Most of the major jazz musicians excelled in one or two areas. For example Jack Teagarden, the subject of last month’s Profiles In Jazz, was a great trombonist and singer. The remarkable Duke Ellington was brilliant in four different ways, as composer, arranger, bandleader and pianist. However Fats Waller topped them all with his contributions in five different but overlapping areas.
First and foremost, Waller was one of jazz’s greatest stride pianists, following in the footsteps and eventually surpassing his mentor and idol James P. Johnson. He made the most hyper and virtuosic solo sound quite natural and effortless, as if the music simply flowed out of him. Waller was also jazz’s very first organist. Unlike the other organists of the 1920s and ’30s, he managed to swing the pipe organ, never sounding stodgy or as if he belonged in a movie theatre or playing for roller skaters.
Fats was a major songwriter, starting with “Squeeze Me” in 1918 and composing such songs as “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” “Keeping Out Of Mischief Now,” “Jitterbug Waltz,” the first anti-racism protest song “Black And Blue,” plus dozens of others. By the early 1930s, Waller had developed into an excellent jazz singer, one who could sound quite touching on “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter,” could scat very well, always swung, and was
The Rise of a Jazz Vibraphonist: Evelyn Yosmali
Garry Berman
