'He’s a Person of Joy, a Fanatic'

Unlike my sons, I can’t listen to music while working – that is, writing. When the music is good, that’s what I’m doing, listening. Otherwise, I don’t need a soundtrack for my life. I would find that annoyingly attention-splitting. What I do instead is periodically take a break and listen to the track that’s been nagging me – Mingus, Van Morrison, Satie, whatever. If I were to keep a log of these musical palate-cleansers, I’m guessing that two musicians would dominate the list  – Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller. Just now I listened to the former’s “S.O.L. Blues” (1927). 

What do Armstrong and Waller have in common? Both are artists who dispense joy without compromising their art. They aim to entertain, and both know with certainty there’s no shame in that. Philip Larkin said Waller was “in the laughter business as much as the jazz business,” and we love him for it. Larkin quotes Armstrong: “Every time someone mentions Fats Waller's name, why, you can see grins on all the faces.”

 

Speaking of laughter, Waller always brings to mind a comedian and actor among his contemporaries, W.C. Fields. Both undercut sappy material. Both mutter some of their best (and most salacious) lines, and suggest a muted sense of discontent and even unhappiness, which nicely sets off their raucous comedy. Larkin again:

 

“Like many fat people, he discovered that the way to prevent people laughing at him was to make them laugh with him; when he had their attention, he could dominate them with his powerful virtuoso piano playing.”

 

In his profile of Waller, Whitney Balliett writes: “Waller’s comic spirit was ungovernable. . . . Waller was a funny man, even when he played the piano and kept his mouth shut.” Lyrically and musically, Waller often subverted the cheesy songs he was sometimes obligated to perform. Listen to “All That Meat and No Potatoes,” “Hold Tight, I Want Some Seafood, Mama” and “Handful of Keys.” Then move on to his rendering with Ada Brown of “That Ain’t Right” in Stormy Weather (1943), “I’ve Got My Fingers Crossed” and his own “Ain’t Misbehavin,’”

 

In 1940, Eudora Welty saw Waller perform in Jackson, Miss. She wrote the story “Powerhouse” about a Fats-like musician, and in 1941 it was published in The Atlantic.  It’s wild, and one of Welty’s best:

 

“This is a white dance. Powerhouse is not a show-off like the Harlem boys, not drunk, not crazy—he’s in a trance; he’s a person of joy, a fanatic. He listens as much as he performs, a look of hideous, powerful rapture on his face. Big arched eyebrows that never stop traveling, like a Jew’s—wandering-Jew eyebrows. When he plays he beats down piano and seat and wears them away. He is in motion every moment—what could be more obscene?”

 

Thomas “Fats” Waller died eighty year ago today at the unforgivable age of thirty-nine.