Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller (May 21, 1904– December 15, 1943) was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, and singer.[1] His innovations in the Harlem stride style laid much of the basis for modern jazz piano. A widely popular star in the jazz and swing eras, he toured internationally, achieving critical and commercial success in the United States and Europe. His best-known compositions, "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Honeysuckle Rose", were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1984 and 1999.[2]
Waller copyrighted over 400 songs, many of them co-written with his closest collaborator, Andy Razaf. Razaf described his partner as "the soul of melody... a man who made the piano sing... both big in body and in mind... known for his generosity... a bubbling bundle of joy". It is likely that he composed many more popular songs than he has been credited with. When in financial difficulties, he had a habit of selling songs to other writers and performers who claimed them as their own.[3] He died from pneumonia, aged 39.
Early life
Waller was the seventh child of 11 (five of whom survived childhood) born to Adeline Locket Waller, a musician, and Reverend Edward Martin Waller, a trucker and pastor in New York City.[4][5] He started playing the piano when he was six and began playing the organ at his father's church four years later. His mother instructed him in his youth, and he attended other music lessons, paying for them by working in a grocery store.[4] Waller attended DeWitt Clinton High School for one semester, but left school at 15 to work as an organist at the Lincoln Theater in Harlem, where he earned $32 a week.[6][7] Within 12 months he had composed his first rag. He was the prize pupil and later the friend and colleague of the stride pianist James P. Johnson.[8] Waller also studied composition at the Juilliard School with Carl Bohm and Leopold Godowsky.[9] His mother died on November 10, 1920, from a stroke due to diabetes.[10]
Waller's first recordings, "Muscle Shoals Blues" and "Birmingham Blues," were made in October 1922 for Okeh Records.[11] That year, he also made his first player piano roll, "Got to Cool My Doggies Now".[11] Waller's first published composition, "Squeeze Me", was published in 1924.[4]
Career
Pianist and composer Oscar Levant called Waller "the black Horowitz".[12] Working with his long-time songwriting partner, lyricist Andy Razaf, Fats also wrote the music and/or performed in several successful Broadway musicals, including 1928's Keep Shufflin',[13] 1929's Hot Chocolates[14] and (with lyricist George Marion Jr.) 1943's Early To Bed.[15]
Waller is believed to have composed many novelty tunes in the 1920s and 1930s and sold them for small sums,[3] attributed to another composer and lyricist.[16]
Biographer Barry Singer offered circumstantial evidence that this song was written by Waller and lyricist Andy Razaf and provided a description of the sale given by Waller to the New York Post in 1929–he sold the song for $500 to a white songwriter for use in a financially successful show (consistent with Jimmy McHugh's contributions to Harry Delmar's Revels, 1927, and then to Blackbirds of 1928).[3] He noted that early handwritten manuscripts in the Dana Library Institute of Jazz Studies of "Spreadin' Rhythm Around" (Jimmy McHugh 1935) are in Waller's hand.[3][18] Jazz historian Paul S. Machlin commented that the Singer conjecture has "considerable [historical] justification".[19] According to a biography by Waller's son Maurice, Waller told his son never to play the song within earshot because he had to sell it when he needed money.[5] Maurice Waller wrote that his father objected to hearing "On the Sunny Side of the Street" on the radio.[16] The famous songwriting team of Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields said the song was inspired by their watching a young couple window shopping at Tiffany's.
The anonymous sleeve notes on the 1960 RCA Victor album Handful of Keys state that Waller copyrighted over 400 songs, many of them co-written with his closest collaborator, Andy Razaf. Razaf described his partner as "the soul of melody ... a man who made the piano sing ... both big in body and in mind ... known for his generosity ... a bubbling bundle of joy". In the same notes are comments by clarinetist Gene Sedric, who recorded with Waller in the 1930s. "Fats was the most relaxed man I ever saw in a studio, and so he made everybody else relaxed. After a balance had been taken, we'd just need one take to make a side, unless it was a kind of difficult number."
According to Waller, he was kidnapped in Chicago while 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 taking place. With a 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 was relieved that the kidnappers had no intention of killing him.[20]
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 composition "Lenox Avenue Blues." Although he recorded with several 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 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.[21]
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, from the Alexandra Palace studios in London, performing "I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby," "Honeysuckle Rose," "Neglected," "Hallelujah," and "Truckin'".[22] 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 occasionally performed Bach organ pieces for small groups. He influenced many pre-bebop jazz pianists; Count Basie and Erroll Garner both revived his hit songs. In addition to his playing, Waller was known for his humorous 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. In April 1927, Waller played the organ at the Vendome in Chicago for movies alongside Louis Armstrong, where his organ playing was praised for "witty cueing" and "eccentric stop coupling."[23]
Waller's RCA Victor recording of "A Little Bit Independent," written by Joe Burke and Edgar Leslie, was No. 1 on Your Hit Parade for two weeks in 1935. He also charted with "Whose Honey Are You?", "Lulu's Back in Town," "Sweet and Low," "Truckin'", "Rhythm and Romance," "Sing an Old Fashioned Song to a Young Sophisticated Lady," "West Wind," "All My Life," "It's a Sin to Tell a Lie," "Let's Sing Again," "Cross Patch," "You're Not the Kind," "Bye Bye Baby," "You're Laughing at Me," "I Love to Whistle," "Good for Nothing," "Two Sleepy People", and "Little Curly Hair in a Highchair."[24]
Soundies
Today's audiences can see and hear Waller performing his own works in Soundies musical films. These three-minute selections were filmed in 1941 in New York, by producer Fred Waller (no relation) and director Warren Murray. Waller filmed four songs: "Ain't Misbehavin'", "Honeysuckle Rose," "Your Feet's Too Big," and "The Joint Is Jumpin'". The films originally played in coin-operated movie jukeboxes and were later reprinted for home movies, television, and video.[25]
Broadway musicals
Later in Waller's career, he had the distinction of becoming the first African-American songwriter to compose a hit Broadway musical that was seen by a mostly white audience. Broadway producer Richard Kollmar's hiring of Waller to create the 1943 musical Early to Bed was recalled in a 2016 essay about Waller by John McWhorter.
