Buoyant Jingles & Liquid Fats -- Waller All the Way

Fats Waller (born Thomas Wright Waller in 1904) was precocious, musically, and began to play both the piano and the organ at an early age. Despite living only to the age of 39, he produced a wealth of jazz recordings and compositions, many of which are considered classics. Fats came of age right at threshold of the 1920's, and was thus positioned historically to participate in the flowering of the first great two decades of the Jazz Era.

  

Waller was primarily known as a pracitioner of "stride" piano style jazz, among a generation of innovators which included James P. Johnson, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Art Tatum, as well as several later figures who also specialized in Boogie-Woogie. Stride is characterized by an "oom-pah" base figure in which the left hand bounces between a base note or "oomp" followed by a chord further up the scale, the "pah!" Playing stride is tough to master, because you can't concentrate on the movement and still play the melody and variations with the right hand. The left hand leaps back and forth, hitting the chords with authority, making a lovely jazz 4/4 rhythm for the right hand to dance around. There are variations on this basic format, but classic stride is about the "walking" or bouncing base. Rag-time--familiar in Scott Joplin tunes (made famous by the movie The Sting) also had a slower, more stately four beat walking base, but with less emphasis and less variation in the melodic arrangements.

       

Stride, as a style, was very exhibitionistic--its pracitioners vying for the fastest, most driven, assault on the keyboard. But Waller, unlike his contemporaries, had a deeply lyrical aptitude, and his pieces are much more tuneful than merely cadenza-like. Also, Waller was among the first to use small band groups to achieve a sound at once intimate, and large. Since he could do so much with the piano--make it growl, or slam, or twinkle, or flutter, he needed much less in the way of side-men to fill in the spaces. He was never essentially a band-leader in the way Ellington or Armstrong were--the use of brass and percussion to enhance an overwhelming keyboard, was a fairly new idea in the mid-1930's, but Waller did much to pioneer the small combo as a unified effect, innovations that later star jazz pianists would turn into a regular tradition (Cole, Brubeck, Peterson, Garner, Shearing, etc.).  

      

Waller was also something of a "novelty" performer, too, often making wise-cracks and asides during performances. This aura of silliness sometimes seems almost a self-deprecation, as if he felt he could only be accepted as something of a ham, instead of a serious composer and arranger. Waller basically has three modes: Ecstatic delight, mugging madcap, and deep blues (which can be seen in his early performances on the organ). Waller's career bridges the era between small-time "joint" gigs, and the larger audience available through recordings. His style is suited to small, intimate settings, but it's big enough to hold its own in a concert hall.  

Dick Hyman has made recorded "perfected" performances of most of Waller's biggest hits, and these clarified versions--though a trifle academic--are the best contemporary interpretations, for my money. But the vintage sets, most of which are still available in later media (such as CD) give a strong sense of what a live Fats session must have been like. Waller was a boisterous man, a big eater and drinker, full of lively humor and irreverent charm, and that comes through as well. 

Waller's innocent sweetness, and his sense of fun, are perfect antidotes to some of the grim, bleak, alienated sounds of Fifties and Sixties jazz. Waller died in 1943, just when Big Band Swing was at its height, at the very young age of 39. It's probably idle to imagine what he might have become, had he lived another 20 years, into the 1950's. His style seems to belong to another era. America is lucky to have had such talent in its midst. Where is this exuberance and sweetness today?