Alot of people mistook him for a "novelty act" simply coz he kids alot through his music but the brotha is ANYTHING but that.

Everytime I hear "Handful Of Keys" it feels like there were 4 hands playing on that piano. His piano solos records show how much depth that cat possessed.

Not to mention, he's the 1st musician who introduced the organ to jazz music.

He's def the BEST stride pianist wiz IMHO!(Willie "The Lion" Smith & James P. Johnson come in 2nd as a row).

Show some love ya'll!
[Edited 11/5/04 13:18pm]

growing up, I would hear my Mom, My uncle and my grandfather playing his stuff on the piano, so some of the earliest pieces I heard on piano were tunes like "Ain't Misbehavin'", "The Viper's Drag" and "Keeping Out of Mischief Now" ...


...
[Edited 11/5/04 13:54pm]

Mucho respect to the great 'Fats'! Like they said at the time, he truly had a 'left hand like God'! Much more than just a novelty act. There is so much great music from that era (1930's-40's) that is unjustifiably forgotten. True artistic giants like Earl Hines, Coleman Hawkins, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Teddy Wilson, Chick Webb, as well as the stride giants like James P. Johnson (who I believe actually wrote at least one opera!?) and Willie 'the Lion' Smith, both influences on Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Thelonious Monk.

Waller and most of the others had to be great entertainers to succeed in the hard times in which they lived and worked. Take Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, the two great trumpet stylists/ improvisers pre-Miles (Davis). Both were accused of 'Uncle Tomming', due to their 'showbizzy' styles. Personally I would rather listen to 'Fats' Waller or any of the above than any of the miserable, self-pitying 'indie' guitar bands that now infest pop music. Waller and his contemporaries had far harder lives and created some of the best and most joyous music ever made.

By the way, great pics, Harlepolis, especially the top one.

Here endeth the history lesson.

Miles said:

The main cat behind Carolina Shout which Fats covered couple of months before he died.

I don't think I've seen that pic of him playing the organ.
Such a great songwriter & pianoplayer.
A shame that his image kinda got in the way 4 his genious.
I have this deep love 4 "Ain't misbehaving" since I was a little
boy & my granddad used 2 play that song 4 me on accordion & I just
kept asking him 2 play it over & over lol.
/Peace Manki

Miles said:

I believe the nail hath been hiteth on its head.

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...rmusic.htm

theAudience said:

Forsooth!! He doth preacheth the Gospel!!

I recently ordered this box set from amazon and I'm expecting it next week,,,

Found this new intersting article about him that ya'll may dig:

Fats Waller wrote, played and laughed his way into ranks of all-time music greats
Jesse Hamlin, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, November 5, 2004

Nobody embraced the pleasure principle with more gusto than Fats Waller, the genius piano player, songwriter, singer, satirist and sybarite, whose storied consumption of food and booze was matched by the size and richness of his artistic output.

One of the great artist-entertainers of the 20th century, Waller partied his way through the Roaring Twenties and the Depression as he poured out hit songs, classic Harlem stride piano solos and joyously swinging sextet records that reveled in his matchless musical and comedic gifts. A mocking clown who was a master of double-entendre and the ad-lib aside, he lampooned sappy tunes while swinging the hell out of them.

Along with his friend and admirer Louis Armstrong, Waller, whose centennial is being celebrated this year, was one of the first black jazz musicians to cross over to international pop stardom.

His brilliant piano and organ playing -- a mix of power and finesse, dynamic subtlety and melodic invention -- dazzled and delighted music lovers. But it was Waller's singing and sly, ribald humor that hooked millions of people who bought his records, packed his live performances and listened to his radio shows.

"People make lists of important figures in the culture that include Lindbergh, Armstrong and Fred Astaire,'' says Dick Hyman, the esteemed pianist, composer and arranger. "I think Waller was one of them, although not quite as well known. He certainly represents the spirit of the 1930s and early '40s.''

Hyman, whose virtuoso playing draws on Waller, the Waller-inspired master Art Tatum and the modernists who followed, will be one of the artists summoning up Fats' merry spirit at Davies Hall on Sunday night.

