Documentary: Fats Waller

Reprinted from http://jazzwax.com

Jazz's folk humor on recordings began with Louis Armstrong and other blues singers in the mid-1920s but was raised to a new level of urbane sophistication by Fats Waller in the 1930s. Here's a documentary on the pianist and composer...

Here's Part 1....

Here's Part 2...

Here's Part 3...

And here's Part 4...

Used with permission by Marc Myers

Encounters with Fats Waller

by Thomas C. Fleming
Photo: www.biography.com

In 1916, when I enrolled at Public School 89 in Harlem as a third grader, the center of black life in New York City was 135th Street -- not 125th Street, as it is now. Eighty years ago, 125th was mostly a Jewish area and had very few blacks.

Just one block from my school, at 7th Avenue and 135th Street, was the Lafayette Theater, which was the main theater that blacks attended. It had not only motion pictures, but vaudeville shows too. It was white-owned and run, but all the entertainers were black. Sometimes it would have serious drama instead of musicals.

In front of the Lafayette was a tree that was known by black entertainers all over the United States as the Tree of Hope. If they had long periods of unemployment, they would come by and kiss the tree and rub its bark, hoping they would get a break. And so many of them got jobs that the name stuck.

Blacks were always trying to work the Palace Theater downtown. That was the lead vaudeville house in the whole nation. Any entertainer who played the Palace, black or white, had made it on the big time.

Around the corner from the Lafayette was a motion picture house, the Lincoln Theater. I think once in a while it had stage acts. There were no talking pictures then, so during the movie, they always had somebody play the piano or organ.

The Lincoln Theater is where Fats Waller first started playing the pipe organ on weekends, when he was 12 years of age. He was a few grades ahead of me, but he was there at the school, the same time I was going. 

read more: http://www.redhotjazz.com/fatsarticle.html

Fats Waller, born Thomas Waller in 1904....

Born: May 21, 1904, Harlem, New York, NY

Died: December 15, 1943, On a train in transit from California.

Master Composer and Pianist

Fats Waller, born Thomas Waller in 1904, was an early contributor to jazz and the composer of the famous American standards "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Honeysuckle Rose." Growing up in Harlem, the son of a Baptist preacher father Edward Waller and mother Adeline, Waller began his musical career playing the organ in his father's services. Soon, however, he turned to the new piano style developing in New York at the time: stride piano.

Waller began to study with James P. Johnson and eventually went on not only to become a talented performer and composer, making his first piano roll in 1922. By the time he died at age 39, Waller had performed, recorded or had his music performed by many of the most celebrated figures in jazz including The Fletcher HendersonOrchestra, Louis Armstrong, Sydney Bechet, Jack Teagarden, and Cab Calloway, among many others. At the time of his death in 1943, Fats was on the way back from a successful tour and movie shoot in Hollywood, and died of pneumonia related to his heavy-drinking and hard-working lifestyle.

Contributions to Jazz

Waller's contributions to the development of jazz lay in his many compositions and in his mastery of the stride piano style. He was regarded as a master by many other pianists who noted his technique, use of tension and release, and a wide dynamic contrast on the instrument. Waller's incredible output as a recording artist must also be noted, as there are few other musicians who performed so much music at such a high level at that time.

Though his musical accomplishments were many, Waller was known perhaps even more for his on-stage persona whose humorous banter, playful lyrics, and physical comedy played an equally prominent role with the music. This was common practice among many black performers of the time, who felt that pleasing the white audience by presenting themselves in this stereotypical fashion was the best way to win wider recognition for their music.

Lesser-Known Contributions

On a tour to Europe in 1939, Fats Waller recorded a series of six solo piano pieces all on related themes and named for different districts in London. The "London Suite" pieces show Waller's roots in ragtime music, but also lean more heavily towards the "impressionistic" music of Ravel and Debussy, the two French composers known for a more colorful approach to harmony and rhythm than most European classical composers before them. The pieces are gems of Waller's output, and give a broader picture of his musical personality. Waller was an incredibly prolific and creative performer and composer whose work contributed in a powerful way to the jazz tradition.

http://jazz.about.com/od/classicjazzartists/a/Artist-Profile-Pianist-Fats-Waller.htm

A great soundie with a unique arrangement of the evergreen, Honeysuckle rose. The last time I posted this gem it was reversed, now it's the right way round ! Enjoy 'Harlem's harmful armful' Mr Fats Waller as he seranades the delightful miss Vivian Brown, an unsung legend in her own right.As well as providing the glamour for a rake of soundies,she performed as a dancer with her twin sister 'Hibby' ,appearing at the original cotton club as part of Bill 'Bojangles' Robinsons's revue. Later in the early 1950's she married a surgeon by the name of Henderson, they had a son called Eddie Henderson,another Jazz legend,quite some story to this lady's life,