves, and the chords are often bluesy seventh chords with flatted notes and clusters of four or five notes in place of simple three-note chords. The left hand swings before or after the beat in a much freer rhythmic variation than the steady "oompah" syncopation of ragtime.

 The real hallmark of stride is the dazzling improvisational embellishments by the right hand, known in the business as "tricks" -- fast-moving flourishes that break up or ornament the melody line. Waller's organ pieces adapt the stride style to the organ by using the pedal board -- a separate bass keyboard played with the feet, which sounds its own set of low-pitched pipes -- to accomplish the back-and-forth bass-note leaps, freeing up the left hand to do some fancier rhythmic and harmonic work. Waller fully exploited other unique capabilities of the organ in adapting his pieces to the instrument. On the organ, a note sounds for as long as the key is held down; that creates the possibility of introducing countermelodies against a sustained legato line, an effect Waller put to good use on several occasions. 

 Computer programs exist that can automatically transcribe musical sound into musical notation, but Machlin found they were of little use with Waller's music, mainly because they are not sophisticated enough to capture his rhythmic subtleties. So Machlin works the old-fashioned way. First he listens to a song until he has a basic picture firmly in his mind of its harmonic shape and of what the hands are doing in each phrase. Then he listens to one bar -- or sometimes half a bar -- at a time, writes down what he thinks he hears, and then tries it out on the keyboard to see if it sounds right. Then he goes back and fills in what he's missed. Sometimes he plays a tape at half speed to try to pick out what Waller was doing. Next comes an extensive process of editing and checking and seeking the opinions of others. "You have someone look over it and they question just about everything," he says. The low fidelity of many of the early recordings doesn't help. Because musical sounds contain natural overtones, it can be extremely difficult to tell whether all or only some of the notes of a chord were actually played. In a few passages, where "despite a lot of listening and agony" Machlin is still not absolutely sure, he has marked in brackets on the transcriptions what he thinks Waller was doing. It can take a full day's work to produce just a starting draft of twenty-four bars; transcribing a first draft of one complete piece can take weeks.
 
THE MUSA series, which is being supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and is being published by A-R Editions, is intended to highlight monuments in American music that have never been published in definitive form. It is first and foremost a scholarly project, and by its very nature its primary audience is likely to be musicologists and historians of music who wish to study the scores, rather than performers interested in playing them. Some volumes are devoted to a single piece, others to a series of pieces; they include never-before-published works along with works that have been available only in badly edited or inconsistent editions. Volumes published so far or in progress include the songs of Charles Ives, John Philip Sousa marches, Ruth Crawford's chamber music, American fiddle tunes, slave songs, George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, and Irving Berlin's early songs. The Fats Waller volume will include three organ performances ("I Ain't Got Nobody," "Rusty Pail," and "Waiting at the End of the Road") and several piano solos and popular songs ("Ain't Misbehavin'," "I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby," "Honeysuckle Rose"), along with some small-ensemble performances. 

 Will any organists or pianists play these solo works once they are available in standard written notation? The pieces are full of vitality, originality, and interest, and on those grounds it may be hard to imagine why they should not find a home in the keyboard repertoire -- again, much as Scott Joplin's rags have, and for much the same reason: the pieces are not only musically rich but often very witty. 

 "I Ain't Got Nobody" is one of the best illustrations of the Waller genius and wit in action: It begins with a slow, lush, theater-organ treatment of the verse, full of swelling chords and melodramatic retards, that is kept just on the near side of schmaltz by a subdued stride tempo coming steadily from the pedals. But, Machlin says, almost immediately we realize that Waller is having us on. By the time the chorus arrives, the left hand has started sneaking in with some off-beat syncopations, and a lilting little countermelody begins to mock the sentimentality of the lachrymose melody and lyrics. Then all pretense is dropped, the tempo picks up, and we're off on a bluesy flight of "tricks" and up-tempo stride figures, call-and-response choruses, and melodic variations.

One reason that organists and pianists may not find themselves tempted to tackle Waller's solo works, however, is that they are very hard; the immediate impact of Machlin's publication may be less to encourage their performance than to generate renewed reverence for Waller's skill. Like all great performers, Waller made it seem easy, though it is anything but. (Waller owed some of that skill to the fact that he had huge hands, which let him do things on the keyboard that few others could. The blind pianist George Shearing said that shaking hands with Waller was like "grabbing a bunch of bananas.") The pieces are not for the faint-hearted; they are certainly much more difficult than Joplin's -- though, as Machlin says, "that is part of their charm." 

 The other question is Should anyone try to perform these works? The improvisational nature of Waller's style does make one wonder if imitating note-for-note what he did on one occasion is the equivalent of performing a written composition, or whether it runs the danger of winding up as something grotesque, like an Elvis impersonation. Machlin says he hopes that pianists and organists will play the pieces, but he admits that some funny questions do arise. Dan Morgenstern, the director of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, has observed that Waller must have played a piece like "Honeysuckle Rose" every working day of his life, and he never played it the same way twice. "The recording becomes a frozen performance," Machlin says, "a benchmark -- willy-nilly, in spite of itself." But it's all we have to go on, and "whatever else you may speculate about, you know that that happened." Machlin also points out that Waller "certainly wanted to be taken seriously [as a composer] at the end of his life, very badly"; he began to put much more effort into reworking the new tunes and left-hand lines that he composed. "Some people say to me, 'Why should someone play these pieces when Fats Waller has already done it?'" Machlin says. "My answer is 'For the same reason you'd play a Chopin étude when Chopin has already done it.'"


http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/jazz/profiles/fats_waller.shtml


BBC RADIO 3

Fats Waller
1904 - 1943
 
Pianist. A giant of a man in every way, Waller was the outstanding exponent of the Harlem 'stride' style of jazz piano, drawing together the innovations of Willie 'The Lion' Smith and James P. Johnson into a coherent style, and taking it to the boundaries of technical possibility. He was also a major influence on the pianists that followed, including Art Tatum.

As well as being a brilliant pianist, Waller was a witty and entertaining singer, a bandleader, a composer of hundreds of songs, and a pioneer of jazz broadcasting. He began his career in Harlem as a teenager, playing organ for silent movies at the Lincoln Theatre. In the early 1920s he went on the road with singer Katie Krippen, and having perfected the art of vaudeville accompaniment, he made discs with several other singers including Alberta Hunter.

He made his first solo recordings in 1922, and other musicians began to record his compositions from the following year. By the late 1920s he was in demand as a recording artist, as the composer of stage shows such as Keep Shufflin' and Hot Chocolates, and as a guest organist at theatres across the USA. In 1929 he cut his greatest piano solo records, including Handful of Keys, that are a masterly document of the Harlem stride style at its best.

During the Depression, as opportunities to record declined, Waller began to broadcast, singing on air and on disc, and eventually leading to the formation of his sextet the Rhythm, in 1934. He made hundreds of discs with this band, ranging from brilliant jazz to sentimental songs, as well as dozens of numbers that were so banal that they were redeemed only by Waller's brilliant artistry and wicked sense of humour.

Songs such as My Very Good Friend the Milkman and Your Feet's Too Big were among his many hits, the latter being made into a short movie. Waller's other films included Hooray For Love and most importantly Stormy Weather, in which he starred opposite Lena Horne and Cab Calloway. Waller came to Britain in 1938 and 1939, making many discs in England, including his exquisite London Suite for solo piano, some hard-swinging band numbers with his 'Continental Rhythm', and some delicate duets with singer Adelaide Hall.

His gargantuan appetites, and a chaotic personal life which involved prison spells for non-payment of alimony, eventually caught up with this larger-than-life character, and despite professing his intention to slow down and spend more time at home, he died from pneumonia on the train journey back from an arduous West Coast trip to spend Christmas with his family in New York.

Further Reading:
Alyn Shipton: Fats Waller - The Cheerful Little Earful (London, Continuum, 2002)

Recommended RecordingsHandful of Keys: (Proper)
Centennial Collection (includes DVD) (Bluebird)

Recommended links:Fats Waller at Red Hot Jazz
Slightly wayward  biography, but lots of music links and examples
 
https://www.city-journal.org/html/fats-waller-youve-never-heard-14795.html

The Fats Waller You’ve Never Heard

The Broadway musical Early to Bed represents a forgotten chapter in the career of the great pianist and composer.

by John H. McWhorter
Autumn 2016
Arts and Culture
City Journal

In 1943 and 1944, a New York theatergoer in the mood for a musical was most likely interested in new sensations such as One Touch of Venus, Carmen Jones—the black-cast version of Carmen, with English lyrics—or, especially, an unexpected smash called Oklahoma! If tickets to these shows proved elusive, one could drop in on another solid hit running at the time. Like most musicals back then, it was about white people, but a black man had written the score—the first time this had happened on Broadway, though no one seemed to notice, and there have been only two such cases since, both flops. This one, however, enjoyed a healthy and profitable one-year run. It then toured the country.

