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Fats Waller
American jazz pianist and composer (1904–1943) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller (May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943) was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, and singer.[2] 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, respectively.[3]
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.[4] He died from pneumonia, aged 39.
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Early life
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Thomas Wright Waller was born in New York City on May 21, 1904, the seventh child of eleven (five of whom survived childhood). His parents were Adeline Waller (née Lockett), a musician, and Edward Martin Waller, a Baptist lay preacher and teamster; they originated from rural Virginia but moved to New York after marrying at the age of 16 in the hope of better employment, housing and education prospects.[5][6][7] Thomas Waller started playing the piano at the age of six, and later played the reed organ at his father's open-air services. He also studied the double bass and violin, paying for music lessons by working in a grocery store.[6][7] From an early age he proved adept at playing by ear, and was inspired by hearing Ignacy Jan Paderewski perform at Carnegie Hall. The nickname "Fats" dates from around this time, on account of his being overweight.[8]
Waller's mother Adeline developed diabetes, which made her weak; consequently the family moved to an apartment with fewer stairs, in central Harlem. The post-war period saw Harlem become populated with bars and clubs which featured live music, fuelling Waller's artistic aspirations.[9] Waller attended DeWitt Clinton High School for a short period of time,[a] but left to pursue his ambition to become a professional musician.[12] He briefly worked polishing jewel boxes and delivering illicit alcoholic drinks during prohibition, with the wages allowing him to afford piano lessons,[13] and at the age of 15 he became an organist at the Lincoln Theatre,[14] where he earned $32 a week.[6] This position allowed him to practise his stagecraft and improvisation.[15]
Edward Waller disapproved of his son's career in music due to his strict religious beliefs, which was a continual source of tension between them. Waller's mother Adeline, who encouraged his aspirations, acted as a mediating influence,[16] but she died on November 10, 1920, from a stroke due to her diabetes.[17] Shortly thereafter Waller moved out to live with a friend, who also knew pianist James P. Johnson,[18] a leading figure of the burgeoning Harlem stride style.[19] The two first met when Waller was aged 16,[14] and Johnson began to teach Waller piano and introduce him to important figures on the Harlem music scene such as Eubie Blake, Willie Gant, Cliff Jackson, Duke Ellington and Willie "the Lion" Smith, bringing him to rent parties where they would perform.[20] Johnson continued to be a friend and mentor throughout Waller's life.[14]
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Career
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1920s
In 1921 Waller was invited to accompany the vaudeville group Liza and Her Shufflin' Six on a tour of the northeast of the U.S., having impressed Liza with his organ playing at the Lincoln Theatre.[21][22] While in Boston he met Count Basie, who asked for organ lessons – these took place back in New York, in the Lincoln.[23] After his return Waller played his first rent party, having improved dramatically from practise and his lessons with James P. Johnson,[24][25] and he continued to perform at these, as well as undertake short-term contracts at nightclubs and cabarets.[26] Waller's steady job at the Lincoln Theatre transferred to the Lafayette Theatre after a change of management.[27]
Via his friend Clarence Williams, a Tin Pan Alley music publisher, Waller became involved with the new recording label Okeh Records. He was originally slated to accompany Sara Martin in "Sugar Blues", but failed to attend the recording session; Williams played instead, which launched his performing career.[28] Williams convinced Fred Hager, the head of artists and repertoire for Okeh, to try Waller again,[29] and his first recordings were "Muscle Shoals Blues" and "Birmingham Blues" in October 1922.[30] In December he accompanied Martin in "Mama's Got the Blues" and "Last Go Round Blues".[30] James P. Johnson got Waller work recording piano rolls for QRS, the first of which was "Got to Cool My Doggies Now", recorded in March 1923.[31] In the summer of that year Waller began composing original pieces, his first being "Wildcat Blues", with lyrics by Williams. The pair collaborated on over 70 songs during the subsequent five years, including "Squeeze Me".[32]
Waller continued to accompany blues singers in recordings, play rent parties, and perform at nightclubs, gaining exposure.[33] During this period he met Andy Razaf, a lyricist with whom he collaborated extensively, and who encouraged him to sing as well as play the piano.[34] He met J. C. Johnson in 1923, and began collaborating with him as well.[35] Waller became known for his prolific output of catchy songs, although did not copyright any of them, instead selling them outright to publishers or performing them without getting them published. In 1926 he composed for two revues with Spencer Williams.[33]
