Tag Archives: Today In Music History

Hank Snow ► Monday Musical Appreciation

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Happy Birthday to Canadian Country singer Hank Snow, the man who discovered Elvis Presley. He would be blowing out 102 candles had he not died in 1999 at the age of 85.

Clarence Eugene Snow was born “in the sleepy fishing village of Brooklyn,

Queens County, on Nova Scotia’s

beautiful South Shore, just down the tracks from Liverpool“, according to his official web site, which continues:

As a boy, Hank faced many difficulties and shortcomings. He had to face

the trauma of his parents’ divorce at just eight years old and he was

forced to stay with his grandparents. He then had to deal with an abusive

grandmother who forbid him to see his mother. He regularly sneaked out

at night and walked the railroad tracks to Liverpool where his mother

was living. Not willing to return to his grandmother, who would often

beat him for visiting his mom, he would sometimes seek shelter in Liverpool’s

railway station, now home of the Hank Snow Country Music Centre.

He learned guitar from his mother. Running away from home at 12, he worked as a cabin boy on fishing schooners out of Lunenburg and bought his first guitar with his first wages: A T. Eaton Special which set him back $5.95. While onboard the ship he listened to the radio, later imitating the Country singers he heard, especially his hero Jimmie Rodgers.

Once he was back on land Snow continued to practice and improve. The WikiWackyWoo picks up the story:

Soon, Snow was invited to perform in a minstrel show in Bridgewater
to help raise money for charity. “Someone blackened my face with black
polish and put white rings around my eyes and lips,” Snow recalls. When
his turn came in the show, he played a song called “I Went to See My Gal
Last Night.” “My debut was a big success,” Snow writes. “I even got a
standing ovation.”[2]

In March 1933, Snow wrote to Halifax radio station CHNS
asking for an audition. The rejection letter he received only made him
more determined and later that year he visited the station, was given an
audition and hired to do a Saturday evening show that was advertised as
“Clarence Snow and his Guitar.” After a few months, he adopted the name
“The Cowboy Blue Yodeler” in homage to his idol Jimmie Rodgers known as
“America’s Blue Yodeler.” Since Snow’s Saturday show had no sponsor, he
wasn’t paid for his performances, but he did manage to earn money
playing halls and clubs in towns where people had heard him on the
radio. He also played in Halifax theatres before the movies started and
performed, for $10 a week, on a CHNS musical show sponsored by a company
that manufactured a popular laxative. At the urging of the station’s
chief engineer and announcer, he adopted the name Hank because it went
well with cowboy songs and once again, influenced by Jimmie Rodgers, he
became “Hank, The Yodeling Ranger.” Snow also appeared occasionally on
the CBC’s regional network.[2]

Signed to RCA Records Canada in 1936, the radio hook-up brought him greater fame and he started touring across Canada. Eventually radio stations south of the border started playing his records and Snow moved to Nashville, where he had a growing audience. In 1950 Ernest Tubbs invited Snow to perform at the Grand Old Opry. He didn’t go over so big until he wrote his first hit song, I’m Moving On:

Even had he not discovered Elvis, Hank Snow would still be remembered today for his music. However, as the Wiki tells us:

A regular at the Grand Ole Opry, in 1954 Snow persuaded the directors to allow a young Elvis Presley to appear on stage. Snow used Presley as his opening act and introduced him to Colonel Tom Parker.
In August 1955, Snow and Parker formed the management team, Hank Snow
Attractions. This partnership signed a management contract with Presley
but before long, Snow was out and Parker had full control over the rock
singer’s career. Forty years after leaving Parker, Snow stated, “I have
worked with several managers over the years and have had respect for
them all except one. Tom Parker (he refuses to recognise the title
Colonel) was the most egotistical, obnoxious human being I’ve ever had
dealings with.”

One of my favourite jokes:

If Hank Snow married June Carter, there would be 6 inches of Snow in June.

But I digress. According to his website:

Hank
Snow sold over 70 million records in his career that spanned 78’s, 45’s,
extended 45’s, LP’s, 8-tracks, cassettes and compact discs.

