Word: waller
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Wednesday, 'Chicken Little Day,' Skylab will probably be 38 degrees above the southeast horizon, drifting southwest to east," Bill Waller, the spokesman, said...
MUSICAL REVUES are the stage craze of the hour, at Harvard and in professional theaters. Last fall two student-written revues in the Houses played to big audiences; Ain't Misbehavin', a set of Fats Waller numbers, won the Tony for Best Musical of 1978 and just opened in Boston; and last week this hardy genre of theater made it to the Loeb Mainstage in the form of Ellington at Eight, a collection of Duke Ellington classics. It shivered a bit in the Loeb's vasty spaces, but perked up its head and boldly smiled on. Despite occasional lapses...
...Misbehavin' inspires movement of quite a different kind. Though it received the 1978 Tony Award for Best Musical, the show is really more of a revue, in which three women and two men--costumed in glittery '30s chic--perform over 30 songs either written or recorded by Fats Waller, the legendary jazzman whose talent for blues and jive helped create the sound of swing...
There was more to Waller's music than the swoony "Honeysuckle Rose", his most famous song. Many of the numbers furnish a disturbingly candid view of Harlem life. The eerie "Viper" describes a marijuana hallucination in which the singer dreams of "a reefer--ten feet long." And every line in the poignant "Black and Blue" furnishes a brilliant play on the word "black" creating a clear statement of what being black meant in America then--and, unfortunately, means today as well...
...wonders how deeply Waller resented the Harlem ghetto that, ironically, his music made so fashionable among Cafe Society. Ain't Misbehavin' might have benefited from a few lines providing some insights into Waller's character, or at least some biography. A brief description of Harlem during this period would be a welcome respite from the somewhat relentless pace of the nonstop singing. Nevertheless, Ain't Misbehavin' has plenty of moments you'll wish would never end. At the Wilbur Theater...