The San Francisco Jazz Festival's tribute to Waller -- who died of pneumonia on the New York-bound Santa Fe sleeper in 1943 at age 39 -- also features Mike Lipskin, the noted Bay Area stride pianist who, as an RCA producer in the 1960s and '70s, reissued many of Waller's discs; R&B chanteuse Ruth Brown, who starred in the hit '70s Broadway musical about Waller, "Ain't Misbehavin',''; the venerable Kansas City pianist Jay McShann; and others.

Hyman, who will play piano and Davies' monster Rufatti pipe organ, fell under Waller's sway as a kid growing up in New York in the late '30s. He learned classic Waller piano solos like "Minor Drag'' and "Harlem Fuss'' by slowing down the 78 rpm recordings his big brother brought home.

"Those records hold up beautifully,'' says Hyman, who has written many scores and arrangements for Woody Allen's films, scored "Moonstruck'' and has played with everybody from Benny Goodman to Charlie Parker. "Waller's time was so perfect, and his tone was so full. His playing had a weight, and at the same time, a fleetness, which is very hard to do. I've been trying to do it for 50 years.''

Because Waller was a funny guy who mocked many of the songs he sang, "the public didn't realize how fine a musician he was,'' Hyman says. Like Armstrong and other black artists of the day, Waller had to be an entertainer, not just a great musician, to achieve the kind of fame he did.

Thomas Waller was born in Harlem in 1904, the seventh of 11 children (only five survived past their infancy). His father was a lay Baptist preacher who owned a trucking company. His mother taught him piano and organ, and by the age of 10, he was playing reed-organ accompaniment to his father's street sermons.

He loved playing the pipe organ -- he liked to call it "the God box'' - - at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, where he sang in the choir (in later years Waller delighted in playing Bach on the organ). He was equally drawn to religious and risque songs.

At 15, the big clowning kid called Fats (he was 5-foot-10 and eventually weighed 285 pounds) quit high school and went to work full time playing the organ for silent films and stage shows at Harlem's Lincoln Theater, where he amused audiences with his sometimes irreverent accompaniment. He was the first musician to play jazz on the organ.

One of the young musicians who came to hear Waller there was Count Basie, whom Waller taught to play organ and whose stripped-down piano style was rooted in Fatsian stride.

Waller learned the rigorous, ragtime-rooted style -- built on alternating bass notes and chords in the left hand and joined with intricate melodies and improvised variations in the right -- from the Harlem stride master James P. Johnson.

Johnson, whose piano rolls the young Waller slowed down in order to learn the pianist's fingering, heard Waller at the Lincoln and agreed to tutor him. In the early '20s, Johnson got his protege jobs playing at raucous Harlem rent parties and clubs, and in 1923 arranged for him to record piano rolls for the QRS company.

His late-night carousing led to his divorce that year from his first wife, Edith, with whom he had a son, Thomas Jr. That unhappy union was the source of years of aggravation, and a six-month jail term, over late alimony payments. Waller's second marriage, to Anita Rutherford, produced two other sons, Maurice and Ronald.

Waller's father had frowned on jazz and encouraged his son's interest in classical music. In a 1943 radio interview, reprinted in Alyn Shipton's 1988 Waller biography, Waller recalled a scene at the Lincoln:

"My father was a minister and had no use for theaters. He came there and took hold of me and said, 'Son, you come on home out of this den of iniquity.' ... I kept right on playing the piano and organ and writing songs.''

Songs flowed out of Waller, "a swift but casual composer,'' as Hyman puts it, whose tunes "came right out of his piano playing. '' According to one story, Waller whistled the melody of "Honeysuckle Rose'' over the phone to lyricist Andy Razaf. He was famous for selling his songs cheap for quick cash, giving them away to needy friends or, according to legend, selling the rights to some in exchange for hamburgers.

He's reputed to have written several melodies that became hits credited to others, among them "On the Sunny Side of the Street'' and "I Can't Give You Anything But Love.'' The songs that bear Waller's name number more than 500.

