Black History Month Music: Fats Waller

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Just in case you’re wondering, next month we’ll start the two-month celebration of my birthday with looking at songs from 1986 and 1976. Both of them were pivotal years for me musically. But there are still two days to go in February, and let’s get to the next person on my list of great musicians with which to celebrate Black History Month. Fats Waller One of those hilarious, “turnabout’s fair play” things that always stuck in my mind: when I was perusing the Knoxville papers of the 1930s, I saw an ad for Fats Waller playing in Knoxville. After a couple of days, the ad had a banner over the corner that said, “For colored audiences.” Eventually the balcony had to be roped off for the whites who wanted to attend. Hopefully, with a moniker like “Fats,” you know that Waller was all about a good time. He had some hilarious songs (“Up in Harlem, at a table for two, there were four of us: me, your big feet, and you!”) and wrote some legendary instrumentals (“Jitterbug Waltz”) and songs (“Ain’t Misbehavin’”). Unfortunately, Waller was a poster child for the rock and roll lifestyle that would come along decades later. His “drugs” were food (he weighed nearly 300 pounds at his death) and alcohol, both of which he refused to curtail. Even when he had the flu in September 1943, he preferred to drink and continue his concerts than to obey the doctor’s orders to rest and recover. Three months later, he was dead from pneumonia. While Waller is generally forgotten today, his high-spirited, fun music was a highlight of the jazz/swing era in the 30s, and it still brings a smile today. Fats Waller Born Thomas Wright Waller, May 21, 1904, New York City Died December 15, 1943, Kansas City, Missouri (pneumonia) (age 39) HALLS OF FAME: Songwriters, 1970; Big Band and Jazz, 1989; Jazz, 2005 Here’s another one of Waller’s most popular compositions that still survives after 80 year, “Honeysuckle Rose”: