Word: waller
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...tuned in the Blue Network's Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street last Sunday night heard a mammoth left hand beating out the solidest bass in U.S. pianism, a right hand doing fine and jubilant things. The hands were those of the great Thomas Wright ("Fats") Waller, short-time student of Leopold Godowsky and lifelong admirer of James P. Johnson, the great professor of Jamaica, L.I. Even a tyro in such matters might easily guess what experts have known for years: that Fats Waller is the payoff in the classic American jazz piano style-full-chorded and hallelujah...
...late the Waller hands have not been idle. In the motion picture Stormy Weather (TIME, July 12), they caused a battered piano to romp in rare fashion. For the Broadway musical Early to Bed (TIME, June 28), the Waller right hand packed out the tunes. This week, back in Manhattan after a trip to Canada, Fats Waller was cooking up some new numbers...
Bill Robinson is the Phidias of tap dancing, and there is such humanity in his mere presence that his acting is neither here nor there. Fats Waller & Band, richly aided, tonsils and all, by Singer Ada Brown produce a blues in a Beale Street joint which, if it inevitably falls short of absolute genuineness, is a fine restoration by Grade-A archeologists. The dancing Nicholas Brothers, younger and more agile by some decades than the great Robinson, stage a volcanic family eruption...
Walker and Royal have the popular, tuneful touch. Bennett and Spialek, both composers of long classical training, specialize on choruses and symphonic build ups. But sometimes one of the men does an entire score. Of current Broadway shows Richard Rodgers' Oklahoma! is entirely Bennett's. Fats Waller's Early to Bed is entirely Walker's. Cole Porter generally insists on using all four. Few musical-show composers will have anyone else...
Fitting Finish. Outwardly the orchestrators are reverent toward the composers whose work they are hired to pull into shape. But sometimes it takes a lot of pulling. Fats Waller, for example, gave Walker little more than some snatches of melody jotted on the backs of a couple of envelopes. But sometimes apparent trouble is easy to solve. While working on George Abbott's Best Foot Forward, Walker was approached by Gene Kelly, who staged the dances for the show. Kelly had definite ideas. Roared he: "The orchestra should go de-bump-bump-bump, wha-ah, crash, zip, bang...