 Its composer was none other than Fats Waller, the great jazz pianist. The man now iconic as a roly-poly jokester tickling the ivories wrote not a revue collection of songs performed by black actors but a standard-issue “book” show, centered on white performers. Early to Bed, then, was history, or should have been, but it has instead been relegated to a footnote in the story of musical theater. Even aficionados have typically never heard of it. Waller’s Wikipedia entry doesn’t mention the show; neither does Thomas Hischak’s The Oxford Companion to the American Musical.

 Early to Bed’s high-quality melodies have been underacknowledged, to say the least. Moreover, the show marked the beginning of what would almost certainly have been a new direction in Waller’s creative output—toward musical theater, a development that in turn likely would have altered the history of Broadway, especially for blacks. Alas, Waller died early in the show’s run, and this history went unwritten, illustrating again the role that chance plays in events. Had Waller begun a string of tuneful Broadway successes—and all evidence suggests that he would have done so—he could have inspired and paved the way for other blacks to create musical-theater works for mainstream consumption. Broadway could have seen a re-blossoming of the “Black Broadway” flowerings that had occurred in the decades before World War II, when Will Marion Cook, Bob Cole, the Johnson brothers, Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, and many others enjoyed success. Black composers could have influenced the trajectory of Broadway music, as Hamilton’s rap and R&B are doing today.

 Though it’s natural to wonder about the role of racism here, Early to Bed’s obscurity owes principally to other factors. Chronicles of musical-theater history, like those of any art form, focus on what pushed the form forward, not the state-of-the-art also-rans. Broadway musicals were at the time produced almost as prolifically as movies; for every Show Boat, two or three bread-and-butter shows came and went, unremembered. That Early to Bed was one of these is a judgment that no one would consider unfair. Even the fanatic can draw a blank on the titles of unambitious productions of Early to Bed’s era, such as Beat the Band the year before or Follow the Girls the year after.

 Further, the tradition of recording original-cast albums became standard practice only in the year that Early to Bed opened, and then only for the longest-running or most prestigious productions. This meant that in 1943, even a solid hit like Something for the Boys, with a Cole Porter score and starring Ethel Merman, was not recorded as an album. Scores survive for some of the unrecorded shows of the time; unfortunately, Early to Bed is not one of them. Sheet music for six of its 13 songs was published, but a few dozen bars of piano music are a pale reflection of how a song was performed on stage with an orchestra, elaborate musical arrangement, and choreography. The rest of the score exists only in fragments.

 Yet these fragments reveal that Early to Bed was as musically delightful as we would expect material written by Waller at the height of his creative powers to be. The show represents a forgotten chapter in Waller’s life and creative output. It deserves to be revived by professionals devoted to making old musicals sing again.
Jeni LeGon and Bob Howard as Lily-Ann and Pooch singing “Hi-De-Ho High” (COURTESY OF AUTHOR (4))
Jeni LeGon and Bob Howard as Lily-Ann and Pooch singing “Hi-De-Ho High” (COURTESY OF AUTHOR)
Fans and jazz historians cherish Fats Waller most for his titanic ability at stride piano—an elaboration on ragtime, with hand-stretching intervals in the left hand that allowed the thumb to contribute a countermelody rather than just doubling the octave, while the right hand not only played the melody but also gamboled through twinkling runs and arpeggios. The living-room pianist who can manage a decent rendition of “The Entertainer” typically finds transcriptions of stride-piano songs like Waller’s “Handful of Keys” less approachable, yet Waller took to the form as if born to it. As a teen in Harlem in the 1910s, Waller learned James P. Johnson’s stride hit “Carolina Shout” from the piano roll by slowing down the mechanism and following the fingering on the keyboard. Despite the admonitions of his preacher father, Waller was soon playing professionally, eventually with various incarnations of a small traveling band. His electricity stood out, as did that of Louis Armstrong, who came to prominence at the same time. In the middle of bandleader Fletcher Henderson’s “The Henderson Stomp” in 1926, a piano solo rips in that, even amid the dim old sonics, grabs the listener’s ear with its strong rhythm and crystal-clear melodic articulation. It was Waller, working as a temporary pianist in just one gig of many.

 Waller’s career was devoted primarily to performing as a singer-pianist while composing and selling individual songs, for which he is best known today, especially “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Honeysuckle Rose.” But he did make occasional forays into musical theater, and in his annus mirabilis of 1929, he placed a show and a half on the Great White Way: Hot Chocolates, a revue that introduced “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” moved downtown, while he shared composing chores with his pianist and composer mentor James P. Johnson for Keep Shufflin’, a sequel to the legendary Shuffle Along.

 However, even as late as 1943, the idea of a black composer writing the score for a standard-issue white show was unheard of. When Broadway performer and producer Richard Kollmar began planning Early to Bed, his original idea was for Waller to perform in it as a comic character, not to write the music. Waller was, after all, as much a comedian as a musician. Comedy rarely dates well, but almost 80 years later, his comments and timing during “Your Feet’s Too Big” are as funny as anything on Comedy Central, and he nearly walks away with the movie Stormy Weather with just one musical scene and a bit of mugging later on, despite the competition of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Lena Horne, and the Nicholas Brothers.

Kollmar’s original choice for composer was Ferde Grofé, best known as the orchestrator of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” whose signature compositions were portentous concert suites. But Grofé withdrew, and it is to Kollmar’s credit that he realized that he had a top-rate pop-song composer available in Waller. Waller’s double duty as composer and performer was short-lived. During a cash crisis and in an advanced state of intoxication, Waller threatened to leave the production unless Kollmar bought the rights to his Early to Bed music for $1,000. (This was typical of Waller, who often sold melodies for quick cash when in his cups. The evidence suggests, for example, that the standards “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street” were Waller tunes.) Waller came to his senses the next day, but Kollmar decided that his drinking habits made him too risky a proposition for eight performances a week. From then on, Waller was the show’s composer only, with lyrics by George Marion, whose best-remembered work today is the script for the Astaire-Rogers film The Gay Divorcée.

With personnel matters resolved, Early to Bed had an easy birth. George Marion’s daughter Georgette told me how, during the months before the premiere, Waller often visited the Marions’ apartment to work with her father. At the premiere of the Boston tryout, Waller was so nervous about how the songs would be received that he fortified himself with Old Grand-Dad before settling in with the audience for the second act. He needn’t have worried: the reviews were good, and the show sailed into New York on June 17, 1943, becoming an instant success and running for 380 performances.

 From a modern perspective, the plot of Early to Bed is more generously viewed as an extended sketch than as a story. After Oklahoma!, even light musical-comedy plots were expected to show a basic coherence and relatively sophisticated integration of music with narrative. Early to Bed was created just before that revolution in standards, and its script was more like what mid-twentieth-century television variety shows would do with their skits.

 In brief: an aging bullfighter’s car breaks down in Martinique, where he, with his son and his black valet (the role that Waller was to have played), has traveled in hopes of making a comeback at the Pan-American Goodwill Games. The son gets hit by a car and is taken to convalesce at the Angry Pigeon brothel, run by Rowena, a former schoolteacher. The woman driving the car, a nightclub dancer on her way to a gig, convalesces alongside him, and the two fall in love. Meanwhile, the bullfighter, “El Magnifico,” and Rowena turn out to have had a fling in the past and consider rekindling it. With the exception of Eileen, a newly hired prostitute, all the newcomers—including the California State University track team, coming through for the games—assume (despite what one would regard as rather obvious signs to the contrary) that the Angry Pigeon is a finishing school.

 Early to Bed’s cast members were dependables of the era. None are resonant names today, with the possible exception of Jane Kean, who played Eileen; she became best known for playing Trixie in Jackie Gleason’s Honeymooners franchise after the famous 39 filmed half-hour episodes, when she replaced Joyce Randolph. It was not star power but sex that kept audiences interested in such a “plot”: the show was dubbed “An Oversexed Musical” by the Chicago Daily News during its tour, and young Maurice Waller’s mother (Waller’s second wife) deemed the show too bawdy for him to see. In the second act, the girls’ float costumes were announced with lubricious labels like “Inter-American Naval Accord,” “The Liberated Areas,” “The Spirit of Global Uplift,” and “All Out for Hemisphere Defense.” The costumes were “brilliant and sparse,” according to Burns Mantle at the Daily News, while the female chorus included four top models. Early to Bed was a feast for the eyes: even the sets won applause, the way they did at the 2016 She Loves Me revival.