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 [of Early to Bed] 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.[26]
Six months after the premiere of Early to Bed, it was still playing in a Broadway theater; at that point, newspapers reported Waller's premature death.
Personal life
In 1920, Waller married Edith Hatch, with whom he had a son, Thomas Waller Jr., in 1921. In 1923, Hatch divorced Waller.[27] Waller married Anita Rutherford in 1926.[28] Together, they had a son, Maurice Thomas Waller, born on September 10, 1927.[29] In 1928, Waller and Rutherford had their second son, Ronald Waller.[27]
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.[30]
Death and descendants
Waller contracted pneumonia and died on December 15, 1943, while traveling aboard the famous cross-country Los Angeles–Chicago train the Super Chief near Kansas City, Missouri. Waller was returning to New York City from Los Angeles, after the smash success of Stormy Weather, and a successful engagement at the Zanzibar Room in Santa Monica, California, during which he had fallen ill.[31]:6 More than 4,200 people were estimated to have attended his funeral at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem,[31]:7 which prompted Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who delivered the eulogy, to say that Waller "always played to a packed house."[32] Afterwards, he was cremated and his ashes were scattered over Harlem from an airplane piloted by an unidentified African-American World War I aviator.[33]
Waller had many admirers, during and after his heyday. In 1939, while nightclubbing in Harlem, Waller discovered a white stride pianist playing Waller tunes– the young Harry Gibson. Waller tipped him handsomely and then hired him to be his relief pianist during his own performances.
Waller also had contemporaries in recording studios. Waller recorded for Victor, so Decca Records hired singer-pianist Bob Howard for recordings aimed at Waller's audience, and Columbia Records followed suit with Putney Dandridge.
Probably the most talented pianist to keep the music of 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."[35]
Actor and bandleader Conrad Janis also did a lot to keep the stride piano music of 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.[36]
A Broadway musical showcasing Waller tunes entitled Ain't Misbehavin' was produced in 1978 and featured Nell Carter, Andre de Shields, Armelia McQueen, Ken Page, and Charlaine Woodard. (The show and 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 at the Ambassador Theatre with the original Broadway Cast. Performed by five African-American actors, the show included such songs as "Honeysuckle Rose," "This Joint Is Jumpin'", and "Ain't Misbehavin'."
Waller's recordings were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, a special Grammy Award established in 1973 to honour recordings that are at least 25 years old and that have "qualitative or historical significance."
In Michel Gondry's 2008 film Be Kind Rewind, the character Elroy Fletcher (portrayed by Danny Glover) tried to find proof that Fats Waller was born in Passaic, New Jersey at the site of his titular video rental store. He was unable to find any proof of it. Later on in the film, after the "Sweded" videos were destroyed because of copyright violations, his employer Mike (portrayed by Mos Def) led him and some people in their neighborhood in making an alternate history documentary about Fats Waller with Mike portraying Fats Waller.[42]
”Ain't Misbehavin'” by Fats Waller is featured in Diamond City Radio, a virtual station in the video game, Fallout 4, and likewise in its successor, Fallout 76, in its virtual Appalachia Radio. Included in the games' soundtracks, the composition enhances the retro post-apocalyptic atmosphere, receiving positive player reception for its nostalgic and immersive contribution to the experience.[45] Fats Waller's "Jitterbug Waltz" also stars in 2007's BioShock.
Andy Razaf was an American poet, composer, and lyricist of such well-known songs as "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Honeysuckle Rose".
Ain't Misbehavin' is a musical revue with a book by Murray Horwitz and Richard Maltby Jr., and music by various composers and lyricists as arranged and orchestrated by Luther Henderson. It is named after the song by Fats Waller, "Ain't Misbehavin'".
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1929.
James Price Johnson was an American pianist and composer. A pioneer of stride piano, he was one of the most important pianists in the early era of recording, and like Jelly Roll Morton, one of the key figures in the evolution of ragtime into what was eventually called jazz. Johnson was a major influence on Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, and Fats Waller, who was his student.
