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| Transcriptions Vol.2 1939 |
| Fats Waller |
első megjelenés éve: 2003
50 perc |
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| (2003)
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CD |
| 3.415 Ft
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| 1. | The Moon is Low
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| 2. | The Sheik of Araby
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| 3. | B flat Blues
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| 4. | Honeysuckle Rose
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| 5. | Ain't Misbehavin'
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| 6. | Sweet Sue Just You
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| 7. | Nagasaki
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| 8. | Lonesome Me
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| 9. | I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby
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| 10. | The Spider and the Fly
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| 11. | After You've Gone
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| 12. | Tea for Two
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| 13. | Poor Butterfly
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| 14. | St. Louis Blues
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| 15. | Hallelujah
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| 16. | Handful of Keys
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Jazz
Thomas Fats Waller - piano, vocals
Fats Waller Rhythm
The Original 1939 Associated Transcriptions
Although a few devout incense-wavers at the altar of Jazz still carp at his humour the boisterous Fats Waller remains one of the most popular of all the great jazz performers, admired even by those who are not otherwise fans of such music. Seldom obtrusively virtuosic, his delivery is so fluent, so uninhibited that we tend to take his technical skill for granted - his ebullience which carries all before it has brought jazz to a wider fraternity, assuring Fats a place in the Hall of Fame along-side Armstrong, Ellington, Bechet and very few others. Individuality was his keynote and despite accusations of commercialism, this colossal pianist, organist, vocalist, songwriter and comic never forgot that he was also an entertainer. The Cheshire cat grin, the antics, the sarcasm and self-mockery were all part of an act that never undermined the power of an awesome left hand.
Thomas "Fats" Waller was born in Waverley, New York on 21 May 1904 but as both of Tom's parents were natives of Virginia he also had the South in his soul. Edward Martin Waller, his father, a preacher at the Harlem Abyssinian Baptist Church hoped vainly that his son might follow in his footsteps; his mother, Adeline, sang and was both a skilled pianist and church organist. As a child Tom was close to his mother and sang hymns to her accompaniment at the harmonium, which by the age of five he had also mastered. As a teenager already dubbed "Fats", a rotund young Thomas Waller played violin and piano in the orchestra of Public School 89. At the same time, amid pronouncements of "Devil's music" from his over-zealous father, he avidly devoured the latest ragtime and the Harlem stride rhythms popularised by Willie "The Lion" Smith (1897-1973) and his own preceptor James P. Johnson (1894-1955).
After a spell as an organist and pianist at various New York silent-movie theatres, during the mid-1920s Fats first unleashed his outgoing, larger-than-life personality upon an audience as a vaudeville pianist-entertainer. Leading a trio in Philadelphia, he also worked with Erskine Tate in Chicago and appeared and made records with the Fletcher Henderson and Ted Lewis orchestras in New York. His work as a composer which had already begun around 1922 produced an intermittent trickle of characteristic piano solos - by the mid-1930s these included “Viper's Drag”, “Handful Of Keys”, “African Ripples”, “Clothesline Ballet”, B Flat Blues, “Zonky”, “Alligator Crawl”, “Russian Fantasy” and several others which would remain unpublished for the duration of his lifetime. Although he recorded prolifically from 1922 on, he was not particularly well-known outside New York - but by 1931 radio had remedied that.
In terms of composition, from the late 1920s he also delivered a more commercially-inspired stream of fine songs, mostly in collaboration with Spencer Williams (1889-1965), Clarence Williams (1898-1965) and Andy Razaf (1895-1973). With Razaf as his collaborator he first found fame with the Broadway shows Keep Shufflin" (1928) and Hot Chocolates (1929) which first introduced such immortal standards as Ain"t Misbehavin" (his first real hit, in November 1929, this was selected for the NARAS Hall of Fame) and Honeysuckle Rose.
Although he made no commercial recordings between March 1931 and 1934, Fats gave frequent broadcasts - from early 1932 until early 1934 he had a two-year contract with WLW in Cincinnati and from mid-1934 his own regular CBS Monday and Thursday night venues on "Rhythm Club", a Saturday night organ program and, on alternate Sundays, guest appearances on Columbia Variety Hour. Moreover, the global distribution of the recordings he made with a five-piece band dubbed "Fats Waller & His Rhythm" (he signed an exclusive contract with Victor, in 1934) had by mid-decade placed him in the top flight of entertainers not just in the USA but also in the international market. There was, apparently, little or no rehearsal of numbers prior to our star's studio recordings - just a short run-through then "in the can", with re-takes a rare occurrence.
During 1935 Fats appeared in two movies and in sales of his records to the white market he outstripped all other black jazz artists. That year, as an adjunct to his radio activities, and extraneous to his contract with RCA, he began a kind of moonlighting, recording 16' radio transcription medleys, the first pseudonymously as "Flip Wallace" for Muzak-Associated (see Naxos Jazz Legends 8.120577). A few other (non-Victor) sides, again captured on acetate (from the Rudy Vallee and Magic Key shows) afford glimpses of Waller in 1936 but comparatively little of the "on air" Waller remains from this heyday period. By 1938 he was broadcasting regularly from New York's Yacht Club and that year, for Associated, he recorded the program here newly remastered for CD from the original acetates. In content the titles to some extent duplicate the commercial Victor discography, but the piano solos - especially the resurrection from Raymond Hubbell's 1916 Big Show Poor Butterfly, the two Vincent Youmans standards and his own Handful Of Keys, apart from their rhythmic vitality display a certain ambient quality and afford Fats greater scope for playful asides..