From right to left, Richard Kollmar (also the writer of the book) as El Magnifico the bullfighter, with Bob Howard and dancer George Zoritch, as the bullfighter’s son
From right to left, Richard Kollmar (also the writer of the book) as El Magnifico the bullfighter, with Bob Howard and dancer George Zoritc
as the bullfighter’s son
It is the score, however, that makes Early to Bed worth remembering. Only two of its songs have been commonly heard since 1944—“When the Nylons Bloom Again” and “The Ladies Who Sing with the Band,” which were published as sheet music and thus available to be taken up for the 1978 Waller revue Ain’t Misbehavin’, a smash endlessly revived since. However, the silky love duet “Slightly Less than Wonderful” and the ballads “This Is So Nice” and “There’s a Man in My Life” are all top-rate, outshining in musical and lyrical craft equivalent numbers in typical musicals of their time, including by star composers such as Richard Rodgers and Cole Porter. Two other songs are known only to obsessive collectors: “Hi-De-Ho High,” about a mythical Harlem high school, is irresistibly hot; while “Martinique” is a maddeningly infectious tune that Waller recorded only as an instrumental, whose clever lyric in the script (with two and a half refrains) about the pliant mood the island puts one in (“They keep a mine-sweeper near / Just to sweep up discarded brassieres here / If you’re inclined to undress / There’s yes in the air in Martinique”) would surely be better known if the show had been recorded. Beyond that, two other fine songs exist in handwritten manuscripts but were never published as sheet music: the title song, with a warm, pleasing melody and naughtily clever lyrics; and the lush ballad “Long Time, No Song.”

 Sadly, while Waller’s entire recorded output is now available beautifully preserved on CDs and mp3s, four of the songs he wrote for the biggest stage hit of his life are lost to the ages—not published as sheet music, preserved as preprint manuscripts, or recorded in any form. Only their lyrics survive, in the final script—and even there, only partially. After Early to Bed closed in 1944, the conductor’s score and orchestra parts were also lost. Before the institutionalization of musical theater as an art, the form was considered topical and evanescent, with some justification. No one in 1943 thought that people even a year later—let alone 70 years later—might want to hear the songs from Early to Bed, much less in their original arrangements.

 In 2009, the staff of Musicals Tonight, a musical-theater company in New York, crafted a small-scale revival of the show. To re-create the lost songs, they located Harold “Stumpy” Cromer, a dancer from the original production, and asked him to recall these songs as best he could. This was precious archaeology, but 65 years inevitably filters recollection to the point that Cromer’s recollections of the songs—like Gershwin collaborator Kay Swift’s of some of his lost material, 50-plus years removed—are more approximations than reproductions. Cromer has since died, as has veteran tapper Jeni LeGon, who played the love interest of the black valet character, and Jane Kean—and with them, living memory of these songs’ actual melodies and full lyrics.

 One song, however, is partially recoverable. Though Waller left little by way of a paper trail, a box of his working papers for Early to Bed survives and is held in Teaneck, New Jersey, by the son of the lawyer whom Waller’s son Maurice employed. He was kind enough to lend me the papers, from which I unearthed a melody that somewhat matches the partial lyric that Cromer recalled for the intriguingly titled “A Girl Who Doesn’t Ripple When She Bends.” The melody was catchy in exactly the fashion that one associates with Waller, easy to imagine as the background to a number preserved in a photo, in which fetching females do calisthenics as a black man in a turban tap-danced (it was that kind of show). The box also includes four fully harmonized melodies, all Waller-solid, not used in the production.

The opulent first-act finale, “Martinique (There’s Yes in the Air)”
The opulent first-act finale, “Martinique 
(There’s Yes in the Air)”
In December 1943, six months into Early to Bed’s run, Waller suffered a bout of flu and bronchitis while touring the West Coast and died of pneumonia on the train ride back east. He was only 39. The timing of his demise was particularly unfortunate because, while Waller biographers rarely stress the fact, writing for Broadway would have been the next chapter in his career.

 In the early 1940s, jazz was developing into the spiky, allusive genre called bebop, with a new harmonic complexity, rapid-fire chord changes, and a focus on the instrumental more than the vocal. Waller was unlikely to have embraced it wholeheartedly. Connecting with the audience through singing and humor were integral to his performance persona, and musicians of his generation tended to find bebop chilly and athletic for mere athleticism’s sake. Meanwhile, work for traveling bands, such as the one that Waller made much of his living from, began drying up a few years after he died.

 Where would that have left him? He was a spellbinding presence on film, and today we savor his appearances, especially in Stormy Weather, but in the 1940s and 1950s, cameos and subsidiary roles were all that black comics and musicians could hope for in mainstream cinema. Perhaps Waller would have landed his own show when television emerged. He had hosted a successful radio program in the 1930s. The first black host of a television show, in 1948, was none other than the man who performed the role that Waller was to have played in Early to Bed: Bob Howard, a singer-pianist-entertainer whom the Decca recording company promoted as competition for Waller in the 1930s. Film clips of his performances reveal a virtual imitation of Waller’s sound and mannerisms. Waller might have been sought out for precisely that job, or a similar one, had he lived—though it likely wouldn’t have lasted long, in a time when black performers drew limited interest from viewers and wan commitment from networks and sponsors.

 If Waller had lived longer, then, he would almost certainly have faced a career crisis by about 1950, but for one trump card: Broadway. Waller’s gift for melody was equal to that of esteemed Broadway composers whose stars rose after World War II, such as Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, Jule Styne, or Harold Rome, and superior to that of many composers who saw their work enshrined in Broadway scores in the 1940s and afterward, such as Morton Gould, Robert Emmett Dolan, and Albert Hague. Waller could have had further hit shows. Kollmar thought so; he had been negotiating for Waller to compose for a white show starring Libby Holman as well as for a black show. As ever more musicals were recorded as cast albums, such recordings would have cemented Waller’s new status as a composer for the “Main Stem.” Even the evolution of musical theater in the 1940s and beyond would have complemented Waller’s own. As theater scores explored broader ranges of emotion, Waller could have found an outlet for his yearning, later in life, to pursue more serious directions. His acetate recording of the up-tempo, unused Early to Bed song “That Does It,” for example, has an unexpectedly quiet, trailing coda, a mood and contrast that would have been effectively applied to the kinds of character songs that Broadway composers were starting to write.

 More Broadway musicals from Waller would have shifted the landscape for black composers: in his absence, in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, blacks had almost no creative presence in Broadway musicals beyond performing. Other black musicians—in classical music as well as in pop and jazz—may well have been inspired by Waller’s example to experiment with the form. Just as likely, white producers would have actively sought out such talent in an effort to channel Waller’s success. Duke Ellington may have been offered more projects and gotten luckier than he did with the failures Beggar’s Holiday and Pousse-Café. Rhythm and blues composer Louis Jordan could also have transferred his abilities to stage music instead of settling—posthumously—for seeing his music adapted for an anthology revue, Five Guys Named Mo.

 Would racism have blocked Waller from joining the leagues of Broadway composers? He was certainly no stranger to it. After the Boston tryout premiere, he and his family had been refused entry into the hotel that he had reserved when the staff learned that he was black. He was similarly barred from other hotels and had to spend the night in a flophouse. But where business was concerned, things were somewhat different. When it came to song hits, money talked, even in 1943. Given that Waller’s race hindered the success of Early to Bed not one bit, there is no reason to suppose that it would have interfered significantly in the backing and mounting of future stage shows.

 In other words, Early to Bed, forgotten today, could have been the beginning of an important moment in the development of American theater music, as well as of opportunities for black musicians in an era when slow but steady civil rights victories were making integration an American reality. One can imagine old clips on YouTube of Waller singing and playing songs from his latest Broadway show on 1950s variety programs like the Colgate Comedy Hour. Instead, fate dictated that Early to Bed was the end of a story rather than the beginning.

Richard Kollmar with two of the famous models featured in the production
Richard Kollmar with two of the famous models featured in the production
That story should at least be gotten down for posterity. In an era that has seen dozens of recordings since the 1980s of old and often obscure Broadway scores, using original materials or re-creating them where necessary, Early to Bed’s songs deserve a recording, in period style, with the gaps filled in by other lesser-known but effective songs written by or associated with Waller. Also, archivists, collectors, and hoarders across America should be on notice for manuscripts of the four missing songs from the score—and maybe even a long-lost copy of the score itself.

 It would be worth it, and I should know: I produced a small-scale re-creation of the score for a cabaret space some years ago and can attest that Waller’s work still delights a modern audience, including listeners with no particular affection for musical theater. The utter obscurity of Early to Bed is a loss not only to scholarship and the heritage of black artistry but to our listening pleasure.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

John H. McWhorter is a City Journal contributing editor and the author of The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language 

 Top Photo: Fats Waller in 1943 (GEORGE RINHART/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES)
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/waller-thomas-wright-fats-1904-1943 
Home › African American History

Waller, Thomas Wright “Fats” (1904-1943)

FATS WALLER

Jazz pianist virtuoso, organist, composer and grand entertainer, Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller was born on May 21, 1904 in Harlem, New York.  He became one of the most popular and influential performers of his era and a master of stride piano playing, finding critical and commercial success in both the United States and abroad, particularly in Europe.  Waller was also a prolific songwriter, with many of his compositions becoming huge commercial successes. His technique and attention to decorative detail influenced countless jazz pianists including Art Tatum, Count Basie, and Thelonious Monk.

