Everybody knows Fats Waller, the Derby-hatted mountain of jollity seated at the keyboard and spreading good cheer in all directions. And yet it was not until the final decade of his life that this particular Fats Waller was born. The other one - the pianist, composer and songwriter - had already been in existence for about fifteen years before that.
Born in 1904, by the age of twenty he was what we would nowadays call a session musician, working in radio and recording studios and theatres. In 1927, along with James P. Johnson, he wrote tunes for the show ‘Keep Shufflin’’, and two years later the score of the Broadway hit ‘Hot Chocolates’. Among the three hundred-odd tunes he composed, many with lyrics by his friend Andy Razaf, are some of the best-loved melodies in the American songbook.
The metamorphosis into popular entertainer is said to have occurred at a party given by George Gershwin, a great lover of Harlem ‘stride’ piano, a style characterised by an insistent ‘oom-pah’ left hand pattern. Having delighted and astonished the company with his virtuosity, and partaken of the liberal hospitality, Fats began singing and clowning around. Among those present was an executive of Victor Records, who recognised a born entertainer when he heard one and instantly fixed up for Fats to record some of his party pieces.
This was in May 1934. Between that date and his death, just over nine and a half years later, on 15 December 1943, Fats recorded several hundred vocal numbers for Victor and became loved around the world as a kind of jovial, mischievous genie. The twenty-five numbers in this collection all date from that last decade, and most of them came out under the heading of ‘Fats Waller and his Rhythm’. The Rhythm was the little group of around half a dozen musicians who worked with him regularly and, for my money, it is one of the most underrated bands in the entire history of jazz.
Just listen to the very first piece, Everybody Loves My Baby, which starts off bursting with high spirits and gets hotter and hotter as first the guitar and then trumpet and clarinet join in. It all sounds gloriously off-the-cuff, and indeed this was one of seven numbers recorded at a single session, so there would not have been much time for reflection. Cheatin’ On Me comes from another session which produced seven finished takes. Fats’s method was to play through the song at the piano, to show everybody how it went, decide on who was to play solo or backing parts, run through it once and, provided there were no disasters, record it and move on to the next. Someone had probably left a vibraphone in the studio, which would account for the opening chimes.
Fats is famous for taking harmless sentimental songs and reducing them to rubble. He did not always do this, and he recorded many perfectly straightforward renditions. But once he got started on the silly voices and wisecracks there was no going back. He simply could not help it. It’s A Sin To Tell A Lie starts out quite innocuously, until he reaches the word ‘lie’, which he delivers in an exaggerated pulpit voice, and after that it is genial lunacy all the way. But after the vocal and Gene Sedric’s excellent clarinet solo, just listen to the piano, those twinkling right hand notes over the striding left. That is seriously brilliant playing. The same applies to the piano on When Somebody Thinks You’re Wonderful, especially the opening chorus, with Sedric’s clarinet crooning along in his best mock-genteel manner. This record was one of Fats’s early successes and has probably never been completely out of print since 1935. You’re Gonna Be Sorry, on the other hand, is one of the many overlooked gems in the Waller oeuvre. This is also true of Twenty-Four Robbers, Stop Pretending, Come Down To Earth My Angel, Old Grand Dad and a few others i