Thomas “Fats” Waller: Performances in Transcription

Edited by Paul S. Machlin

Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller (1904–43) attained widespread recognition as a pianist early in his professional life, but his developing career did not follow a single trajectory. He engaged in an exceptionally broad range of creative endeavors (perhaps more than any other jazz musician of his time) and excelled in each. His constant schedule of live engagements—on radio in the early 1930s, in clubs, on tours, and in shows throughout the decade—resulted in both an enhanced technique and an assured, relaxed approach to performance.

Photo of "Fats" Waller from the edition

The evidence documenting Waller’s many activities is vast. It includes the hundreds of 78 rpm discs as well as unreleased takes he made for the Victor Talking Machine Company (among others), airchecks of radio shows, and a few brief but memorable appearances on film. This recorded legacy illuminates Waller’s most immediately recognizable qualities as a performer: his propulsive swing, his brilliant technique, the inventiveness of his improvisations, the infectious enthusiasm of his musical persona, and his humor. It also helps explain his influence, which extended not only to other pianists, notably Count Basie and Art Tatum, but also well beyond his immediate contemporaries.

During the first half of the 1920s, as Waller advanced from adolescence to young adulthood, his work in music provided a well-rounded apprenticeship for his multifaceted career. He taught himself certain technical aspects of playing the piano by imitating and memorizing the keyboard activity generated by piano rolls.

After this apprenticeship, Waller entered a more intensive period of creative work, focusing on three overlapping areas of musical activity: composing, recording, and performing. Between 1926 and 1929 he composed independent songs for Tin Pan Alley, as well as songs for no fewer than five shows and revues: Tan Town Topics, Junior Blackbirds, Keep Shufflin’, Load of Coal, and Hot Chocolates. At the same time, he had begun to record for the Victor Company on a regular basis. From 1927 to 1929 he produced a catalog of recordings that demonstrated his mastery of stride on both piano and pipe organ. Moreover, at many of these sessions he made alternate takes—two or more performances of a particular song recorded consecutively at the same session. Such concentrated work on selected repertoire honed his technical skill at the keyboard and encouraged him to vary his interpretations.

Waller’s increased recording activity in the late 1920s was prompted by the dramatic rise of the recording industry itself. His position as an entertainer was enhanced further by the enthusiasm in American life and culture for radio—a technology firmly entrenched by the end of the decade. It was principally these media, individually and in combination, that introduced Waller’s work to a broad, multiracial public. By a coincidence crucial to the growth of his reputation, he achieved a new level of artistic maturity just as the operations of the two media began to converge, creating new avenues of commercial opportunity for performers of popular music.

Despite his heavy performing and recording schedule, Waller—always a fluent and rapid songwriter—found time to compose. But after 1934 his annual output of published compositions decreased, occasionally dwindling to only a few titles. By this time, though, Waller was a seasoned craftsman. His published music reflected both famili­arity with Tin Pan Alley’s verse and chorus structures and the ability to conceive an appealing melodic line to convey the essence of the lyric.

This edition of Performances in Transcription contains 17 transcriptions that reveal the compositional artistry and comic play of “Fats” Waller. Using pairs of transcriptions of the same tune, this volume explores the creative process within Waller’s improvisations by demonstrating the wide variety of gesture and idea capture at the moment of recording. Alternate takes of “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” for example, show how deep the stylistic gulf between two versions of a song could become, even within the same recording session. Alternate takes of “Waiting at the End of the Road” performed on piano and on pipe organ demonstrate Waller’s ability to exploit the different expressive possibilities inherent in the two instruments.

Drawn from recordings made throughout Waller’s career, other pairs include a broad sampling of solo piano and pipe organ performances, popular songs and small ensemble work: “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” “Gladyse,” “Honeysuckle Rose,” “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” “I’m Crazy ’bout My Baby,” and “Rusty Pail.” A single transcription of Waller’s little-known homemade acetate of “That Does It” from his 1943 show Early to Bed completes the volume.

Among these pieces, “Honeysuckle Rose” is, arguably, Waller’s most popular and enduring song—a favorite with jazz and popular musicians alike. The 1941 recording is one of four that Waller made in the studio. The other three include two performed by a sextet called “Fats Waller and His Rhythm” (7 November 1934 and 9 April 1937, though there were slight differences in personnel on the two dates), and one titled “A Jam Session at Victor,” recorded on 31 March 1937 by a small group that featured Bunny Berigan and Tommy Dorsey. In addition, Waller played “Honeysuckle Rose” in many radio broadcasts, on film, on transcription discs, on private recordings, and in concert. Recordings of some of these performances have surfaced, either in their original format or as reissues, so that at this writing, 13 different Waller performances of “Honeysuckle Rose” are known to survive. Indeed, jazz critic and scholar Dan Morgenstern has speculated that Waller “must have played this tune every working day of his life.”

The accompanying essay to this edition explores the nature of Waller’s compositional and lyrical ingenuity, illustrated by several recently discovered manuscript sketches that offer clues to Waller’s musical imagination. Serving both performers and scholars, this volume should provide new insights into Waller’s musical achievements.

Photo of Paul Machlin

Paul Machlin is Arnold Bernhard Professor of Music at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where he teaches courses in jazz history, American popular music, and nineteenth-century music. He also directs the Colby College Chorale and serves as music director for music theater productions. He has a lifelong love of and fascination with the music of the African-American jazz pianist Thomas “Fats” Waller. Indeed, one of his earliest childhood memories is watching his parents dance around the kitchen to Waller’s records, an activity he duplicated for his own children, and which he hopes they will repeat for theirs.

He has twice been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for his research on “Fats” Waller. In addition to Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller: Performances in Transcription, 1927–1923, he has also written Stride: The Music of Fats Waller (1985), as well as various articles and reviews in the Annual Review of Jazz Studies, College Music Symposium, American Music, and other journals. He has also arranged for chorus and conducted two of Waller’s wittiest performances, “The Joint Is Jumpin’ ” and “Your Feet’s Too Big.”