Waller came from a very musical family—his grandfather was an accomplished violinist and his mother was the organist of his family’s church.  His first exposure to music was in the form of church hymns and organ music, an instrument he was taught to play by his mother and the church musical director. When he was a young boy his mother hired a piano tutor and he learned how to read and write music.  His father hoped that he would follow a religious calling rather than a career in jazz, but his love of jazz proved too great.  In 1920 his mother, Adeline Waller, passed away and Waller moved in with the family of his piano tutor, Russell Brooks.  While living with Brooks, Waller met James P. Johnson and Willie Smith, two of the greatest stride pianists of the era.  Both men saw Waller’s potential as a born showman.  Johnson decided to take Waller under his wing and taught him the stride style of piano playing, greatly advancing his level of musical education.

By the age of 15, Waller was playing the organ at a Harlem silent movie theatre for $23 a week. In 1922, Waller made his recording debut as a soloist for the Okeh label and in 1923 he recorded a number of piano rolls for the QRS Company.  In 1926 his career took off when he signed with the RCA Victor Label. Waller recorded many sides and scored an abundance of hits with RCA such as “Jitterbug Waltz,” “Honeysuckle Rose,” and “The Joint is Jumpin'.”  He became very popular despite the notion that jazz was not a “serious” form of music.

Waller’s other accomplishments include vaudeville appearances with the famous blues singer Bessie Smith, soon after which he wrote the music to the show "Keep Shufflin'".  In 1927, Waller met the poet and lyricist Andy Razaf and the two collaborated on several musicals, the most of popular of which, Hot Chocolates would bring them great critical and commercial success.  It also produced the song “Ain’t Misbehavin’” which became a huge hit for Louis Armstrong.  By the early 1940s Waller was earning a comfortable living as an entertainer. He wrote the first non-black musical for Broadway by an African American, Early to Bed, and took a role in the film Stormy Weather. He also appeared regularly on radio.

While traveling cross-country following performances on the West Coast, Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller died of pneumonia in Kansas City, Missouri's Union Station train depot on December 15, 1943 at the age of 39. 

Sources:

 Maurice Waller and Anthony Calabrese, Fats Waller (New York: Schirmer Books, 1977); Alyn Shipton, Fats Waller: the Cheerful Little Earful (New York: Continuum, 2002); Paul S. Machlin, Stride, the Music of Fats Waller (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985). 

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6181057




Heard on News & Notes 
 
If You Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It is Sony Legacy's new 3-CD set of jazz-great Fats Waller's best music. Historians and music critics say no one has ever quite been able to fill Waller's shoes since his death in 1943.

(Soundbite of music) 

FARAI CHIDEYA, host: 

That's Thomas Wright Waller, but you probably know him by his nickname - Fats.
(Soundbite of music) 

Mr. FATS WALLER: (Musician) Swing it on out there. Nah, nah. (Unintelligible) in the state of Carolina (unintelligible). 

CHIDEYA: Fats Waller was one of the country's most prolific piano composers and a beloved entertainer. A new CD collection of his work was released this week. NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates listened to it and has this report. 

(Soundbite of music) 

KAREN GRIGSBY BATES: Dan Morgenstern is director of the Institute of Jazz at Rutgers University, and he's been a Fats Waller fan for decades. In 1938, he was barely nine years old, settling in the life in Denmark after his family fled Hitler's to Austria. As a treat, his mom took him into a concert hall in Copenhagen one evening. That's where he got his first eyeful of Fats - all 6' 2” and 285 pounds of him. 

(Soundbite of music) 

Professor DAN MORGENSTERN (Director, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University): I've never seen anybody remotely like him, and of course he was an electrifying performer. And even though I didn't understand more than a few words of anguish, it was very easy to understand what he was communicating. And one of the things that he communicated was the tremendous beat that he had. 

(Soundbite of music) 

BATES: This was not namby-pamby piano. It was, says writer and jazz critic Stanley Crouch, an especially muscular kind of music. 

Mr. STANLEY CROUCH (Jazz critic): He could really like, as they say in the jazz world, he could lift a bandstand. And if you got - if you stood a band with him and he started playing, you were going to play better, if only you keep from being overshadowed by your accompaniment. 

BATES: That ability is evident throughout If You Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It, a three-CD compendium from Sony Legacy which contains some of Waller's best music. 

Orrin Keepnews has produced jazz records from more than a half-century, including an earlier chronological compendium of Waller's music. He organized this set in three parts. In disc one, Waller's sings and plays his own compositions. Disc two is a strictly instrumental section. And in disc three, Keepnews says Waller plays and sometimes attacks popular songs of the day. 

Mr. ORRIN KEEPNEWS (Producer, If You Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It): You know, there are a number of wonderful instances of Waller pulling things apart. And one of my absolute all-time favorites of his interpolations… 

(Soundbite of song, “It's A Sin To Tell A Lie”) 

Mr. KEEPNEWS: there's a Tin Pan Alley standard called It's A Sin To Tell A Lie. And, you know, be sure it's true when you say I love you, it's a sin to tell a lie. 

(Soundbite of song, “It's a Sin to Tell a Lie”) 

Mr. WALLER: (Singing) Be sure it's true when you say I love you. It's a sin to tell a lie. Millions of hearts have been broken yes, yes, just because these words was spoken. You know the words that were spoken? Here it is. I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, ha ha. Yes, but if you break my heart I'll break your jaw and then I'll die. 

Mr. KEEPNEWS: And that's about as good an example of Waller at his extreme best. 

BATES: This impish ditties led some people to assume that this was the complete Fats Waller. Not so, says Stanley Crouch. 
 
Mr. CROUCH: So on the one hand, you have a guy who becomes famous not so much for being the great piano player that he was but for being a great comedian in a musical context. I think that as Martin Williams, who's known as the dean of the jazz critics once said, he was caught inside his persona. 

BATES: The onstage persona people saw was joyfully mischievous in an area notorious for Jim Crow and racial violence. Looking at his performances some 60 years later, some contemporary observers figure Waller was merely putting on a happy face to avoid alienating his white audiences. Stanley Crouch says that's a ridiculous simplification. 

Mr. CROUCH: I don't think anyone was either angry or depressed every second of every day. And Waller was a guy who really was connected to the black American gallows sense of humor, that is that you can make the worst things seem funny. 

BATES: He could also make hard things seem a lot easier than they were. Dan Morgenstern says people don't know it, but Waller mastered in instruments some people consider even more difficult than the piano. 

Prof. MORGENSTERN: It's a pity that he never got to record his favorites organ music, which was Bach. I mean he was a master of the pipe organ. 

(Soundbite of music played in pipe organ) 

BATES: Echoes of Bach can be heard in this version of the Rodgers & Hart favorite, Thou Swell.
(Soundbite of song, “Thou Swell”) 

BATES: Waller died in 1943 on an eastbound train. He'd caught pneumonia while performing in Hollywood and the medicine that would have saved him today wasn't widely available then. He was 39 years old. 

Since then there's been lots of argument as to who, if anybody, is the next Fats Waller. Critic Stanley Crouch says the work of Errol Garner and Marcus Roberts, both acknowledged masters of stride piano, show Waller influence. But producer Orrin Keepnews says that kind of discussion doesn't much matter. He'd rather we listeners concentrate on something else. 

Mr. KEEPNEWS: I think, you know, rather than try to worry about him as an influence, lets just enjoy him as a talent. 

BATES: Not a hard assignment at all. 

Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News, Los Angeles. 

(Soundbite of song, “Ain't Misbehaving”) 

Mr. WALLER: (Singing) No one to talk with, all by myself. No one to walk with but I'm happy…
CHIDEYA: Want a little more Fats in your diet, visit our Web site, npr.org. 

(Soundbite of song, “Ain't Misbehaving”) 

Mr. WALKER: (Singing) Ain't misbehaving, saving my love for you, for you, for you, for you. I know for certain the one I love. I'm through with flirting, it's you that I'm thinking of. Ain't misbehaving, saving my love for you. 

CHIDEYA: Thanks for sharing your time with us. We will be back tomorrow. To listen to the show, visit npr.org. News & Notes was created by NPR News and the African-American Public Radio Consortium. 

(Soundbite of song, “Ain't Misbehaving”) 

Mr. WALLER: (Singing) What do I care? Your kisses are worth waiting for, believe me. I don't stay out late. No place to go. I'm home about eight, just me and my radio. Ain't misbehaving, saving all my love for you. 

CHIDEYA: I'm Farai Chideya. This is NEWS & NOTES. 

Copyright © 2006 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Fats Waller's Playful Jazz Piano Legacy






Heard on Day to Day
 

Singer, Musician, Showman


Hear selected cuts from the CD compilation 'If You Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It!'


'Your Feet's Too Big'


'Honeysuckle Rose'



'Thou Swell'


Fats Waller was often called the "clown prince" of jazz, but the showbiz bluster sometimes overshadowed his unparalleled skill at the keyboard, both as a composer and performer.  SONY BMG Music Entertainment 

Waller with Lena Horne, his co-star in the 1943 musical Stormy Weather.  SONY BMG Music Entertainment 

A comic showman who delighted crowds with his playful stage antics, Fats Waller was the beloved "clown prince" of jazz during a golden era of the genre, leading up to World War II.