Throughout his life he recorded over 100 LPs, including everything from hit
parade material to gospel, train songs, instrumentals (alone and with Chet
Atkins), tributes to Jimmie Rodgers and the Sons of the Pioneers, and
recitations of Robert Service poems. He has always kept a warm spot in his
heart for Nova Scotia, and he paid homage with his album “My Nova Scotia
Home”. He also recorded “Squid Jiggin’ Ground” in honor of the fishermen he
sailed with out of Lunenburg in his early youth.
Every August Liverpool, Nova Scotia, holds a multi-day Hank Snow Tribute. This year’s shindig will happen August 18-21 and tickets are already available. However, as Not Now Silly likes to say: It’s all in the grooves. This is why people still sing and play Hank Snow tunes:









Happy Birthday Lesley Gore ► Monday Musical Appreciation

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On this day in 1946 Lesley Sue Goldstein was born. We knew her better as Lesley Gore.

Discovered by Quincy Jones when she was only 16, Lesley Gore was still in high school when It’s My Party hit the top of the pop charts. Hit after hit followed under the tutelage of producer Jones. However, when she graduated, she chose to go to college, as opposed to pursuing a full-time career in the music biz. She would perform and record on weekends. The WikiWackyWoo picks up the story:

Gore was one of the featured performers in the T.A.M.I. Show concert film, which was recorded and released in 1964 by American International Pictures, and placed in the National Film Registry
in 2006. Gore had one of the longest sets in the film, performing six
songs including “It’s My Party”, “You Don’t Own Me”, and “Judy’s Turn to
Cry”.[13]

Gore performed on two consecutive episodes of the Batman television series (January 19 and 25, 1967), in which she guest-starred as Pussycat, one of Catwoman‘s minions.[1] In the January 19 episode “That Darn Catwoman”, she lip-synched to the Bob Crewe-produced “California Nights”, and in the January 25 episode “Scat! Darn Catwoman” she lip-synched to “Maybe Now”.[11] “California Nights”, which Gore recorded for her 1967 album of the same name, returned her to the upper reaches of the Hot 100.[9]
The single peaked at number 16 in March 1967 (14 weeks on the chart).
It was her first top 40 hit since “My Town, My Guy and Me” in late 1965
and her first top 20 since “Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows”.[1]

Further Reading

Quincy Jones; A National Treasure

It wasn’t until her death last year did much of the world learn she was a Lesbian. Biography takes it from there:

It was also at Sarah Lawrence that Gore realized that she was a
lesbian. Before college, she later explained, she simply had never had
the time to examine her true feelings. “I had boyfriends,” she said. “I
was scheduled to get married … All of that was part of the agenda at
the time … Part of the problem that I had … was being out in the
public. It was hard to even explore it. I wasn’t even left that
opportunity. When I talk to some of my gay women friends now who might
just be a little bit older than me, they would come in from [Long]
Island or New Jersey, and they would put on their black Levis and black
jackets and run to the bars. I wasn’t quite able to do that.”

Though
Gore did not come out as gay until after the heyday of her fame had
passed, she says she never concealed it from the people who were close
to her: “I just tried to live as normally as humanly possible. But as
truthfully as humanly possible.”

Rolling Stone picked up the story for her obituary:

After graduating college in the late Sixties and staying largely out
of the spotlight throughout the Seventies, Gore resurfaced in 1980 when
“Out Here On My Own,” a song she co-wrote with her brother Michael for
the Fame soundtrack, was nominated for a Best Original Song
Academy Award; Michael Gore would instead end up winning the Oscar for
his song “Fame.”

Gore came out to the public when she served as host on a few episodes of the PBS’ LGBT newsmagazine series In the Life. She released her final album Ever Since in 2005.