In 1926, Waller began his association with the Victor Talking Machine Company (later RCA Victor) after being contacted by Ralph Peer. On November 17, 1926, he recorded "St. Louis Blues" and his composition "Lenox Avenue Blues", his first solo recordings,[36] and on December 1, 1927, he recorded "Red Hot Dan" with Thomas Morris, the first recording of Waller singing.[37][38]
1929 saw the composition of some of Waller's most highly-regarded songs, such as "Ain't Misbehavin'" (for the revue Hot Chocolates), "I've Got a Feeling I'm Falling", "Honeysuckle Rose" (for the revue Load of Coal), and "Black and Blue".[39][40] To avoid having to pay more in child support to Edith, whom he had divorced in 1923, Waller sold the rights for twenty of his songs (including "Ain't Misbehavin'") to Irving Mills for $500. This was a small fraction of their value.[41][42] As a consequence he earned only the musician's share of the royalties from the subsequent recordings.[43]
1930s
Waller's radio career began in December 1930, when he featured on a new show for CBS playing the piano and, unusually until this point, singing.[44] Joe Davis, who had become Waller's publisher and manager after the sale of his material to Irving Mills, began to market Waller as a singer as well as a pianist, and he recorded the solo songs "I'm Crazy about My Baby" and "Draggin' My Heart Around" on March 31, 1931.[45]
Waller began to play regularly at the Hot Feet Club, where he developed his storytelling asides and style as a raconteur: "the cocked eye brow, the finger punctuating the air for emphasis, and eyes rolling heavenward whenever he said something blue".[46] In the summer of 1931 he visited Paris with Spencer Williams, playing in the city's nightclubs and enjoying the much lower levels of racial discrimination and absence of prohibition.[47] Davis appointed Marty Bloom as Waller's manager after Waller's return,[48] but Bloom resigned the position shortly thereafter and it was taken by Phil Ponce, who was experienced in showbusiness and had established and managed the Ponce Sisters.[49]
Ponce decided to focus on Waller's radio career, and secured a two-year contract with WLW in Cincinnati, where he was given his own program, "Fats Waller's Rhythm Club".[50][41] Waller also played for their show "Moon River", but was not credited due to his own show's "raucous and comedic reputation".[51] After the contract ended in late 1933, Waller moved back to New York.[52] A sequence of CBS radio performances in March and April of 1934 provided extensive publicity,[41] and led to his own regular show, "The Rhythm Club", as well as regular appearances on other CBS programs.[53]
This radio success led to RCA Victor offering a recording contract, assuming that the records would at least sell well in the black community, but they unexpectedly proved to have wide appeal, and became bestsellers.[54] Victor arranged for tours for Waller and a group of musicians as the Fats Waller Band in 1935, and while back in New York during breaks between fixtures the group recorded a number of songs, the most popular of which was "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter".[55] Part of the tour involved promoting the release of the film Hooray for Love, in which Waller had appeared earlier that year, and the success of this publicity activity led to him featuring in King of Burlesque.[56]
The band continued to tour and record over the next few years, but Waller's drinking became heavier and his behavior more erratic, and interest from promoters declined after a racially-motivated boycott led to poorly-attended events in South Carolina and Florida in 1937.[57] Ed Kirkeby had taken over as manager in 1935 due to Ponce's ill health, and he attempted to revive domestic interest in Waller by arranging a tour of Britain and Scandinavia in 1938, where jazz was increasing in popularity.[58] The tour was a great success, with Waller recording for HMV and appearing on the new medium of television in addition to his live performances, but it was curtailed due to the threat of invasion from Nazi Germany.[59] Waller had been developing his interest in composition and classical music, inspired by George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F. He began to incorporate more classical themes into his music, and took up the violin.[60] While in London he composed the impressionist London Suite, representing different areas of the city he had visited, and this was recorded by HMV.[61]
1940s
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The tour in Europe revived Waller's career in the US. He was in high demand as an accompanist on recordings, but the Victor contract was exclusive, so he was credited as "Maurice Waller", his son's name. Victor marketed Waller as a comic performer, with songs such as "You Run Your Mouth, I'll Run My Business".[62] In 1941 he recorded four Soundies – short musical films of "Ain't Misbehavin'", "Honeysuckle Rose," "Your Feet's Too Big," and "The Joint Is Jumpin'".[63] He toured the US, often staging surprise concerts to entertain the troops at the local military post.[64]
Waller's interest in more "serious" music continued, and on January 14, 1942 he staged a concert in Carnegie Hall in an attempt to make audiences take jazz more seriously.[65] The concert was received well by the audience, although at least one critic gave it a mixed review,[66] possibly because Waller had become drunk during the interval.[67]