 Yet Waller's talent as an entertainer overshadowed tremendous gifts as a musician and songwriter. A new three-disc collection of his recordings focuses on the music behind the merriment.

 Waller was an imposing figure with an especially muscular playing style.

 "As they say in the jazz world, he could lift the bandstand," says jazz critic Stanley Crouch. "So if you were up there with him, and he started playing, you were going to play better -- if only to keep from being overshadowed..."

The CD collection, titled If You Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It!, divides Waller's musical life into three compartments. Original songs fill one disc. Another features instrumental-only compositions. The third offers Waller's interpretations of hit songs by other composers of the era.

 Some of those "interpretations" showcased Waller at his impish best, ad-libbing funny lines into more solemn tunes. It's easy to see how audiences and even contemporary critics could miss a deeper side of Waller -- his sophisticated ear, and his love of Bach's compositions for the pipe organ.

 Waller died of pneumonia in 1943 on a train headed east after a performance in Hollywood. He was 39. In later years, plenty of arguments have erupted over who, if anyone, is the next Fats Waller.

 But maybe such debate misses the point. "I think rather than worry about him as an influence, you just enjoy him as a talent," producer Orrin Keepnews says. 


https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Fats-Waller-wrote-played-and-laughed-his-way-2676342.php


Fats Waller wrote, played and laughed his way into ranks of all-time music greats


by  Jesse Hamlin
November 5, 2004 
San Francisco Chronicle 

Nobody embraced the pleasure principle with more gusto than Fats Waller, the genius piano player, songwriter, singer, satirist and sybarite, whose storied consumption of food and booze was matched by the size and richness of his artistic output. 

 One of the great artist-entertainers of the 20th century, Waller partied his way through the Roaring Twenties and the Depression as he poured out hit songs, classic Harlem stride piano solos and joyously swinging sextet records that reveled in his matchless musical and comedic gifts. A mocking clown who was a master of double-entendre and the ad-lib aside, he lampooned sappy tunes while swinging the hell out of them. 
Illustration of Fats Waller for his centennial on time use only by Zachariah O'Hora

Nobody embraced the pleasure principle with more gusto than Fats Waller, the genius piano player, songwriter, singer, satirist and sybarite, whose storied consumption of food and booze was matched by the size and richness of his artistic output.

One of the great artist-entertainers of the 20th century, Waller partied his way through the Roaring Twenties and the Depression as he poured out hit songs, classic Harlem stride piano solos and joyously swinging sextet records that reveled in his matchless musical and comedic gifts. A mocking clown who was a master of double-entendre and the ad-lib aside, he lampooned sappy tunes while swinging the hell out of them.

Along with his friend and admirer Louis Armstrong, Waller, whose centennial is being celebrated this year, was one of the first black jazz musicians to cross over to international pop stardom.


His brilliant piano and organ playing -- a mix of power and finesse, dynamic subtlety and melodic invention -- dazzled and delighted music lovers. But it was Waller's singing and sly, ribald humor that hooked millions of people who bought his records, packed his live performances and listened to his radio shows. 

 "People make lists of important figures in the culture that include Lindbergh, Armstrong and Fred Astaire," says Dick Hyman, the esteemed pianist, composer and arranger. "I think Waller was one of them, although not quite as well known. He certainly represents the spirit of the 1930s and early '40s." 

 Hyman, whose virtuoso playing draws on Waller, the Waller-inspired master Art Tatum and the modernists who followed, will be one of the artists summoning up Fats' merry spirit at Davies Hall on Sunday night. 

 The San Francisco Jazz Festival's tribute to Waller -- who died of pneumonia on the New York-bound Santa Fe sleeper in 1943 at age 39 -- also features Mike Lipskin, the noted Bay Area stride pianist who, as an RCA producer in the 1960s and '70s, reissued many of Waller's discs; R&B chanteuse Ruth Brown, who starred in the hit '70s Broadway musical about Waller, "Ain't Misbehavin',"; the venerable Kansas City pianist Jay McShann; and others. 

 Hyman, who will play piano and Davies' monster Rufatti pipe organ, fell under Waller's sway as a kid growing up in New York in the late '30s. He learned classic Waller piano solos like "Minor Drag" and "Harlem Fuss" by slowing down the 78 rpm recordings his big brother brought home. 
"Those records hold up beautifully," says Hyman, who has written many scores and arrangements for Woody Allen's films, scored "Moonstruck" and has played with everybody from Benny Goodman to Charlie Parker. "Waller's time was so perfect, and his tone was so full. His playing had a weight, and at the same time, a fleetness, which is very hard to do. I've been trying to do it for 50 years." 

 Because Waller was a funny guy who mocked many of the songs he sang, "the public didn't realize how fine a musician he was," Hyman says. Like Armstrong and other black artists of the day, Waller had to be an entertainer, not just a great musician, to achieve the kind of fame he did. 

 Thomas Waller was born in Harlem in 1904, the seventh of 11 children (only five survived past their infancy). His father was a lay Baptist preacher who owned a trucking company. His mother taught him piano and organ, and by the age of 10, he was playing reed-organ accompaniment to his father's street sermons. 

 He loved playing the pipe organ -- he liked to call it "the God box" - - at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, where he sang in the choir (in later years Waller delighted in playing Bach on the organ). He was equally drawn to religious and risque songs. 

 At 15, the big clowning kid called Fats (he was 5-foot-10 and eventually weighed 285 pounds) quit high school and went to work full time playing the organ for silent films and stage shows at Harlem's Lincoln Theater, where he amused audiences with his sometimes irreverent accompaniment. He was the first musician to play jazz on the organ. 

 One of the young musicians who came to hear Waller there was Count Basie, whom Waller taught to play organ and whose stripped-down piano style was rooted in Fatsian stride. 

 Waller learned the rigorous, ragtime-rooted style -- built on alternating bass notes and chords in the left hand and joined with intricate melodies and improvised variations in the right -- from the Harlem stride master James P. Johnson. 

 Johnson, whose piano rolls the young Waller slowed down in order to learn the pianist's fingering, heard Waller at the Lincoln and agreed to tutor him. In the early '20s, Johnson got his protege jobs playing at raucous Harlem rent parties and clubs, and in 1923 arranged for him to record piano rolls for the QRS company. 

 His late-night carousing led to his divorce that year from his first wife, Edith, with whom he had a son, Thomas Jr. That unhappy union was the source of years of aggravation, and a six-month jail term, over late alimony payments. Waller's second marriage, to Anita Rutherford, produced two other sons, Maurice and Ronald. 

 Waller's father had frowned on jazz and encouraged his son's interest in classical music. In a 1943 radio interview, reprinted in Alyn Shipton's 1988 Waller biography, Waller recalled a scene at the Lincoln: 

 "My father was a minister and had no use for theaters. He came there and took hold of me and said, 'Son, you come on home out of this den of iniquity.' ... I kept right on playing the piano and organ and writing songs." 

 Songs flowed out of Waller, "a swift but casual composer," as Hyman puts it, whose tunes "came right out of his piano playing. " According to one story, Waller whistled the melody of "Honeysuckle Rose" over the phone to lyricist Andy Razaf. He was famous for selling his songs cheap for quick cash, giving them away to needy friends or, according to legend, selling the rights to some in exchange for hamburgers. 

 He's reputed to have written several melodies that became hits credited to others, among them "On the Sunny Side of the Street" and "I Can't Give You Anything But Love." The songs that bear Waller's name number more than 500. 

 They include such enduring hits as "Squeeze Me," based on a bawdy old tune called "Boy in the Boat," and "Honeysuckle Rose," written with Razaf for the 1929 revue "Load of Coal" at the Harlem hot spot Connie's Inn; "Black and Blue," a rueful, biting song about racial injustice ( "My only sin is my skin") and "Ain't Misbehavin'," both written with Razaf for "Hot Chocolates. " 

 That 1929 Connie's Inn revue was such a smash it moved to Broadway, where Armstrong made a big splash singing "Ain't Misbehavin'." 

 That same year, Waller recorded a series of masterly stride piano solos for RCA Victor that still fall fresh on the ear: "Handful of Keys," "Numb Fumblin'," "Smashing Thirds." So do the solos he cut in '34, among them "African Ripples" and "Viper's Drag." 

 "He had a classical tone and touch and imparted tremendous rhythmic energy," says Lipskin, who studied with another Harlem stride master, Willie "The Lion" Smith. Unlike later pianists who just played loud, Waller, who bridged stride and swing, created energy and drama through changes in dynamics and tone, says Lipskin, who got hooked on Fats at age of 3. 

 Lipskin loved Waller's piano and humorous singing, "the warm and genuine happiness of the music," he says. "I wasn't too happy as a child, and this music transported me into a realm of sensuous musical enjoyment." 

 Waller started singing in the early '30s, swinging melodies in an Armstrong-influenced style. He gleefully ridiculed the syrupy songs Victor required him to sing, as well as fooling with some of his own. 