Stride jazz piano, often shortened to stride, is a jazz piano style that arose from ragtime players. Prominent stride pianists include James P. Johnson, Willie "the Lion" Smith, Fats Waller, Luckey Roberts, and Mary Lou Williams.
Harry Brooks was an American writer of popular songs, jazz pianist and composer in the 1920s to the early 1950s.
"Ain't Misbehavin'" is a 1929 stride jazz/early swing song. Andy Razaf wrote the lyrics to a score by Thomas "Fats" Waller and Harry Brooks for the Broadway musical comedy play Connie's Hot Chocolates. As a work from 1929 with its copyright renewed, it will enter the American public domain on January 1, 2025.
You Were Meant for Me is a 1948 musical film directed by Lloyd Bacon and starring Dan Dailey and Jeanne Crain as a bandleader and his wife. It was released by 20th Century Fox. The film includes performances of "You Were Meant for Me", "I'll Get By ", and "Ain't Misbehavin'".
"Honeysuckle Rose" is a 1929 song composed by Thomas "Fats" Waller with lyrics by Andy Razaf. It was introduced in the 1929 Off-Broadway revue "Load of Coal" at Connie's Inn as a soft-shoe dance number. Waller's 1934 recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
"(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue" is a 1929 jazz standard and racial protest song composed by Fats Waller and Harry Brooks with lyrics by Andy Razaf.
Jay Cee Johnson, usually known as J. C. Johnson and in some sources, mistakenly, as James C. Johnson, was an American pianist and songwriter, best known for his collaborations with Fats Waller and Bessie Smith.
Ain't Misbehavin' is a 1979 album by Clark Terry, focusing on the music on Fats Waller. Terry is joined by pianist Oscar Peterson and the singer Johnny Hartman.
Plays Fats Waller is an album by American jazz organist Jimmy Smith featuring performances of tunes associated with Fats Waller, recorded on January 23, 1962 and released on Blue Note later that year.
The period from the end of the First World War until the start of the Depression in 1929 is known as the "Jazz Age". Jazz had become popular music in America, although older generations considered the music immoral and threatening to cultural values. Dances such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom were very popular during the period, and jazz bands typically consisted of seven to twelve musicians. Important orchestras in New York were led by Fletcher Henderson, Paul Whiteman and Duke Ellington. Many New Orleans jazzmen had moved to Chicago during the late 1910s in search of employment; among others, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and Jelly Roll Morton recorded in the city. However, Chicago's importance as a center of jazz music started to diminish toward the end of the 1920s in favor of New York.
Dinah Washington Sings Fats Waller is a seventh studio album by blues, R&B and jazz singer Dinah Washington released on the Emarcy label, and reissued by Verve Records in 1990 as The Fats Waller Songbook. In the album Washington covers 12 songs that have been penned or performed by jazz pianist, organist, singer and songwriter Fats Waller. Allmusic details the album in its review as saying: "Dinah Washington Sings Fats Waller appropriately brings together Waller's vivacious songs and Washington's demonstrative vocal talents. The jazz diva effortlessly handles Waller classics while turning in particularly emotive renditions. Adding nice variety to the already strong set, Washington's husband at the time, saxophonist Eddie Chamblee, joins the singer for playful duets on "Honeysuckle Rose" and "Everybody Loves My Baby".
"Viper's Drag" is a stride piano composition by the jazz pianist, composer, and arranger Thomas "Fats" Waller.
All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller is an album by Jason Moran paying tribute to pianist/composer Fats Waller which was released on the Blue Note label.
Ain't Misbehavin' is an album by pianist Hank Jones featuring tunes associated with Fats Waller recorded in 1978 for the Galaxy label and released in 1985.
A Tribute to Fats Waller is a solo album by pianist Jay McShann that was recorded in 1978 and first released by the Canadian Sackville label as an LP before being reissued on the compilation CD Solos & Duets.
↑ Pelisson, Gerard J.; Garvey III, James A. (2009). The Castle on the Parkway. Scarsdale, New York: The Hutch Press. p.40.
↑ Ivy, James (2011). "Waller, Fats (1904–1943)". In Price, Emmett G. (ed.). Encyclopedia of African American Music. Santa Barbara: Greenwood. pp.986–987.
1 2 Bromberg, Howard (2012). "Waller, Fats". In Rollyson, Carl (ed.). The Twenties in America. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press. pp.904–905.
↑ Palmer, David (1976). All You Need Is love: The Story of Popular Music. Grossman. ISBN0670114480.
↑ "Keep Shufflin'". Playbill.com. Playbill, Inc. February 27, 1928. Retrieved January 26, 2021. Keep Shufflin' – Music: Thomas "Fats" Waller – "On The White Keys"
↑ "Hot Chocolates". Playbill.com. Playbill, Inc. June 20, 1929. Retrieved January 26, 2021. Thomas "Fats" Waller – Music
↑ "Early To Bed". Playbill.com. Playbill, Inc. June 17, 1943. Retrieved January 26, 2021. Thomas "Fats" Waller – Music
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.
Taylor, Stephen (2006). Fats Waller on the Air: The Radio Broadcasts & Discography. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. ISBN0810856565.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fats Waller.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