---Peter Dempsey, 2003
Fats Waller
Active Decades: '20s, '30s and '40s
Born: May 21, 1904 in New York, NY
Died: Dec 15, 1943 in Kansas City, MO
Genre: Jazz
Not only was Fats Waller one of the greatest pianists jazz has ever known, he was also one of its most exuberantly funny entertainers -- and as so often happens, one facet tends to obscure the other. His extraordinarily light and flexible touch belied his ample physical girth; he could swing as hard as any pianist alive or dead in his classic James P. Johnson-derived stride manner, with a powerful left hand delivering the octaves and tenths in a tireless, rapid, seamless stream. Waller also pioneered the use of the pipe organ and Hammond organ in jazz -- he called the pipe organ the "God box" -- adapting his irresistible sense of swing to the pedals and a staccato right hand while making imaginative changes of the registration. As a composer and improviser, his melodic invention rarely flagged, and he contributed fistfuls of joyous yet paradoxically winsome songs like "Honeysuckle Rose," "Ain't Misbehavin,'" "Keepin' Out of Mischief Now," "Blue Turning Grey Over You" and the extraordinary "Jitterbug Waltz" to the jazz repertoire.
During his lifetime and afterwards, though, Fats Waller was best known to the world for his outsized comic personality and sly vocals, where he would send up trashy tunes that Victor Records made him record with his nifty combo, Fats Waller & His Rhythm. Yet on virtually any of his records, whether the song is an evergreen standard or the most trite bit of doggerel that a Tin Pan Alley hack could serve up, you will hear a winning combination of good knockabout humor, foot-tapping rhythm and fantastic piano playing. Today, almost all of Fats Waller's studio recordings can be found on RCA's on-again-off-again series The Complete Fats Waller, which commenced on LPs in 1975 and was still in progress during the 1990s.
Thomas "Fats" Waller came from a Harlem household where his father was a Baptist lay preacher and his mother played piano and organ. Waller took up the piano at age six, playing in a school orchestra led by Edgar Sampson (of Chick Webb fame). After his mother died when he was 14, Waller moved into the home of pianist Russell Brooks, where he met and studied with James P. Johnson. Later, Waller also received classical lessons from Carl Bohm and the famous pianist Leopold Godowsky. After making his first record at age 18 for Okeh in 1922, "Birmingham Blues""'Muscle Shoals Blues,"" he backed various blues singers and worked as house pianist and organist at rent parties and in movie theaters and clubs. He began to attract attention as a composer during the early- and mid-'20s, forming a most fruitful alliance with lyricist Andy Razaf that resulted in three Broadway shows in the late '20s, Keep Shufflin', Load of Coal, and Hot Chocolates.
Waller started making records for Victor in 1926; his most significant early records for that label were a series of brilliant 1929 solo piano sides of his own compositions like "Handful of Keys" and "Smashing Thirds." After finally signing an exclusive Victor contract in 1934, he began the long-running, prolific series of records with His Rhythm, which won him great fame and produced several hits, including "Your Feet's Too Big," "The Joint Is Jumpin'" and "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter." He began to appear in films like Hooray for Love and King of Burlesque in 1935 while continuing regular appearances on radio that dated back to 1923. He toured Europe in 1938, made organ recordings in London for HMV, and appeared on one of the first television broadcasts. He returned to London the following spring to record his most extensive composition, "London Suite" for piano and percussion, and embark on an extensive continental tour (which, alas, was canceled by fears of impending war with Germany). Well aware of the popularity of big bands in the '30s, Waller tried to form his own, but they were short-lived.
Into the 1940s, Waller's touring schedule of the U.S. escalated, he contributed music to another musical, Early to Bed, the film appearances kept coming (including a memorable stretch of Stormy Weather where he led an all-star band that included Benny Carter, Slam Stewart and Zutty Singleton), the recordings continued to flow, and he continued to eat and drink in extremely heavy quantities. Years of draining alimony squabbles, plus overindulgence and, no doubt, frustration over not being taken more seriously as an artist, began to wear the pianist down. Finally, after becoming ill during a gig at the Zanzibar Room in Hollywood in December, 1943, Waller boarded the Santa Fe Chief train for the long trip back to New York. He never made it, dying of pneumonia aboard the train during a stop at Union Station in Kansas City.
While every clown longs to play Hamlet as per the cliche -- and Waller did have so-called serious musical pretensions, longing to follow in George Gershwin's footsteps and compose concert music -- it probably was not in the cards anyway due to the racial barriers of the first half of the 20th century. Besides, given the fact that Waller influenced a long line of pianists of and after his time, including Count Basie (who studied with Fats), Teddy Wilson, Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, Dave Brubeck and countless others, his impact has been truly profound.
---Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide |
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