CONTINUOUS FATS: May 21 to December 15

All piano players, Jazz Bands, Singers and fans of Swing are invited to play or stream a Thomas ‘Fats’ Waller video between his birthday and DOD. Why, in these trying times, because Fats will put a Smile on every face with his Jitterbug, Jive and Swing!

Thomas ‘Fats’ Waller was born in New York on May 21, 1904 and died on a train at age 39 arriving in Kansas City, December 15, 1943!

[Editor’s Note: Over several decades Dan Kassell solicited quotations about Fats Waller from important people in the jazz community; most of what follows are as communicated to Dan, not collected from other sources.] 

When I asked MIKE LIPSKIN why Fats Waller was still recognized, he answered:

“Who was the highest paid Black entertainer in 1938, first significant crossover recording star, and during his short Mozartian life of only 39 years cut more than four hundred recordings? Thomas Fats Waller’. He was born 120 years ago, when phonograph recording was in infancy, piano rolls were big sellers, and rose to fame parallel with the expansion of radio, Movies, and records. Fats excelled in many ways; a gifted and humorous jazz pop singer, a hit song composer and energetic performer, he brought happiness to thousands through the Mid Depression until the middle of WWII as they listened to his countless records, heard him on network radio or had the special joy of seeing him live. He had an ability to take obscure songs that had been on the publishers’ shelves for years and make unique hits of them. “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter”, and “Your Feets Too Big” are just two examples.

Almost never mentioned is Waller’s innate pianistic ability to display warm full voicings of subtly unique chord progressions under his special interpretations of pop song, blues, and his own compositions on solos. One of the greatest stride jazz pianists, he left his mark on Art Tatum, Count Basie, both who idolized him, Erroll Garner, Hazel Scott, Mary Lou Williams, Joe Sullivan and Cleo Brown, and many others. I’ve devoted my life to playing in the stride jazz style, and keeping the memory of this giant of American Music alive.” email 5/14/24.

LORAINE FEATHER, LYRICIST, SINGER
There is controversy over Thomas Waller’s title “Minor Drag” and to confuse the myth evermore “You’re Outta Here” adds a contemporary generational lyric while the expert Dick Hyman plays Fats original on the keys backing the animated cartoon character of feminist Loraine Feather. It’s a creation of George Griffin using Final Cut Pro in a Vimeo release. Watch: https://vimeo.com/10618846

TOM ROBERTS, PIANO
About Fats, expounded, “two fold, as a pianist, technical level. “Beautiful sound he created on a piano – he makes the piano sing, technique is impeccable, time is so patient. That’s not the best thing about him, pales in comparison to the joy he creates, the incredible joy, so much joy. The only other performer – Louis Armstrong – his love of performing, love of life was transforming!

I play popular songs “I’ve Got a Feeling I’m Falling”, or “Sweet Savannah Sue”. I put the record on and learn what he does. You really begin to take on the patterns as I transcribe to learn how to play it! Who plays that style? Don Ewell gets the relaxed quality – the effortlessness. Who else, “Dick Hyman – wonderful, he does a nice Waller. Phone interview 12/1/03.

DICK HYMAN: FATS WALLER AT 114
‘Fats Waller was one of the great formative players in my musical biography. His perfect time, his firm but delicate pianistic touch, his perfect voice-leading and supremely confident humor were all aspects of playing to which we should all aspire.”

“I attended Waller’s recital at Carnegie Hall in 1942 as a high school student, sitting in the upper balcony with a class buddy, watching Fats’ performance degenerate into what we later learned was alcoholic confusion, and still we loved what he did. Since those days, I’ve particularly studied Waller’s earlier recordings going back to the 1920’s. One of these was “The Minor Drag”, to which Lorraine Feather added ingenious and humorous lyrics. She and I recorded the resulting work as an animated cartoon entitled “You’re Outta Here” in 2001, with my solo accompaniment to her singing based on Fats’ memorable 1929 recording. Other instructive piano solos for me were his recordings of “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, “Bach Up to Me”, “Carolina Shout” (composed by Waller’s mentor, James P. Johnson), “Valentine Stomp” and “Viper’s Drag.”

“I also learned about organ playing from various Waller recordings, and much of what I have been able to do on that instrument was based on his approach. As a kid, I particularly liked a session which Victor Records, in their great wisdom, released as the Louisiana Sugar Babies. For these delicate interpretations Fats played organ while James P. Johnson played piano. There were numerous other organ recordings, including solo versions of “I Ain’t Got Nobody” and “Sugar” which inspired me.”