The Wiki sums it all up:

In a 2005 interview with After Ellen, she stated she was a lesbian and had been in a relationship with luxury jewelry designer Lois Sasson since 1982.[22] At the time of her death, the couple had been together for 33 years.[23] Gore died of lung cancer on February 16, 2015, at the NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, New York City; she was 68 years old.[24][25] Her New York Times obituary described her as a teenage and feminist anthemist.[26] Following her death, Neil Sedaka commented that she was “a phenomenal talent” and “a great songwriter in her own right.”[26]

As we always say here in the Not Now Silly Newsroom, it’s all in the grooves:





A Big Day for Florida & Music ► Monday Musical Appreciation

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Two musical events occurred on this day in history — 8 years apart — that changed South Florida and music. 

In 1960 the teen comedy Where the Boys Are was released to theaters around the country. SPOILER ALERT: It’s the madcap story of 4 college girls who take a road trip to Fort Lauderdale on Spring Break for some sand, surf and sex.

Where the Boys Are made Fort Lauderdale an official destination for every footloose college student. Starting with the very next break in 1961, college students poured into Fort Lah De Dah. The media publicized it, creating new converts for the next year.

At first no one minded so much because the kids brought money. However, every year there were more Spring Breakers than the previous until, as TIME magazine told its readers in A Brief History of Spring Break:

By the free-loving ’70s, Fort Lauderdale’s fun and sun had become
decidedly raunchier. With gratuitous PDA and “balcony-diving” —
negotiating one’s way from balcony to balcony to get to other floors or
rooms, a practice typically performed in a drunken stupor and thus madly
dangerous — the norm, many communities began questioning why the heck
they had invited such unruly houseguests in the first place. By 1985,
some 370,000 students were descending on Fort Lauderdale (or fondly,
“Fort Liquordale”) annually — prompting yet another exploitative film, Spring Break
starring Tom Cruise and Shelley Long. But by the end of the ’80s, the
town had enough: stricter laws against public drinking were enacted and
Mayor Robert Dressler went so far as to go on ABC’s Good Morning America to tell students they were no longer welcome. As a result, spring
breakers were pushed even farther south, and to destinations outside the
U.S. where the sun was hotter and drinking ages lower.

By the time I moved to the Fort Lauderdale area in 2015, Spring Break was just a shadow of its former Bacchanalian self.

Where the Boys Are is a pretty good movie and has held up over the years. It’s a wonderfully kitchy throwback to a simpler time, but still explores some serious social issues about teens and their sexuality. It also hosts a wealth of good acting, including Paula Prentiss in her first movie; Yvette Mimieux, playing an innocent who has a downfall; and George Hamilton, playing George Hamilton, the role he was made for.

However, avoid 1984’s Where the Boys Are. It’s so bad it’s not even good.

Eight years after Where the Boys Are came the Miami Pop Festival, a 3-day extravaganza featuring a who’s who of the music scene, including (alphabetical list stolen from the WikiWackyWoo): The Amboy Dukes, Chuck Berry, Blues Image, The Box Tops, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Canned Heat, Wayne Cochran, Cosmic Drum, James Cotton Blues Band, Country Joe and the Fish, José Feliciano, Fish Ray, Flatt and Scruggs, Fleetwood Mac, Marvin Gaye, The Grass Roots, Grateful Dead, Richie Havens, Ian & Sylvia, Iron Butterfly, Junior Junkanoos, Jr. Walker & The Allstars, The Charles Lloyd Quartet, Hugh Masekela, Joni Mitchell, Pacific Gas & Electric, Procol Harum, Terry Reid, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Steppenwolf, The Sweet Inspirations, Sweetwater, Joe Tex, Three Dog Night, and The Turtles. All for $7.00 per day!!!

The Miami Pop Festival was the first big festival on the east coast and was the precursor to Woodstock.

And, nothing was ever the same again.

The Beatles Meet Brian Epstein ► Throwback Thursday

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On this day in 1961 The Beatles meet with Brian Epstein to discuss whether he would manage them. And, nothing was ever the same again.

