Artist: Fats Waller
Genre(s):
Jazz
Other
Discography:
I Got Rhythm
Year: 1996
Tracks: 23
Greatest Hits
Year: 1996
Tracks: 14
Aint Misbehavin
Year: 1990
Tracks: 20
Fats Waller - The Early Years Part II (cd2)
Year: 1935
Tracks: 1
Fats Waller - The Early Years Part II (cd1)
Year: 1935
Tracks: 1
Breakin' the Ice, Early Years I (cd2)
Year: 1935
Tracks: 1
Breakin' the Ice, Early Years I (cd1)
Year: 1935
Tracks: 1
Your Feet's Too Big
Year:
Tracks: 14
The Joint is Jumpin' (1929-43 RCA)
Year:
Tracks: 1
Classic Jazz Archive (CD1)
Year:
Tracks: 24
Not only was Fats Waller one of the greatest pianists jazz has of all time known, he was as well one of its most expansively funny entertainers -- and as so often happens, matchless facet tends to apart the other. His inordinately light-colored and whippy touch belied his ample physical cinch; he could swing as hard as any piano player alive or stagnant in his classic James P. Johnson-derived tread fashion, with a powerful left hand hand delivering the octaves and tenths in a hardworking, rapid, seamless stream. Waller also pioneered the use of the pipe organ and Hammond organ in idle words -- he called the pipe organ the "Deity box" -- adapting his irresistible gumption of swing to the pedals and a disconnected right hand patch making imaginative changes of the registration. As a composer and improviser, his melodic invention seldom flagged, and he contributed fistfuls of joyous yet paradoxically winsome songs like "Honeysuckle Rose," "Ain't Misbehavin,'" "Keepin' Out of Mischief Now," "Risque Turning Grey Over You" and the extraordinary "Jitterbug Waltz" to the malarky repertory.
During his lifetime and later on, though, Fats Waller was best known to the macrocosm for his oversized comic personality and guileful vocals, where he would send off up trashy tunes that Victor Records made him track record with his neat combo, Fats Waller & His Rhythm. Yet on virtually any of his records, whether the strain is an evergreen plant criterion or the most shopworn bit of jingle that a Tin Pan Alley taxi could serve up, you testament try a fetching combination of good knockabout sense of humour, foot-tapping cycle and fantastical piano playing. Today, virtually all of Fats Waller's studio recordings stern be base on RCA's on-again-off-again series The Complete Fats Waller, which commenced on LPs in 1975 and was static in progress during the 1990s.
Lowell Jackson Thomas "Fats" Waller came from a Harlem house where his church Father was a Baptist place preacher man and his mother played piano and organ. Waller took up the forte-piano at age 6, playing in a school orchestra light-emitting diode by Edgar Sampson (of Chick Webb renown). After his mother died when he was 14, Waller stirred into the home of piano player Russell Brooks, where he met and studied with James P. Johnson. Later, Waller also received classical lessons from Carl Bohm and the noted piano player Leopold Godowsky. After making his first record at eld 18 for Okeh in 1922, "Brummagem Blues"/"'Muscle Shoals Blues,"" he backed several blues singers and worked as house pianist and organist at split parties and in flick theaters and clubs. He began to appeal care as a composer during the early and mid-'20s, forming a most fruitful alliance with lyrist Andy Razaf that resulted in three Broadway shows in the late '20s, Keep Shufflin', Load of Coal, and Hot Chocolates.
Waller started qualification records for Victor in 1926; his most significant early records for that label were a series of vivid 1929 solo pianoforte sides of his own compositions like "Handful of Keys" and "Shattering Thirds." After finally sign language an sole Victor contract in 1934, he began the long-running, prolific series of records with His Rhythm, which won him great celebrity 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 come along in films like Hooray for Love and King of Burlesque in 1935 patch chronic regular appearances on radiocommunication that dated back to 1923. He toured Europe in 1938, made organ recordings in London for HMV, and appeared on one of the number one telecasting broadcasts. He returned to London the following spring to record his to the highest degree extensive composition, "London Suite" for pianissimo and percussion, and ship on an extended continental tour (which, unfortunately, was canceled by fears of impending war with Germany). Well aware of the popularity of big bands in the '30s, Waller tried and true to form his have, simply they were ephemeral.
Into the forties, Waller's touring schedule of the U.S. escalated, he contributed music to another musical, Early to Bed, the photographic film appearances unbroken approaching (including a memorable stretch out of Stormy Weather where he lED an all-star band that included Benny Carter, Slam Stewart and Zutty Singleton), the recordings continued to period, and he continued to eat and boozing in super clayey quantities. Years of exhausting alimony squabbles, plus excess and, no doubtfulness, frustration over non organism taken more seriously as an artist, began to wear the piano player down. Finally, after becoming ill during a gig at the Zanzibar Room in Hollywood in December, 1943, Waller boarded the Santa Fe Chief prepare for the long trip back to New York. He never made it, dying of pneumonia aboard the coach during a catch at Union Station in Kansas City.
Patch every buffoon longs to play Hamlet as per the cliche -- and Waller did ingest so-called serious musical pretensions, longing to follow in George Gershwin's footsteps and write concert music -- it likely was not in the card game anyhow due to the racial barriers of the number one half of the 20th c. Besides, granted the fact that Waller influenced a long agate 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 shock has been rightfully profound.
R Kelly trial: Day Three
