Listen Up: Fats Waller
May 24 2010

ELEGY FOR FATS WALLER
Lighting up, lest all our hearts should break,
His fiftieth cigarette of the day,
Happy with so many notes at his beck
And call, he sits there taking it away,
The maker of immaculate slapstick.

With music and with such precise rampage
Across the deserts of the blues a trail
He blazes, towards the one true mirage,
Enormous on a nimble-footed camel
And almost refusing to be his age.

He plays for hours on end and though there be
Oases one part water, two parts gin,
He tumbles past to reign, wise and thirsty,
At the still centre of his loud dominion -
THE SHOOK, THE SHAKE, THE SHEIK OF ARABY.

by Michael Longley
(reproduced with kind permission of Wake Forest UP- www.wfu.edu/wfupress)

******************

Hey, Fats!

Can you imagine a time when you could nickname a large person Fats? And have it stick as their everyday given name?

Once upon a time, you could. Once upon the 1920s and '30s time. Fats. You could call someone Fats. (Right up until the 1960s, as Fats Domino and Chubby Checkers could attest.)

Not an unreservedly golden time, the 1920s and '30s. In those days you could refuse to serve Blacks. You could vilify Jews. You could lock away the mentally ill as dispensible idiots and lunatics. Ah, them good ol' days. Not.

But.

For all their intolerance and insensitivity, the 1920s and '30s bred and nurtured Thomas "Fats" Waller (1904-1943).

The Pianobabbler writes today to praise the- I'll moderate my language, underpromise and overdeliver -this Rabelasian über-genius of a composer, pianist, vocalist and personality.

Such sweet thunder, the music Fats made, wrote and delivered: Honeysuckle Rose, Ain't Misbehavin', Black and Blue, and on and on. Classics.

Fats' music first sandbagged the Pianobabbler in the 1970s. I heard his driving solo piano piece Handful of Keys. Fats' energized fingers reached in and took hold of my soul 'til it rattled and danced. How many times I listened to that piece.

Then dropped the other shoe. A vocal track- was it I Can't Give You Anything But Love? or I've Got a Feeling I'm Falling? How could anyone sing with such humour, such swing, such phrasing, while retaining such feeling? And, while simultaneously playing piano with historical mastery? Impossible.

If you know Fats and his work, you will smile at the mere mention of his name. If you do not know Fats and his work, you will smile at the mere audition of his music.

Fats thrived in the 1920s and 1930s. Harlem Stride piano ruled as the dominant music style of the day. Fats served as its Crown Prince. The style blended omnivorous piano virtuosity with a scruff of the neck palpitant oom-PAH oom-PAH rhythm, plus enough melody for a corporate picnic.

Stride piano: downright happy fun music.

And as with stride, so with Fats. Downright happy fun music.

How to encapsulate a musician- cliché alert -the mass of whose artistic gifts reciprocated his corporeal breadth? How to practise concision about big music, big talent, big sound, a big man? How to wrap one's hands and mind around a career which, while dead at age 39, put out enough recordings and compositions for 39 ages?

No need to answer these questions or expatiate here. Others have written at length about Fats.

The Pianobabbler wants only to keep the buzz and huzzah of Fats' music alive by buzzing and huzzahing about it. Huzzah!

Some dismiss Fats. "Facile". "Buffonish". "Formulaic".

Oh brother, are you missing the point.

Even as facile, buffonish, and formulaic song as Your Feets Too Big (which Fats did not compose) betrays the nuanced harmonic, melodic, rhythmic and technical depth of which he was capable.

After all, Fats had studied with one of the greatest pianists in classical music history: Leopold Godowsky, as well as the legendary conductor Karl Böhm. Fats was no idiot savant, or player by instinct. Barred by racism from becoming a classical concert pianist, he brought his prodigious talen to the pop music of the day: jazz.

Leave your troubles at the doorstep, your preconceptions behind, step into the sunny side of music, and listen to some Fats Waller. When you do, you'll know the Joint is Jumpin'.



The Pianobabbler has babbled.

The Pianobabbler is a RonDavisMusic production. The Pianobabbler's blog posts appear weekly at pianobabber.com. Please remember to leave your comments and thoughts below. Subscribe to the RSS feed. And subscribe to RonDavisNews by clicking on the link, above right. And follow us on Twitter.

- Red Hot Jazz offers audio page for Fats Waller (click here)

blog comments powered by Disqus