 He recorded a slew of popular sides from 1935 through the early '40s with his Rhythm sextet, which often featured trumpeter Herman Autrey, reedman Gene Sedric, guitarist Albert Casey and drummer Slick Jones, and on occasion was expanded into a big band. 

 They recorded Waller originals like "Jitterbug Waltz," "Crazy 'Bout My Baby" and "The Joint is Jumpin'," a rollicking 1936 disc spiced with laughter, police sirens and Waller's jive asides ("Get rid of that pistol, yeah, yeah, get rid of it! ... Don't give your right name, no, no, no.") 

 Like Billie Holiday, Waller could make memorable music from pop dross like "Spring Cleaning" ("No lady, we can't haul your ashes for 50 cents," he jokes), and mint gold with novelty tunes like "Your Feets Too Big." But he could also sing a good song relatively straight, with feeling, as he does on his splendid 1935 recording of "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter." 

 "He showed people you could take a song that might be banal and possibly unusable and, through humor and jazz, transform it into a worthy piece of music," says Lipskin, one of countless artists who've been inspired by Waller's music and comedy. 

 You can hear the big man's influence in the work of everyone from pianist Thelonious Monk to the cutup trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and sardonic singer- songwriter-instrumentalists like Dave Frishberg and Dan Hicks. 

 "You can't beat the combination: a guy that's funny and a goof-off and does a lot of extemporaneous vocal and verbal stuff and is also a top-flight jazz musician," says Hicks, who has often performed "Honeysuckle Rose" and other Waller tunes and whose amusing scat singing brings Waller's rubbery sounds to mind. "He had the musical goods to back up all that jive." 

 The iconic image of Waller -- the mugging clown with the raffishly cocked derby and pencil mustache -- comes from his winning performance in the 1943 film "Stormy Weather." The year before, he'd given an infamous performance at Carnegie Hall, at which the man who famously kept a jug of whiskey or quart of gin by the piano was too drunk to really play. 

 "He got progressively drunker," recalls Hyman, who was up in the balcony that night. "Every tune seemed to turn into 'Summertime.' " 

 The years of overindulgence, all-nighters and constant traveling took its final toll the following December, when Waller died at Kansas City's Union Station on his way home from Hollywood. 

 "His very good spirit will keep him with us for ages," said Armstrong, quoted in the Nat Shapiro-Nat Hentoff oral jazz history, "Hear Me Talkin' To Ya." 

"Every time someone mentions Fats Waller's name, why you can see the grins on all the faces, as if to say, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Fats is a solid sender, ain't he?' "
 

Contributor:


University of Washington
 
Entry Categories:

http://www.towntopics.com/wordpress/2014/05/21/the-common-fate-of-all-things-rare-or-fats-wallers-last-ride/

May 21, 2014

“The Common Fate of All Things Rare”: Or Fats Waller’s Last Ride

THOMAS "FATS" WALLER
(1904-1943)

Aware that this issue will be appearing on Fats Waller’s 110th birthday, I’m listening to “Honeysuckle Rose,” the first track on If You Got to Ask, You Ain’t Got It, a 3-disc CD set from RCA. The music is coming from the speakers of my Honda CRV as we pay our biennial visit to the Inspection Station near Dayton on Route 130. As the song plays, there’s no appreciable change in the performance of my 14-year-old alter ego, which seems to be off its game, almost as if it felt failure looming. But once Fats hits his stride-piano stride, we’re in business. The damage he’s doing with the left hand that Rudi Blesh compared to “heat thunder on a summer day” seems to rouse a bell-clear burst of cheering from the right hand, and when the big man’s gutsy, give-no-quarter vocal comes in, it’s a walking talking opera and we’re driving like a dream. At the DMV there’s only one car ahead of us, and ten minutes later we’re flying south on 130, me and my forest green millennial music machine with its good-till-2016 sticker shining like a medal on the windshield, yes, yes, we’re stridin’ high.

Playing the God-Box

In Visions of Jazz, Gary Giddins calls him “a state of mind …. He was also bigger than life, Rabelaisian in intake, energy, and output. His greatest joy was playing Bach on the organ, but he buttered his bread as a clown, complete with a mask” that “consisted of a rakishly tilted derby, one size too small, an Edwardian mustache that fringed his upper lip, eyebrows as thick as paint and pliable as curtains, flirtatious eyes, a mouth alternately pursed or widened in a dimpled smile, and immense girth, draped in the expensive suits and ties of a dandy.”

Further insights on Thomas “Fats” Waller as “the clown who wants to play Hamlet” are offered by New York Times jazz critic John S. Wilson, a longtime resident of Basin Street in Princeton, down by the D&R Canal. After mentioning Waller’s “consuming desire to bring to the public his love of classical music and of the organ” and the depth of the “hurt” he felt when audiences rejected this side of him, Wilson describes the moment in Paris in 1932 when Fats “climbed up into the organ loft of the Cathedral of Notre Dame with Marcel Dupré, the cathedral’s organist.” Fats is quoted saying, “First Mr. Dupréplayed the God-box and then I played the God-box.” There seems to be some debate about whether Waller played Bach’s Toccata and Fugue or his own “Honeysuckle Rose.” Both, I would think, though RCA Victor declined to release any of his Bach performances, including the two fugues he recorded at Victor’s Camden studio in 1927. He also once recorded on the organ in the same Abbey Studio where history was made three decades later by the Beatles, who regularly performed their version of Waller’s “Your Feet’s Too Big” at Hamburg’s Star Club.

The Life of the Party

Standing an inch short of six feet, weighing 285 pounds, and turned out in the style nicely nailed in Gary Giddins’s sketch, Waller “lit the place up like Luna Park” when he walked into a room, according to his son and biographer, Maurice. As much as he loved Bach (said to be third on his list of the greatest men in history, behind Lincoln and FDR), he also loved being the quintessential Life of the Party. It would be twisting reality to spin his story as that of a misunderstood giant whose inner church organist wept whenever he sat down to play something serious only to hear the audience, even at Carnegie Hall, losing patience and soon shouting for the dispenser of joy to do his thing.

Fats Waller didn’t die half a year before his 40th birthday from the stress of stifling his serious side. The life force loved to party, and his prodigious capacity for food and drink and late hours is well-documented. According again to his son, people would drop into the Waller home in St. Albans Queens at all hours of the night to hang out with Fats and hear him play. He never turned them away. Who could? These were people like Legs Diamond, Joe Louis, Humphrey Bogart.

One of the best-known Fats Waller stories, included in Bill Crow’s Jazz Anecdotes from the archives of the Institute for Jazz Studies at Rutgers, has Fats playing at Chicago’s Hotel Sherman circa 1925 when he was ordered into a car at gun-point and driven to a saloon in East Cicero to play at a surprise birthday party for Al Capone. After experiencing certain initial concerns for his well-being, Fats settled down and so totally charmed the partygoers that Capone kept him there three days, “shoving hundred dollar bills into his pocket with each request” before returning him to Chicago “several thousand dollars richer.”

Playing for Movies

In a minute and a half clip from a September 23, 1943, interview with Hugh Conover on WABC in New York, Waller jokes about being dragged “kicking and screaming” into the world, and then shows his kneejerk sensitivity to language when asked when he made his first professional appearance. “I was approximately 14 years old — that’s a good word approximately. I like that.” According to Murray Schumach’s New York Times interview from July 1943, which can also be accessed at handfulofkeys.com, Fats says that after dropping out school (“I hated algebra”) he found work playing organ accompaniment for silent movies in a Harlem theatre called the Lincoln, where he got in trouble for the sort of waggish improvising that would become his trademark. Like the time the silent movie cowboy, William S. Hart was on the screen: “He’s just been plugged and looks like he’s a cold mackerel. Pretty sad stuff. Next thing I know I’m playing ‘St. Louis Blues.’”

The Last Ride

The circumstances of Fats Waller’s death at 39 are worthy of a place in the national narrative if you can imagine a collaboration between, say, Walt Whitman, Thomas Wolfe, Jack Kerouac, and Ralph Ellison: the stricken hero passing his last hours on the Santa Fe Chief, eastbound from the Zanzibar Club in L.A., after being laid up for weeks with a virus. You know that if people partying around the grand piano in the Club Car knew Fats was aboard, he’d have been summoned to perform, so it’s possible he didn’t get to his berth until he’d sweated out a set surrounded by the revellers while the train braved a blizzard, the winter winds of the plains howling outside. As the Chief pounded into Kansas City’s Union Station on the morning of December 15, 1943, Waller’s manager, Ed Kirkeby, found the big man in his berth, unconscious and unresponsive. The coroner’s statement reports that “Acute left influenzal bronchopneumonia” was “the immediate cause of death.” The place of death was given as Union Station.
To die in Kansas City’s Union Station? As Fats was known to say, “One never knows, do one?”

