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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.[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, respectively.[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.
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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.[4][5][6] 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.[5][6] 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.[7]
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.[8] Waller attended DeWitt Clinton High School for a short period of time,[a] but left to pursue his ambition to become a professional musician.[11] He briefly worked polishing jewel boxes and delivering illicit alcoholic drinks during prohibition, with the wages allowing him to afford piano lessons,[12] and at the age of 15 he became an organist at the Lincoln Theatre,[13] where he earned $32 a week.[5] This position allowed him to practise his stagecraft and improvisation.[14]
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,[15] but she died on November 10, 1920, from a stroke due to her diabetes.[16] Shortly thereafter Waller moved out to live with a friend, who also knew pianist James P. Johnson,[17] a leading figure of the burgeoning Harlem stride style.[18] The two first met when Waller was aged 16,[13] 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.[19] Johnson continued to be a friend and mentor throughout Waller's life.[13]
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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.[20][21] While in Boston he met Count Basie, who asked for organ lessons – these took place back in New York, in the Lincoln.[22] After his return Waller played his first rent party, having improved dramatically from practise and his lessons with James P. Johnson,[23][24] and he continued to perform at these, as well as undertake short-term contracts at nightclubs and cabarets.[25] Waller's steady job at the Lincoln Theatre transferred to the Lafayette Theatre after a change of management.[26]
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.[27] Williams convinced Fred Hager, the head of artists and repertoire for Okeh, to try Waller again,[28] and his first recordings were "Muscle Shoals Blues" and "Birmingham Blues" in October 1922.[29] In December he accompanied Sara Martin in "Mama's Got the Blues" and "Last Go Round Blues".[29] 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.[30] 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".[31]
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 frightened Waller realized he was the "surprise guest" at Capone's birthday party, where he was generously tipped to perform requests over the course of three days.[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, and others in 1928 and 1929. 1929 also saw the composition of some of his most highly-regarded songs, such as "Ain't Misbehavin'", "I've Got a Feeling I'm Falling", "Honeysuckle Rose", and "Black and Blue". With white musicians he recorded ensemble pieces in the group "Fats Waller and His Buddies", notable as one of the first times a black musician was given top billing in a group's name.[33]
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.[36]
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."[37]
1930s
Waller 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'".[38] 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 the feature film 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'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."[39]
Compositions
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.[40]
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.[41] 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][42][page needed] Jazz historian Paul S. Machlin commented that the Singer conjecture has "considerable [historical] justification".[43] 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.[44] Maurice Waller wrote that his father objected to hearing "On the Sunny Side of the Street" on the radio.[45] 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.[citation needed]
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."[citation needed]
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.[46]
Broadway musicals
Working with his long-time songwriting partner, lyricist Andy Razaf, Waller also wrote the music and/or performed in several successful Broadway musicals, including 1928's Keep Shufflin',[47] 1929's Hot Chocolates.[48]
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. ... Kollmar's original choice for composer [of Early to Bed] was Ferde Grofé ... 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. ... 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.[49]
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.[citation needed]
Pianist and composer Oscar Levant called Waller "the black Horowitz".[50]
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Personal life
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In 1920, Waller married Edith Hatch,[51] 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.[52] They found their own apartment,[53] and Edith gave birth to a son, Thomas Waller Jr., in 1921.[51] 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.[54] In 1923 they divorced, with an agreement for Waller to pay $35 per week in child support and alimony.[55] Waller persistently failed to pay this, prompting Edith to take him to court several times, and he spent time in jail on Welfare Island.[56] 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.[57]
Waller married Anita Rutherford, whom he knew in childhood and met again while playing at the Lincoln Theatre, in 1926.[58] They had a son, Maurice Thomas Waller, born on September 10, 1927.[59] In 1928, Waller and Rutherford had their second son, Ronald Waller.[23]
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.[60]
Death and descendants
Waller died of pneumonia during the night of December 14–15, 1943, while traveling on a train to New York City. He was returning from the filming of Stormy Weather in California and a subsequent engagement at the Zanzibar Room in Hollywood, during which he had fallen ill. 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".[61] 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".[62]
American football player Darren Waller is his great-grandson.[63]
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Tribute artists
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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."[64]
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.[65]
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.[66]
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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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In popular culture
- Waller is the subject of the Irish poet Michael Longley's "Elegy for Fats Waller".[68]
- Waller's version of "Louisiana Fairytale" was used for many years as the theme song to the American television series This Old House.[69]
- Waller's church organ music featured prominently in David Lynch's film Eraserhead in 1977.[70]
- In Michel Gondry's 2008 film Be Kind Rewind, the character Mike (portrayed by Mos Def) believes that Fats Waller was born in Passaic, New Jersey at the site of the titular video rental store. Later on in the film, after the "Sweded" videos were destroyed because of copyright violations, he, his employer Mr. Fletcher (portrayed by Danny Glover) and some people in their neighborhood make an alternate history documentary about Fats Waller with Mike portraying Fats Waller.[71]
- The story of Fats Waller's performance at Al Capone's birthday party was told in the Mysteries at the Museum Season 21 episode "Columbus and the Mermaid, Skyscraper Snafu and Stealing the Show".[72]
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Selected works
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Recordings
Waller features in hundreds of recordings.[73] 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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