“Waller was also a considerable song composer, and his score for the Broadway musical, “Ain’t Misbehavin’” continues to be performed in local theaters around the country. “Honeysuckle Rose”, “Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now”, “Squeeze Me”, “Stealin’ Apples” and “The Jitterbug Waltz” are other standards which I am likely to play on any solo concert.” Email 5/15/18

JUDY CARMICHAEL, PIANO
“I always play Fats Waller, everybody loves him. He’s so animated and wonderful on film. While I was still playing Ragtime piano I heard “Prince of Wails” — early Count Basie striding like Fats Waller – I went crazy, it was a musical breakthrough for me” KUSF, San Francisco interview with David Reffkin.

MIKE LEDONNE, PIANO
“I never heard Fats Waller – when I learned to play organ – I did! I tried to play some of Fats figures, those little curlicue figures in the right hand”. I saw Dick Wellstood and Judy Carmichael. Studied with Jackie Byard – who wanted to be Fats Waller, as a persona — he based his character on Fats – embodied the spirit, I got close thru him. Phone interview 12/4/03.

MARTY GROSZ AT AGE 74 IN 2004
Many words were written about Thomas (Fats) Waller for the centenary of his birth, but Marty Grosz has been singing Waller’s music and Andy Razaf’s lyrics for years.

“As a pianist, for starters, Grosz marveled over Fats Waller’s “time” and his touch, specifically “the incredible precision of his playing, the weight and clarity of it.” “He’d often start lightly, just walking . . . into . . . it . . . And by the time he’s finished, it’s really rocking. That’s a quality that’s really lost in jazz. Fats was a master of sneaking into things.” And there are his songs, “They’re easy for jazz musicians to play,” “The chords and melodies work in a way that by today’s standards, and some even have a built-in beat, like ‘Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now.'”

AL CASEY, ACOUSTIC GUITARIST
Albert Aloysius Casey passed on to join the band in heaven, leaving with his special brand of guitar that put the Swing-Jazz rhythm in Fats Waller’s Rhythm Boys. When just out of High School he joined Waller until his surprise passing in 1943. In recognition he won the Esquire 1944 Poll and his “Buck Jumpin’” was recorded with Art Tatum and Oscar Pettiford. l organized a group around Casey with Peter Sokolow-piano at the Bickford Theater in Morristown, NJ June 2001 while he was with with the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band.

PETER SOKOLOW, STRIDE PIANIST
“I discovered Fats music through my pianist father who played “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Your Feet’s Too Big”. “I sat down to learn to play piano, I went and got the LP with “Sit Right Down and Blue Turning Gray – I’m totally self taught – I love the comedy, the happy sound – I got everything also!”

GEORGE AVAKIAN, PRODUCER
“My favorites are almost unknown: ‘Sweet and Slow’, ‘I’m Growing Fonder of You’. He should get more attention.” George remembered seeing Fats in person backstage in the Sherman Hotel, Chicago with Marshall Stearns. Questioned at Ray Bryant Trio, Columbia Savings event 3/6/04.

DAN MORGENSTERN, JOURNALIST, AUTHOR
“Fats Waller gave some concerts in Copenhagen. And my mother was hip enough to get tickets for it. So, here is Fats Waller, I had not seen very many black people in my young life, but here is this huge man, Fats Waller, who was well over 6 feet tall and weighed about 350 and he came out in a beautiful white suit of tails and he had a silver top hat, he came out, (laughter) and he took off his top hat and put it on top of the piano and he sat down. And I didn’t know what he was talking about, you know, you heard English all the time, in the movies and on records. But it didn’t matter because he communicated. He was so full of vitality and he had such a beat that just sitting down at the piano playing and singing, he totally charmed me. And that was it. I mean, that … that was it, and I won’t say that from that moment on I knew that I was gonna’ become … Director of The Institute of Jazz Studies! That was just (snapped his finger), gradually bit by bit, it came together. It started out with that, naturally, I wanted to get some records by Fats and so on. My transcribed interview, Borders Books, Kips Bay, “Jazz Talk” 2/5/01.

BILLY TAYLOR REMEMBERED FATS IN DC
Dan Kassell: Well I want to thank you in advance for joining me this morning.

Billy Taylor: My pleasure, Dan. Well, you know – Fats Waller is a special man. He was my first big influence. My Uncle Bob was a big Fats Waller and Willie the Lion fan, you know. And he laid that on me that was the way he played, because those were the group of guys that he liked. But I kept bugging him about teaching me. Three quarters all my father’s brothers were musicians. I kept bugging him saying “I want to do that.” And he said “Oh, no, you go study the music and make sure you got piano lessons and everything”.

DK: What age were you then?

BT: I was what? Six or seven, somethin’ like that. And he said “I want you to listen to this guy.” Fats Waller was accessible. And I said “Man, this guy was you know like in theories, curly notes and hearing the kinds of things that really . . . it was so cleanly played, and so rhythmical, and it had elements that were much more appealing to me than any other music that I was hearing at that time as a kid. You know, and I’m not talking about his singing.