According to This Day In Music:

Brian Epstein invited The Beatles into his office to discuss the possibility of becoming their manager. John Lennon, George Harrison and Pete Best arrived late for the 4pm meeting, (they had been drinking at the Grapes pub in Matthew Street), but Paul McCartney was not with them, because, as Harrison explained, he had just got up and was “taking a bath”.

McCartney, bathed and dressed, eventually showed up and The Beatles decided to let Epstein become their manager. Over the next few years he helped take them to the “toppermost of the poppermost” as the most successful boy band of all time.

As the WikiWackyWoo tells us:

Epstein first discovered the Beatles in November 1961 during a lunchtime Cavern Club performance. He was instantly impressed and saw great potential in the group.[1] Epstein was rejected by nearly all major recording companies in London, then he secured a meeting with George Martin, head of EMI‘s Parlophone
label. In May 1962, Martin agreed to sign the Beatles, partly because
of Epstein’s conviction that the group would become internationally
famous.[2]

The Beatles’ early success has been attributed to Epstein’s
management style, and the band trusted him without hesitation. In
addition to handling the Beatles’ business affairs, Epstein often
stepped in to mediate personal disputes within the group. The Beatles’
unquestioning loyalty to Epstein later proved detrimental, as the band
rarely read contracts before signing them.[3] Shortly after the song “Please Please Me” rose to the top of the charts in 1963, Epstein advised the creation of Northern Songs, a publishing company that would control the copyrights of all Lennon–McCartney compositions recorded between 1963 and 1973. Music publisher Dick James and his partner Charles Silver owned 51-percent of the company, Lennon and McCartney each owned 20%, and Epstein owned 9%.[4] By 1969, Lennon and McCartney had lost control of all publishing rights to ATV Music Publishing.
Still, Epstein’s death in 1967 marked the beginning of the group’s
dissolution and had a profound effect on each individual Beatle. In
1997, Paul McCartney said, “If anyone was the Fifth Beatle, it was Brian.”[5]

That’s not all that happened to The Beatles on this day. Today in Beatles History gives us the full lowdown:

1938: Marriage of Alfred Lennon and Julia Stanley. After the ceremony, they go to the movies and then to their respective houses.

1963: Concert at the Guild Hall, Portsmouth (‘The Beatles Autumn Tour’) (postponed 12 November).

1964: Brian flies from Los Angeles to London.
1964: Appearance on BBC-TV’s ‘Top Of the Pops’.

1965: Start of UK tour, with the Moody Blues and The Kobbas & Beryl Mardsen. Concert at the Odeon Cinema, Glasgow.
1965: UK single release: ‘We Can Work It Out’/’Day Tripper’. First single officially released as double A side.
1965: UK LP release: ‘Rubber Soul’.

1966: ‘Yesterday’… And Today’, 24th week in the Top 200 (Billboard).

1971: UK LP release: ‘Fly’.

1977: Start of ‘London Town’ LP sessions at AIR London Studios.

1980: John and Yoko’s apartment, Dakota Building. Photographic session of John and Yoko, with Annie Leibovitz.

1988: 10th episode of a BBC series, essentially based on ‘The Beatles At The Beeb’ collection.

1993: Paul’s concert at the Pacaembu Stadium, Sao Paulo, Brazil (‘The New World Tour’).

Happy Birthday Doc Pomus ► A Musical Appreciation

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Doc Pomus singing at the Pied Piper with Uffe Bode,
Sol Yaged, John Levy and Rex William Stuart (1947)

Light 88 candles — the same as the number of keys on a piano — for Doc Pomus, one of the greatest names in Rock and Roll you never heard of; a Founding Father and a Brill Building Blues-shouting Jew.

Born Jerome Solon Felder on June 27, 1925, in Brooklyn, he walked with crutches due to a bout of polio at the age of six. He fell in love with The Blues after hearing a Big Joe Turner tune and took the stage name Doc Pomus as a teenager when he started performing in Blues clubs as a teenager. More often than not, he was the only White person in the club. During these years he recorded some 40 songs for small labels.

Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus

According to the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame:

At first, penning songs for his own recordings, he soon became a major song source on the New York scene and a regular at the new Atlantic Records’ office, creating classics for Laverne Baker, Ruth Brown, Lil Green, Ray Charles and Big Joe Turner. He enjoyed his first rhythm and blues top ten hit with “Lonely Avenue” by Ray Charles. Hooking up with a team of two other young songwriters, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, he hit big with the Coasters’ “Young Blood.”

Pomus, by coincidence, met a talented teenaged fledgling songwriter Mort Shuman, who was dating Pomus’ cousin. He took Shuman under his wing and eventually the two became full partners despite the 15-year age difference between them.

Ultimately, the pair enjoyed a wonderful nine-year association resulting in a major body of work which, collectively, became a dominant force on the record charts and led to sales of well over one hundred million. The songs included, “This Magic Moment,” “Save The Last Dance For Me,” “Teenager in Love,” “Can’t Get Used To Losing You,” “Turn Me Loose,” “Hushabye,” “I Count The Tears,” “Sweets for My Sweet” and “Seven Day Weekend,” among many others. For Elvis Presley, they produced a series of major hit songs, including “Little Sister,” “Viva Las Vegas,” “His Latest Flame,” “Surrender,” “Suspicion,” “A Mess of Blues” and “Long, Lonely Highway,” to mention a very few.

Just last year a documentary on the great Doc Pomus was released. Making fun of his almost anonymous fame, the movie is called A.K.A. Doc Pomus:

Jeff Tamarkin, in his review of Lonely Avenue; The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus, by Alex Halberstadt, gets to the bottom of the contradictions:

It wasn’t until long after the hits, after the Beatles and Dylan made irrelevant the songwriting mills, after a 10-year writing sabbatical when high-stakes poker brought in more cash than his royalties, that Pomus began to feel comfortable in his skin. He began writing again, and though his collaborations with the likes of Dr. John and Willy DeVille never came close to the charts, he felt at home with these younger singers, who respected the same traditions he did.

By the ’80s, he had recast himself as an eccentric, ebullient man about town, dressing loudly, throwing lavish parties, turning up nightly at clubs where bouncers cleared a path for his wheelchair and set him in the prime spots. But he also became a magnet for all manner of hangers-on and hucksters, and he took to carrying a business card that read “Doc Pomus — I’ve Got My Own Problems.”

Despite the overhanging gloom, Lonely Avenue — which takes its name from the 1956 Ray Charles hit that put Pomus on the map — is anything but depressing. Halberstadt’s re-creation of period detail is rich as is his portraiture of the myriad characters who flit in and out of Pomus’s life — Muhammad Ali, Veronica Lake (with whom Halberstadt claims Pomus had an affair), Rodney Dangerfield, John Lennon. With access to family and friends, as well as to the late songwriter’s journals — he died in 1991 — Halberstadt (who never met his subject) gets at the heart of Pomus’s often conflicting personal and professional lives.

However, as always, it’s about the music. Here’s a Doc Pomus Jukebox which includes some of his early Blues sides, as well as some of his tunes made famous by others.


As always: CRANK IT UP!!!

Music Brings Our World Together For The First Time

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Dateline June 25, 1967 – Our World is broadcast to the entire world, via the very first live, global, satellite hookup. Taking part in the broadcast were creative artists from 19 countries around the globe, including Maria Callas, Pablo Picasso, Marshall McLuhan and The Beatles. More than 350 million people tuned in.

According to the WikiWackyWoo, it took more than 10,000 technicians, producers and translators to pull off the two and a half hour broadcast. The project took 10 months to plan. The countries that participated promised that their segments would be 100% live and no politicians or heads of state could appear. A last minute problem came close to scuttling the project, when the entire Eastern Bloc, directed by the Soviet Union, pulled out in protest over response to the Six Day War.

More from the WikiWackyWoo:

The opening credits were accompanied by the Our World theme sung in 22 different languages by the Vienna Boys Choir.

