In the early 1980s, as often as I could, I’d head down to Greenwich Village on Saturday afternoon and spend a night checking out the jazz and blues music scene. At that time, the great blues singer Alberta Hunter had a longstanding gig at The Cookery.
She performed with just a piano and bass player every Wednesday to Saturday night. Once in a while, I’d sit in and listen to her sing the blues. She was something special. One of the songs I remember her singing was Sugar, a song she first recorded with Fats Waller on May 20, 1927 at Victor Talking Machine’s Trinity Baptist Church studio in Camden, New Jersey, where Waller recorded several songs on their Estey pipe organ.
Here is Waller on the pipe organ with Alberta Hunter singing Sugar:
She would sometimes talk about playing with the great Fats Waller, and so I began searching out and collecting some early Fats Waller albums, like this 1953 10” Riverside album.
This is an interesting collection of songs transcribed from piano rolls cut by Waller for QRS in the early 1920s. These piano rolls look like this:
Some years later, while reading John Szwed’s Space Is The place, it occurred to me that Fats Waller was an early and important influence on a 10-year-old Herman “Sonny” Blount.
Herman Blount, later to be known as Sun Ra, grew up near Birmingham, Alabama’s Terminal train station, shown here behind the iconic “Magic City” sign.
His mother and great-aunt worked in the terminal’s restaurant. He used to walk to the terminal, and they would feed him in the kitchen. Afterwards, he would stand in the dining room listening to the latest rolls on the restaurant’s player piano. In particular, he liked Fats Waller’s Snake Hips, issued in 1923.
I think it is no coincidence that Sun Ra’s first known recordings are homemade solo organ songs, recorded onto a reel to reel in 1948.
Actually, Fats Waller’s pipe organ songs weren’t his first recordings on this instrument. On November 3, 1926, he played the reed organ on Fletcher Henderson’s Columbia recording of The Chant, which some think prompted Victor Talking Machine to record Waller just two weeks later.
As much as I like Waller’s Victor pipe organ recordings, particularly those he recorded as the Louisiana Sugar Babes, perhaps my favorite Waller songs are a few he recorded with popular singer Gene Austin.
On June 6. 1929, Gene Austin recorded I’ve Got A Feeling I’m Falling.
In the studio orchestra that day was co-writer Fats Waller on piano.
Gene Austin is an interesting character deserving of more research. He ran away from home at 15 and joined the Army. He was first stationed in New Orleans and played piano at night in the city’s vice district. Later he served with General Pershing’s Pancho Villa Expedition and was awarded the Mexican Service Medal. He also served in France during World War I. Austin did all this before he recorded My Blue Heaven, which for a while was the largest selling record of all time.
Ed Kirkeby, bandleader and recording manager at Columbia Records, tells an interesting story about how I’ve Got A Feeling I’m Falling was written:
‘Fats’ career proceeded apace this summer. One day he ran into Harry Link [another songwriter, who later wrote ‘These Foolish Things’] in a publisher’s office.
“Hey, Fats! What you got there?” Link nodded to a manuscript under Fats’ arm.
“Oh, just a little bit of music, Harry. Gonna be a big hit, I expect – well, one never knows, do one?”
“Let’s go over to my place.” Link opened the door, and they both went out and across to the Santly Brothers Publishing Company.
“Now, let’s hear that song,” Link said, as he cleared some music from the rack of the piano.
He listened intently to the tune Fats played and shook his head in admiration.
“Good, Fats, how about us doing this together? I’ll get Billy Rose to get some lyrics out on it….”
Here is the recording of that song - note the vocal resemblance between Austin and Fred Astaire:
It was also during this time that Waller began to attract attention as a composer, forming a strong alliance with lyricist Andy Razaf, resulting in three off-Broadway shows in the late ’20s: Keep Shufflin’; Load of Coal; and Hot Chocolates.
The first, Keep Shufflin’, opened on February 27, 1928 at the Eltinge Theatre in New York. It was the sequel to the 1921 Shuffle Along, a musical revue composed by Eubie Blake, with lyrics by Noble Sissle, and staring Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson. It was the first all-Black hit Broadway show and a landmark in African-American musical theater, credited with inspiring the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and '30s. Waller’s score for Keep Shufflin’ made a considerable impression with his exuberant piano playing from the orchestra pit.
Here’s one of my favorite songs from that score, ‘Sippi, recorded on March 27, 1928 as the Louisiana Sugar Babes featuring: Waller and his mentor James P. Johnson on piano; Jabbo Smith on trumpet, and Gavin Bushell on clarinet and bassoon - of particular note is perhaps the first ever bassoon solo by Bushell.
Waller’s second off-Broadway show was Load of Coal, which opened in May 1929 as a floorshow at Connie’s Inn in Harlem and featured Waller’s famous Honeysuckle Rose:
I like this 1935 broadcast recording of Waller playing Honeysuckle Rose:
By far Waller’s most famous musical revue was Hot Chocolates, which opened at the Hudson Theatre on June 20, 1929. It ran until December 14, 1929 with 219 performances.
Louis Armstrong made his Broadway debut as part of the show’s pit band. Incidentally, Cab Calloway later joined the cast at Armstrong’s recommendation. Waller’s big hit from this revue was Ain’t Misbehaving:
Here is Waller performing Ain’t Misbehavin’:
However, I think Waller’s greatest accomplishment is something he is least known for. It is not composing such popular classics as Honeysuckle Rose and Ain’t Misbehavin’, rather his greatest accomplishment was his score for the little known Broadway show Early to Bed, which opened on June 17, 1943 at the Broadhurst Theatre and went on a 390-performance run.
What makes Waller’s score for Early to Bed so extraordinary is that it was the first Broadway score for a nearly all-white cast to be composed by a person of color - an historic accomplishment that we all should celebrate during Black Music Month!
Here’s one more for the road. From Early to bed, this is Slightly Less Than Wonderful:
Incidentally, for Early to Bed, Waller collaborated with George Marion, who wrote the screenplay for the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers 1934 RKO film The Gay Divorcee.
Tragically, on the morning of December 15, 1943, only six months into Early to Bed’s Broadway run, Waller was found dead while traveling on the Santa Fe Chief, a train eastbound from LA to New York. His place of death was listed as Union Station, Kansas City, Missouri. He was just six months short of his 40th birthday.
Had he lived longer, I think Waller could have inspired many more composers of color to follow his lead and break Broadway’s color barrier, and Early to Bed could have marked the beginning of an important moment in the development of American musical theater. As Waller himself would say, “One never knows, do one?”
Next week on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll step back in time and dig our paddles in and explore the waters of Chicago bassist Ronnie Boykins.
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Until then, keep on walking….