Piano jazz music artist: Fats Waller a great jazz entertainer
November 23rd, 2008 | by Tom |Of all the stride pianists to record, the most accomplished exponent of style was Fats Waller. Born in 1904, his short life was lived in the fast lane, until his death from pneumonia in 1943. He was an impressive figure, standing five feet eleven inches tall, weighting 285 pounds, and with vast hands, each of which could stretch well over an octave-and-a-half on the keyword.
Fats Waller, a great entertainer on the piano - “The Joint is Jumpin”
Famous as much for his gargantuan appetite (for food, drink and female company) as for his musical abilities, Waller’s success as a popular entertainer and singer tended to mask his brilliance as a pianist and organist, let alone as the composer of dozens of tunes, many of which became hit songs.
Nothing better demonstrates the way in which his louche lifestyle contrasted with the refinement of his musical achievements than the story that his own son, when asked at school what his father did for a living, paused for a moment and then said: “He drinks gin”.
Waller’s initial public success was not at the piano at all. He became the first great jazz organist, using the instrument he has begun playing as a consequence of his lay preacher father’s religious work to extend improvisational ideas in jazz. He used imaginative combinations of pipes within an atmospheric style that combined the sacred world of spirituals and gospel with the secular charms of the darkened movie house.
Playing stride piano, Waller not only demonstrated a technical command of the style and immediately identifiable touch that imbued all levels of dynamic, from the quietest tinkle to the loudest fortissimo. He was also one of the most rhythmically subtle of players, and from the late 1920’s until his death, his mere presence in the studio was an almost certain guarantee of swing, relentless momentum, and joyful zest.
During his career, he made over four hundred recordings, but at the heart of his output is a series of piano solos, of which the fifteen different pieces recorded in 1929, four sequels from 1934, his London Suite from 1939, and a final five pieces from 1941 definitively cover almost every aspect of stride.
In them, he also adopted many of the techniques of a style that has traditionally been frowned upon jazz critics - “novelty piano“.
These pianists harnessed an impressive array of technically difficult embellishments to a light ragtime style, albeit without the rhythmic emphasis or harmonic inflections of jazz.
Tags: fats waller, piano jazz, ragtime