Canada’s CBC Television had Marshall McLuhan being interviewed in a Toronto television control room. At 7:17 pm GMT, the show switched to the United States’ segment about the Glassboro, New Jersey, conference between American president Lyndon Johnson and Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin; since Our World insisted that no politicians be shown, only the house where the conference was being held was televised. National Educational Television’s (NET) Dick McCutcheon ended up talking about the impact of the new television technology on a global scale.

The show switched back to Canada at 7:18 pm GMT. Segments that were beamed worldwide were from a Ghost Lake, Alberta ranch, showing a rancher, and his cutting horse, cutting out a herd of cattle. The last Canadian segment was from Kitsilano Beach, located in Vancouver, British Columbia’s Point Grey district at 7:19 pm GMT.

At 7:20 pm GMT, the program shifted continents to Asia, with Tokyo, Japan being the next segment. It was 4:20 a.m. local time and NHK showed the construction of the Tokyo Subway system.

The equator was crossed for the first time in the program when it switched to the Australian contribution, which was at 5:22 a.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST). This was the most technically complicated point in the broadcast, as both the Japanese and Australian satellite ground stations had to reverse their actions: Tokyo had to go from transmit mode to receive mode, while Melbourne had to switch from receive to transmit mode. The segment dealt with Trams leaving the Hanna Street Depot in Melbourne with Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Brian King explaining that sunrise was many hours away as it was winter there. A scientific segment, later on in the broadcast, was also included that dealt with the Parkes Observatory tracking a deep space object.

For the Beatles segment John Lennon wrote All You Need Is Love specifically for the broadcast (though like all their Beatles’ songs it’s credited to Lennon-McCartney). The song premiered that night to the entire world at the very same time. Watch:


The Beatles – All You Need is Love from gledson_adriel on Vimeo.

All recordings of All You Need Is Love were in black and white. This colourized version is from The Beatles Anthology series. Watch it while you can because EMI & The Beatles seem to remove any copies found on the innertubes.

The Beatles released All You Need Is Love as their next single, on July 7, 1967. However, it wasn’t the exact performance from the satellite broadcast. John had been unhappy with his vocals, so he re-recorded them and Ringo fixed a few of the drum tracks, including substituting a drum roll for a tambourine shake during the La Marseillaise section of the tune. The single went straight to the top of the charts, where it stayed for 3 weeks.

Les Paul ► The Man Who Made Rock and Roll Possible

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Not Now Silly celebrates the birth of the man that made it all possible: Lester William Polsfuss, better known as Les Paul.

Les Paul didn’t invent the guitar, which falls into the family of chordophones.Those go back several thousands of years to India and China. Modern descendants include the lute and violin, not to mention the guitar as we now know it.

Les Paul didn’t even invent the electric guitar. That happened in 1931 when George Beauchamp invented a magnetic pick-up for the Ro-Pat “Frying Pan” lap steel guitar. Les Paul didn’t get around to inventing his solid body electric guitar until 10 years later and even then it was just a 2×4 with the electronics hidden inside. It was so ugly, and Les received so many negative comments on it, he disguised it by hiding it in a dummy guitar.

Les Paul didn’t even invent overdubbing, although he perfected it and popularized the technique.

Yet, Les Paul is often credited with inventing all three. The New York Times 2009 obituary stated:

Mr. Paul was a remarkable musician as well as a tireless tinkerer.
He played guitar alongside leading prewar jazz and pop musicians from Louis Armstrong to Bing Crosby.
In the 1930s he began experimenting with guitar amplification, and by
1941 he had built what was probably the first solid-body electric
guitar, although there are other claimants. With his guitar and the
vocals of his wife, Mary Ford, he used overdubbing, multitrack recording
and new electronic effects to create a string of hits in the 1950s.

Mr.
Paul’s style encompassed the twang of country music, the harmonic
richness of jazz and, later, the bite of rock ’n’ roll. For all his
technological impact, though, he remained a down-home performer whose
main goal, he often said, was to make people happy.