They include such enduring hits as "Squeeze Me,'' based on a bawdy old tune called "Boy in the Boat,'' and "Honeysuckle Rose,'' written with Razaf for the 1929 revue "Load of Coal'' at the Harlem hot spot Connie's Inn; "Black and Blue,'' a rueful, biting song about racial injustice ( "My only sin is my skin'') and "Ain't Misbehavin','' both written with Razaf for "Hot Chocolates. ''

That 1929 Connie's Inn revue was such a smash it moved to Broadway, where Armstrong made a big splash singing "Ain't Misbehavin'.''

That same year, Waller recorded a series of masterly stride piano solos for RCA Victor that still fall fresh on the ear: "Handful of Keys,'' "Numb Fumblin','' "Smashing Thirds.'' So do the solos he cut in '34, among them "African Ripples'' and "Viper's Drag.''

"He had a classical tone and touch and imparted tremendous rhythmic energy,'' says Lipskin, who studied with another Harlem stride master, Willie "The Lion'' Smith. Unlike later pianists who just played loud, Waller, who bridged stride and swing, created energy and drama through changes in dynamics and tone, says Lipskin, who got hooked on Fats at age of 3.

Lipskin loved Waller's piano and humorous singing, "the warm and genuine happiness of the music,'' he says. "I wasn't too happy as a child, and this music transported me into a realm of sensuous musical enjoyment.''

Waller started singing in the early '30s, swinging melodies in an Armstrong-influenced style. He gleefully ridiculed the syrupy songs Victor required him to sing, as well as fooling with some of his own.

He recorded a slew of popular sides from 1935 through the early '40s with his Rhythm sextet, which often featured trumpeter Herman Autrey, reedman Gene Sedric, guitarist Albert Casey and drummer Slick Jones, and on occasion was expanded into a big band.

They recorded Waller originals like "Jitterbug Waltz,'' "Crazy 'Bout My Baby'' and "The Joint is Jumpin'," a rollicking 1936 disc spiced with laughter, police sirens and Waller's jive asides ("Get rid of that pistol, yeah, yeah, get rid of it! ... Don't give your right name, no, no, no.'')

Like Billie Holiday, Waller could make memorable music from pop dross like "Spring Cleaning'' ("No lady, we can't haul your ashes for 50 cents,'' he jokes), and mint gold with novelty tunes like "Your Feets Too Big.'' But he could also sing a good song relatively straight, with feeling, as he does on his splendid 1935 recording of "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter.''

"He showed people you could take a song that might be banal and possibly unusable and, through humor and jazz, transform it into a worthy piece of music,'' says Lipskin, one of countless artists who've been inspired by Waller's music and comedy.

You can hear the big man's influence in the work of everyone from pianist Thelonious Monk to the cutup trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and sardonic singer- songwriter-instrumentalists like Dave Frishberg and Dan Hicks.

"You can't beat the combination: a guy that's funny and a goof-off and does a lot of extemporaneous vocal and verbal stuff and is also a top-flight jazz musician,'' says Hicks, who has often performed "Honeysuckle Rose'' and other Waller tunes and whose amusing scat singing brings Waller's rubbery sounds to mind. "He had the musical goods to back up all that jive.''

The iconic image of Waller -- the mugging clown with the raffishly cocked derby and pencil mustache -- comes from his winning performance in the 1943 film "Stormy Weather.'' The year before, he'd given an infamous performance at Carnegie Hall, at which the man who famously kept a jug of whiskey or quart of gin by the piano was too drunk to really play.

"He got progressively drunker,'' recalls Hyman, who was up in the balcony that night. "Every tune seemed to turn into 'Summertime.' ''

The years of overindulgence, all-nighters and constant traveling took its final toll the following December, when Waller died at Kansas City's Union Station on his way home from Hollywood.

"His very good spirit will keep him with us for ages,'' said Armstrong, quoted in the Nat Shapiro-Nat Hentoff oral jazz history, "Hear Me Talkin' To Ya.''

"Every time someone mentions Fats Waller's name, why you can see the grins on all the faces, as if to say, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Fats is a solid sender, ain't he?' ''