Everybody, you know . . . he’s famous as a singer. And of course that was what I heard a lot of because he was so famous, but I’m always listening, you know, when he’d stop singin’ and somethin’ else was goin’ on and I’d say “Oh, man, that was gorgeous!” So Waller was highly placed in my head at that time. That was something that I said “Gee, I just want to do that. Cuz’ this is so gorgeous.”

DK: In 1950, I heard, at eight years old, “Your Feet’s Too Big”. My parents would go to 52nd Street, hear music live, come home with fantastic stories of the night life and on those 10″ records and it was fun, it was humorous. And as a kid, I heard the lyrics and I knew it was fun but there was something infectious about the joy he brought to the music that was easy to get.

BT: Well, that was a quality that he presented in all of . . . it’s in everything he did . . . all of his playing had that quality. I mean, whether he was playing with Louis Armstrong or whether he was playing one of those shows. When I began to really listen to Fats Waller, the fun thing for me was when he did a show at the Howard Theater in Washington and he was the star. There was another pianist, who played the show, I know the guy, he was a wonderful . . . he was a fine pianist, himself. Anyway, he was playing with the band and at some point in the show they would always have this battle where the musicians would heckle him, “Oh, Fats, he’s getting’ you tonight.” Or, “He’s gonna’ get you.” Sayin’ “You better not come out again.” And all of this stuff, and putting him on. And he said “Oh, no, I got him. I got him.” It’s on one of the records that he did like that. Publicist Arnold Jay Smith arranged the private interview at the International Association of Jazz Educators Convention 1/24/04.

DAVE BRUBECK TRAVELED 40 MILES TO BUY HIS FIRST JAZZ RECORD
Another delightful surprise happened after listening to Dave Brubeck play “Sunny Side of the Street” as a Jazz Masters recipient at the IAJE Convention in New York then queried him by telephone about Fats Waller to discover:

Dave Brubeck: “I never saw him in person. The first record I ever bought was Fats Waller’s ‘Let’s Be Fair and Square in Love’ and ‘There’s Honey on the Moon Tonight’.”

DB: “And I wrote a piece called ‘Mr. Fats’, which I’ve recorded”.

DB: “And the only other story that I can tell you is I was working with Cleo Brown, When Fats died, the members of the band wanted Cleo to take Fats’ place!” Phone Interview 2/3/04

MOSAIC RELEASED UNKNOWN RECORDING
The National Jazz Museum in Harlem obtained The Savory Collection with a then unknown version of “Honeysuckle Rose” by the song’s composer, Fats Waller. Released by MOSAIC on three CD’s. It’s a Fats jam with Jack Teagarden, brother Charlie Teagarden, Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Condon, Bud Freeman, Charlie Shavers, Artie Shapiro and drummer Zutty Singleton that Loren Schoenberg, Senior Scholar, described as “the essence of joyful expression. . . . written by one of the greatest jazz pianists and composer of jazz’s earliest years. Fats Waller really means a lot to us because he’s a Harlem musician. Raised here. His father was a minister in Harlem. And Fats really rose up through the Harlem music scene and succeeded here before he became internationally famous as a bandleader, singer, and entertainer.”

Let’s just go into the tune itself. “Honeysuckle Rose” is a relatively simple melody that’s repeated over and over again. And yet, or maybe because of that, it became a musician’s favorite not long after it was written. It was a tune that musicians loved to jam on because the chord sequence and the melody offered kind of a blank slate. The tune was written with his lyricist Andy Razaf in 1929 for an off-Broadway review called “Load of Coal” done at Connie’s Inn and was originally a soft shoe dance number.” Release notes 2011.

A LAST RECOLLECTION OF FATS
“I put Fats on the train (in 1943), he said he wanted to get home to New York for some home cookin’” —Juanita Boisseau, Cotton Club Dancer

At a showcase of “Shades of Harlem” a musical last fall in upper Manhattan’s Harlem an original Cotton Club gal was announced as “being in the movie ‘Stormy Weather’ – Juanita Boisseau, age 91!” After the performance, Jaunita (you should have seen her gorgeous complection and imagine what she must have looked like to those Harlem men 50 years ago). I asked if she knew guitarist Al Casey when he played with Fats Waller? She replied to my surprise, “I put Fats on the train (after the last Hollywood farewell 1934 party), he said he wanted to get home to New York for some home cookin’,” and added, “I was also in the line in a Fats movie short (“Ain’t Misbehavin'”- 1941 Soundie), one of the Jones sisters, I was sittin’ on the piano.”