Nothing I could write would explain it any better than the wonderful documentary “Chasing Sound,” which intercuts contemporary footage of Les Paul performing at the Iridium Jazz Club — which he did right up to his death at the age of 94 — with historic footage and music telling Les Paul’s life story. Watch:

I’ve also put together a Les Paul Jukebox for your listening pleasure:
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A Tribute To Fats Waller ► A Musical Appreciation

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If Fats Waller had only written “Honeysuckle Rose” he would have been famous. If Fats Waller had only written “Ain’t Misbehavin’” he would have been famous. If Fats Waller had only written “Squeeze Me” he would have been famous. If Fats Waller had only written “Jitterbug Waltz” he would have been famous. If Fats Waller had only written “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” he would have been famous.

Celebrating the joyous birthday of the greatest Stride piano player this country ever produced. Thomas “Fats” Waller was born on May 21, 1904, and died at the young age of 39. Yet in his time he copyrighted more than 400 tunes. He made money off some of them. Others he sold off cheap when he was hurting for cash. Some he lost completely. According to the WikiWackyWoo:


Waller composed many novelty tunes in the 1920s and 1930s and sold them for relatively small sums. When the compositions became hits, other songwriters claimed them as their own. Many standards are alternatively and sometimes controversially attributed to Waller. Waller’s son Maurice wrote in his 1977 biography of his father, that once he was playing “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby” when he heard his father complaining from upstairs and came down and admonished him never to play that song in his hearing, saying that he had to sell that song when he needed some money. He even made a recording of it in 1938 with Adelaide Hall who, coincidentally, had introduced the song to the world (at Les Ambassadeurs Club in New York in 1928), in which he played the tune but made fun of the lyrics.[2] Likewise, Maurice noted his father’s objections whenever he heard “On the Sunny Side of the Street” played on the radio.[3]

Fats had been taught to play piano by the great James P. Johnson. Johnson was 10 years older and had practically invented Stride piano (often mistakenly called Ragtime piano). He got Fats his first piano roll and recording gigs and they became good friends. However, even Johnson admitted the student had surpassed the teacher.

As a great a piano player Fats was, his favourite instrument was the pipe organ. His father was a preacher and, after taking up the piano at 6, Fats started playing organ in the church at the age of 10. Later he played organ during the silent movies. Once he had gained a bit of fame he was allowed to record syncopated Jazz on the pipe organ, both solo and with “his Rhythm,” the name of his 5 and 6 man combos.

Recording a Jazz group that had a pipe organ as a lead instrument proved to be a technical challenge. It was during the days before electronic microphones had been invented. Performers had to be carefully arranged around a horn, from quietest to loudest, to balance the sound properly. A pipe organ is LOUD! So loud that the recording equipment and Fats’ band had to be on the opposite side of a cavernous room from the pipe organ. That presented a new problem. A slight delay due to the speed of sound caused havoc with the syncopated rhythms. Only the supreme musicianship of “his Rhythm” was able to overcome that challenge. I am most excited by the organ music that Fats recorded.

Sadly Fats Waller made few movies. His over-sized personality and mugging were just perfect for motion pictures, as these two clips attest:


However, the times being what they were, there was not a lot of call for Black performers in the Hollywood of the ’30s and ’40s.

Having said all that, maybe it’s a good thing that Fats Waller didn’t live to his 50s or 60s. I often think of how painful it must have been for Louis Armstrong, accused of being an Uncle Tom during the Civil Rights Era because he felt that putting on an entertaining performance, which included Satchmo’s trademark handkerchief and onstage mugging. However, no one mugged bigger and wider than Fats Waller. I doubt he would have escaped this criticism had he lived.

There are so many great songs and performances that I am having trouble putting together a representative Fats Waller jukebox. I have 515 Fats Waller MP3s, all from my own CD collection. As well, Spotify has identified 1,327 tunes for listening. However, I have tried to include some of his greatest tunes, both solo and band performances, with and without pipe organ. I also included a few interpretations of his music. Enjoy!

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