In his book, Jazz and Death: Medical Profiles of Jazz Greats (University Press of Mississippi 2002), Dr. Frederick J. Spencer describes bronchopneumonia as “a patchy infection of the bronchi and bronchioles — the air passages that carry air into and out of the lungs.” Sounds very like the “intake and output” mentioned by Gary Giddins, whose account of that snow-blown endgame train ride features a jazz-flavored double entendre Fats would have appreciated even more than the notion of dying in your berth. When Waller spoke of the bitter winter wind to Ed Kirkeby (“yeah, hawkins is sure blowin out there tonight”), he was using a term for a cold wind “common among black midwesterners” and presumably unrelated to the blowing of the great tenor man who was born just up the Missouri River in St. Joseph. As things happen (“one never knows”), Kirkeby’s account of Fats’s last words in his biography Ain’t Misbehavin’ “created the widely repeated legend that Fats went out contemplating Coleman Hawkins.”

Another jazz-flavored touch is that when the Chief carrying Fats arrived at Union Station it coincided with the arrival of a train carrying Louis Armstrong.

Fats Waller would have turned 40 on May 21, 1944.

Waller’s Rose

I haven’t got the time, patience, or genealogical resources to prove it, but it’s not unlikely that Fats Waller is descended from Edmund Waller, the 17th-century poet and Member of Parliament (1606-1687). There are interesting possibilities online at houseofnames.com. Like Jo Waller,  age 17, who arrived in Barbados in 1635. Or Nicholas Waller, 41, who landed in Philadelphia in 1738. An Alfred Waller showed up in New York in 1845. The reason Edmund Waller is worth a closing mention in a column that begins with “Honeysuckle Rose” is “Go, lovely Rose,” the four stanza lyric for which he’s best known and which ends with a reference to the “common fate of all things rare …. How small a part of time they share/That are so wondrous sweet and fair.”
The Princeton Public Library provided the CD set mentioned at the top, though of course you can see and hear Fats Waller on YouTube, where I found the documentary from which the quotes by Maurice Waller were taken.




THE MUSIC OF FATS WALLER: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH FATS WALLER:  

Fats Waller - Ain't Misbehavin' - Stormy Weather (1943) 

 

 

FATS WALLER The very best 

 


FATS WALLER  A documentary, Part 1

 


 

Fats Waller - King of Piano Swing, His Best Jazz Hits

 

 

 

Fats WALLER "Honeysuckle Rose" !!!

 

 


Fats Waller - The Joint Is Jumping 

 

 

Fats Waller - Ain't Misbehavin' (Past Perfect) [Full Album] 

 

 

THOMAS ''FATS'' WALLER THE VERY BEST

 

 

Fats Waller and his Rhythm 1942 "Ain't Misbehavin"

 

 

Fats Waller Ain't Misbehavin'

 

 

When Somebody Thinks Your Wonderful - by Fats Waller 

 

 

Fats Waller : You're The Top 1935

 

 

Fats Waller & Ada Brown - That Ain't Right - Stormy

 

 

DO YOU HAVE TO GO by Fats Waller 1941 

 

 

fats waller - your feet's too big 

 

 

Fats Waller - That's All 

 

 

YOU SHOWED ME THE WAY by Fats Waller 1937

 

 

Fats Waller plays Tea for Two (piano solo, 1939)

 

 

Fats Waller Best songs || Fats Waller Greatest Hits || Best of .

 

 

Fats Waller - Boogie Woogie

 

 

Fats Waller - The Spider And The Fly 

 

 

Fats Waller - All the Best (FULL ALBUM - BEST OF JAZZ) 

 

 

Fats Waller - I Believe In Miracles 

 

 

I'm on a Seesaw, by Thomas "Fats" Waller 

 

 

Fats Waller – "Fats" Waller Plays And Sings Full Album 1954

 

 

Fats Waller - Squeeze Me 

 

 

Fats Waller I´m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter 

 

 

Fats Waller - Smoke Dreams Of You 

 

  

This is New York - Thomas Fats Waller 

 

Fats Waller - Honeysuckle Rose 

 

 

THOMAS ''FATS'' WALLER THE VERY BEST 

 

 

THE BIG HITS FROM 1922 TO 1943 Thomas ''Fats'' Waller - (pn/or/voc/Orchestra composer and director) 

 

1) Muscle Shoals Blues (pn.solo) 2) St. Louis Blues (pipe-or solo) 3) Messin' Around With The Blues (pipe-or) 4) Ain't Misbehavin' (pn solo) 5) Christopher Columbus 6) Twelfth Street Rag 7) Honeysuckle Rose 8) I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby 9) Let's Sing Again 10) Bach Up To Me 11) Bye Bye Baby 12) Lounging At The Waldorf 13) It's A Sin To Tell A Lie 14) There Goes My Attraction 15) I Just Made Up With That Old Girl Of Mine 16) You're Not The Kind 17) Fractious Fingering 18) The More I Know You 19) Copper Colored Gal 20) Black Raspberry Jam 21) Latch On 22) Why Do I Lie To Myself About You? 23) Until The Real Thing Comes Along 24) Your Feet's Too Big 25) Honeysuckle Rose (pn solo) 26) Carolina Shout (pn solo) 27) That's What The Well Dressed Man in Harlem Will Wear 28) Ain't Misbehavin' 29) Moppin' And Boppin'

 

Fats Waller 1938 Live Radio Broadcast 

 

 

Fats Waller and His Orchestra live at The Yacht Club (1938) 

 

 

Fats Waller (Piano & Vocal), Andy Razaf (Vocal), with Leith Stevens Orchestra. Recorded Live December 11th, 1938 During the month of December 1938 Fats Waller was delighting audiences at the Yacht Club in New York. For the week of December 30th he was to appear at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Prior to this engagement, Fats made a guest apperence on the first broadcast of a new weekly radio series called, "This is New York". The program eminated over the wires of WABC on December 11, 1938 and was a replacement for the Orson Welles Mercury Players Theatre rescheduled for a different time later in the week. The series ran well into 1939 and each week endeavoured to capture in its dialogue and music of its varied guests the big city atmosphere of New York with its many colors and sides. A portion of the opening show was devoted to a musical tour of Harlem, and where could one find a guide for such a musical trip than Fats himself? As host Gilbert Seldes - writer and New York critic states in the opening, "Tonight we are going to vist Harlem and we've got the man. At the Piano is Mr. Thomas Waller generally known as Fats for an obvious reason. There are exactly 243 pounds of Mr. Waller tonight. There are also ten fingers that weigh nothing because they are composed of pure genius - Fats Waller." What follows truly is pure genius in typical Walleriana fashion. THE JOINT IS JUMPIN opens with a Fats vocal and Piano solo. Later in the last chorus he is joined by long time friend and musical collaborater Andy Razaf and the full CBS studio orchestra conducted by Leith Stevens. Next is a beautiful Waller vocal interpretation of the Dubose Heyward and George Gershwin classic, SUMMERTIME, fully orchestrated with strings. Sadly Fats never recorded this beautiful melody. Fats once again jumps into the upbeat and is joined by Andy for a rompin' STOMPIN' AT THE SAVOY. This piece was also never recorded by Fats and appears on record for the first time. Notes by Wayne Knight

 

Jason Moran in Fats Waller Dance Party 2015

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fats_Waller

Fats Waller


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fats Waller edit.jpg
Waller in 1938
Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller (May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943) was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer. His innovations in the Harlem stride style laid the groundwork for modern jazz piano. His best-known compositions, "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Honeysuckle Rose", were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1984 and 1999.[1]

Waller played with many performers, from Nathaniel Shilkret (on Victor 21298-A) and Gene Austin to Erskine Tate, Fletcher Henderson, McKinney's Cotton Pickers and Adelaide Hall, but his greatest success came with his own five- or six-piece combo, "Fats Waller and his Rhythm". 

 On one occasion his playing seemed to have put him at risk of injury. Waller was kidnapped in Chicago leaving a performance in 1926. Four men bundled him into a car and took him to the Hawthorne Inn, owned by Al Capone. Waller was ordered inside the building, and found a party in full swing. Gun to his back, he was pushed towards a piano, and told to play. A terrified Waller realized he was the "surprise guest" at Capone's birthday party, and took comfort that the gangsters did not intend to kill him. It is rumored that Waller stayed at the Hawthorne Inn for three days and left very drunk, extremely tired, and had earned thousands of dollars in cash from Capone and other party-goers as tips.[15]

In 1926, Waller began his recording association with the Victor Talking Machine Company/RCA Victor, his principal record company for the rest of his life, with the organ solos "St. Louis Blues" and his own composition, "Lenox Avenue Blues". Although he recorded with various groups, including Morris's Hot Babes (1927), Fats Waller's Buddies (1929) (one of the earliest multiracial groups to record), and McKinney's Cotton Pickers (1929), his most important contribution to the Harlem stride piano tradition was a series of solo recordings of his own compositions: "Handful of Keys", "Smashing Thirds", "Numb Fumblin'", and "Valentine Stomp" (1929). After sessions with Ted Lewis (1931), Jack Teagarden (1931) and Billy Banks' Rhythmakers (1932), he began in May 1934 the voluminous series of recordings with a small band known as Fats Waller and his Rhythm. This six-piece group usually included Herman Autrey (sometimes replaced by Bill Coleman or John "Bugs" Hamilton), Gene Sedric or Rudy Powell, and Al Casey. 