Irving Mills had become a film producer, and in early 1943 engaged Waller to perform songs including "Ain't Misbehavin'" (which he owned the rights to) in Stormy Weather.[68][66] Upon returning to New York, he began to compose for the musical Early to Bed, which premiered in Boston on May 24, 1943. It received positive reviews, and was staged at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway on June 17.[69] Waller was the first black composer to write a Broadway show for a white cast.[70]
Compositions
Waller is believed to have composed many songs in the 1920s and 1930s and sold them for small sums,[4] attributed to another composer and lyricist.[71]
Standards attributed to Waller, sometimes controversially, include "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby". The song was made famous by Adelaide Hall in the Broadway show Blackbirds of 1928.[72] 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).[4] 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.[4][73][page needed] Jazz historian Paul S. Machlin commented that the Singer conjecture has "considerable [historical] justification".[74] 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.[75] Maurice Waller wrote that his father objected to hearing "On the Sunny Side of the Street" on the radio.[76]
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Personal life
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In 1920, Waller married Edith Hatch,[77] and the couple moved in with Edith's parents as they were unable to afford their own home. Edith's parents disapproved of Waller's career as a musician, considering it unfit for a newly-married man.[78] They found their own apartment,[79] and Edith gave birth to a son, Thomas Waller Jr., in 1921.[77] She was unhappy being married to a working musician, with its financial insecurity and unsociable hours, and felt that she and their son deserved more of Waller's time and attention.[80] In 1923 they divorced, with an agreement for Waller to pay $35 per week in child support and alimony.[81] Waller persistently failed to pay this, prompting Edith to take him to court several times, and he spent time in jail on Welfare Island.[82] His will left her the minimum amount allowed by law, with the stipulation that this should be reduced to nothing in the event that the law change to permit this between the time of writing and his death.[83]
Waller married Anita Rutherford, whom he knew in childhood and met again while playing at the Lincoln Theatre, in 1926.[84] They had a son, Maurice Thomas Waller, born on September 10, 1927.[85] In 1928, Waller and Rutherford had their second son, Ronald Waller.[24]
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.[86]
Death
Waller's health began to decline in 1939 or 1940, with heavy alcohol drinking, working late hours, and excessive food consumption being contributing factors (he reportedly weighed about 285 pounds (129 kg) at the time of his death).[87][88] He contracted influenza while playing a series of events at the Zanzibar Room in Hollywood in October 1943, but disregarded a doctor's recommendation to go to hospital and stop drinking.[89]
Waller died of pneumonia in the early morning of December 15, 1943, while returning to New York on the Santa Fe Chief, as the train was stopped at Kansas City Union Station.[90] His funeral took place at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, the church his parents had joined after first moving to the city from Virginia. More than 4,200 people were estimated to have attended, which prompted Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who delivered the eulogy, to observe that Waller "always played to a packed house".[91] Afterwards he was cremated, and his ashes were scattered over Harlem from an airplane piloted by a World War I and Spanish Civil War pilot known as the "Black Ace".[92]
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Influence
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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."[93]
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.[94]
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'."
In 1981, Thin Lizzy released the album Renegade, which contained the song "Fats", co-written by Phil Lynott and Snowy White as a tribute to Waller.[95]
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Recognition and awards
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."
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Selected works
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Recordings
Waller features in hundreds of recordings.[97] JSP Records released a complete collection of the known extant recordings:
- 1922-29 - The Complete Recorded Works Vol. 1: Messin' Around With The Blues (4xCD) (JSP, 2007)
- 1930-34 - The Complete Recorded Works Vol. 2: A Handful Of Keys (4xCD) (JSP, 2006)
- 1934-36 - The Complete Recorded Works Vol. 3: Rhythm And Romance (4xCD) (JSP, 2007)
- 1936-38 - The Complete Recorded Works Vol. 4: New York, Chicago & Hollywood (4xCD) (JSP, 2007)
- 1938-40 - The Complete Recorded Works Vol. 5: New York, London & Chicago (4xCD) (JSP, 2008)
- 1940-43 - The Complete Recorded Works Vol. 6: New York, Chicago & Hollywood (4xCD) (JSP, 2008)
Instrumental
Piano solo
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Organ solo
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Songs
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Stage
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Film
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See also
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
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