 Waller wrote "Squeeze Me" (1919), "Keepin' Out of Mischief Now", "Ain't Misbehavin'" (1929), "Blue Turning Grey Over You", "I've Got a Feeling I'm Falling" (1929), "Honeysuckle Rose" (1929) and "Jitterbug Waltz" (1942). He composed stride piano display pieces such as "Handful of Keys", "Valentine Stomp" and "Viper's Drag".[citation needed]

He enjoyed success touring the United Kingdom and Ireland in the 1930s, appearing on one of the first BBC television broadcasts on September 30, 1938.[16] While in Britain, Waller also recorded a number of songs for EMI on their Compton Theatre organ located in their Abbey Road Studios in St John's Wood. He appeared in several feature films and short subject films, most notably Stormy Weather in 1943, which was released July 21, just months before his death. For the hit Broadway show Hot Chocolates, he and Razaf wrote "(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue" (1929), which became a hit for Ethel Waters and Louis Armstrong.

 Waller performed Bach organ pieces for small groups on occasion. Waller influenced many pre-bebop jazz pianists; Count Basie and Erroll Garner have both reanimated his hit songs. In addition to his playing, Waller was known for his many quips during his performances. 

 Between 1926 and the end of 1927, Waller recorded a series of pipe organ solo records. These represent the first time syncopated jazz compositions were performed on a full-sized church organ. 

Personal life


In 1938, Waller was one of the first African Americans to purchase a home in the Addisleigh Park section of St. Albans, Queens, a New York City community with racially restrictive covenants. After his purchase, and litigation in the New York State courts, many prosperous African Americans followed, including many jazz artists, such as Count Basie, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, and Milt Hinton.[17]

 

Death and descendants

 

Waller contracted pneumonia and died on December 15, 1943, while traveling aboard the famous cross-country train the Super Chief near Kansas City, Missouri. His final recording session was with an interracial group in Detroit, Michigan, that included white trumpeter Don Hirleman. Waller was returning to New York City from Los Angeles, after the smash success of Stormy Weather, and after a successful engagement at the Zanzibar Room, in Santa Monica California, during which he had fallen ill.[18]:6 More than 4,200 people were estimated to have attended his funeral at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem,[18]:7 which prompted Dr. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who delivered the eulogy, to say that Fats Waller "always played to a packed house."[19] Afterwards he was cremated and his ashes were scattered, from an airplane piloted by an unidentified African American World War I aviator, over Harlem.[20]
One descendant is professional football player Darren Waller, who is Fats' great-grandson.[21]
 

Revival and awards

 

A Broadway musical showcasing Waller tunes entitled Ain't Misbehavin' was produced in 1978. (The show and a star of the show, Nell Carter, won Tony Awards.) The show opened at the Longacre Theatre and ran for more than 1600 performances. It was revived on Broadway in 1988. Performed by five African-American actors, the show included such songs as "Honeysuckle Rose", "This Joint Is Jumpin'", and "Ain't Misbehavin'". 

Recordings of Fats Waller were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame which is a special Grammy Award established in 1973 to honour recordings that are at least 25 years old and that have "qualitative or historical significance". 

Probably the most talented pianist to keep the music of "Fats" Waller alive in the years after his death was Ralph Sutton, who focused his career on playing stride piano. Sutton was a great admirer of Waller, saying "I've never heard a piano man swing any better than Fats – or swing a band better than he could. I never get tired of him. Fats has been with me from the first, and he'll be with me as long as I live."[23]
 
Actor and band leader Conrad Janis also did a lot to keep the stride piano music of "Fats" Waller and James P. Johnson alive. In 1949, as an 18-year-old, Janis put together a band of aging jazz greats, consisting of James P. Johnson (piano), Henry Goodwin (trumpet), Edmond Hall (clarinet), Pops Foster (bass) and Baby Dodds (drums), with Janis on trombone.[24]
 

In popular culture

 

 

See also

 

 

References

 

  1. Tenenholtz, David. "Waller, Fats (Thomas Wright)". JAZZ.COM. Archived from the original on 6 April 2009. Retrieved 10 July 2013.

  3. "Thomas Wright Waller". Encyclopedia of World Biography (vol. 16) (2nd ed.). Detroit: Gale. 2004. pp. 81–82.

  5. Pelisson, Gerard J.; Garvey III, James A. (2009). The Castle on the Parkway. Scarsdale, New York: The Hutch Press. p. 40.

  7. Ivy, James (2011). "Waller, Fats (1904–1943)". In Price, Emmett G. Encyclopedia of African American Music. Santa Barbara: Greenwood. pp. 986–987.

  9. "James P. Johnson | American composer and pianist". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2017-05-13.

  11. Bromberg, Howard (2012). "Waller, Fats". In Rollyson, Carl. The Twenties in America. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press. pp. 904–905.

  13. "Honeysuckle Rose" sung by Fats Waller in a 1941 Minoco Production Soundie

  15. Palmer, David (1976). All You Need Is Love. Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-11448-0.

  17. Tyle, Chris (2012). "I Can't Give You Anything but Love (1928)". JazzStandards.com. Retrieved April 4, 2014.

  19. Singer, Barry (1992). Black and Blue: The Life and Lyrics of Andy Razaf. Shirmer-Macmillan. pp. 210f. Retrieved 2014-06-27.

  21. Berger, Edward; Martin, Henry; Cayer, David; Morgenstern, Dan; Porter, Lewis, eds. (1996). Annual Review of Jazz Studies 7: 1994–1995. Scarecrow Press. Retrieved 2014-06-27.

  23. Machlin, Paul S., ed. (2001). Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller: Performances in Transcription, 1927–1943, Volume 41. A-R Editions. ISBN 9780895794673.

  25. Waller, Maurice and Anthony Calabrese. Fats Waller, Schirmer Books, 1977. ASIN B000JV3G1U, p. 164.

  27. "Underneath a Harlem Moon: The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall (Bayou Jazz Lives): Iain Cameron Williams: Amazon.com: Books". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2014-06-27.

  29. Waller-Calabrese, pp. 62–63.

  31. Vitery, Institute of jazz studies, Edwin. "Fats Waller in Europe: London". newarkwww.rutgers.edu.

  33. "This Green and Pleasant Land" by Bryan Greene, in Poverty and Race, page 3.

  35. Machlin, Paul S. (1985). Stride: The Music of Fats Waller. Springer. ISBN 9781349085675 – via Google Books.

  37. "Waller, Fats (Thomas Wright)". Jazz.com. Archived from the original on 2009-04-06. Retrieved 2014-06-27.

  39. The Book of Lists 3. Corgi. 1984. p. 425. ISBN 0-552-12371-4. From "Gone with the wind, sort of: ashes of 19 famous people – and 1 dog."

  41. "Darren Waller". RamblinWreck.com. CBS. Retrieved 30 October 2015.

  43. "GRAMMY Hall Of Fame". GRAMMY.org. Archived from the original on 2011-01-22. Retrieved 2014-06-27.

  45. Schacter, James D. Piano Man: The Story of Ralph Sutton, p. 12, Jaynar Press, Chicago, IL.

  47. Uhl, Jim. "For Conrad Janis, Acting and Jazz Share the Spotlight," The Mississippi Rag, pp. 1-9, Sept. 2002, Minneapolis, MN.

  49. "Workshop Poems – The Belfast Group". Beck.library.emory.edu. Retrieved 2014-06-27.

  51. "FAQs | This Old House TV". This Old House. Archived from the original on 2014-03-29. Retrieved 2014-06-27.

  53. "David Lynch's Eraserhead Soundtrack". DavidLynch.de. Retrieved 2014-06-27.

  55. "Travel Channel Schedule". Retrieved 31 July 2018.

    1. "Fats Waller". Redhotjazz.com. Retrieved 2014-06-27.

     

    Further reading

     

    1. Machlin, Paul S., ed. (2001). Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller: Performances in Transcription, 1927–1943. Music of the United States of America (MUSA), vol. 10. Madison, Wisconsin: A-R Editions.
    2. Taylor, Stephen (2006). Fats Waller on the Air: The Radio Broadcasts & Discography. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-5656-5.

     

    External links

     

    1. Fats Waller at Encyclopædia Britannica
    2. Fats Waller piano rollography
    3. Red Hot Jazz, a selection of Fats Waller's Recordings
    4. Fats Waller Forever, a digital exhibit of Fats Waller's musical career
    5. Fats Waller at Music of the United States of America (MUSA)
    6. Fats Waller memorabilia
    7. Fats Waller, a tribute to the King of Stride Piano (French and English)
    8. Fats Waller Stride Piano & Sheet Music
    9. Allmusic
    10. MIDI sequences of 21 piano compositions and 29 piano arrangements by Fats Waller

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , ,