How Tom Is Doin'

Radio listeners who 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.

Of 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.

He has cooked up some good ones before. Among them: Ain't Misbehavin', I've Got a Feelin' I'm Fallin', Keepin' Out of Mischief Now. Waller has collaborated with many a lyricist. Some of his best results he turned out with Andy Razaf, his favorite poet next to Longfellow.* During one rewarding session in retreat at Anbury Park, N.J., the two men turned out Zonky, My Fate Is in Your Hands and Honeysuckle Rose in two hours. Razaf had enticed Waller into his mother's Asbury Park home for a productive session away from the nightspots. Says Razaf: "She's a wonderful cook and Fats loves to eat. We had a show to write and I figured that would keep Fats away from the bars. He could set the telephone book to music."

Keeping Tom Waller away from bars is a difficult feat. His capacity for both food & drink is vast. A Waller breakfast may include six pork chops. It is when he is seated at the piano that he most relishes a steady supply of gin. When his right-hand man, brother-in-law Louis Rutherford, enters with a tray of glasses, Tom will cry, "Ah, here's the man with the dream wagon! I want it to hit me around my edges and get to every pound."

The Early Days. That requires a lot of alcohol: Waller is 5 ft. 10 and weighs over 270 lb. That mass helps to account for the great strength of his basses, and makes his playing look as magisterial as it sounds. Whether he plays a stomping Dinah or lazy variations on When My Baby Smiles at Me, no other pianist gives quite his impression of commanding ease. Musicians he plays with sense it instantly, ease up themselves.

Fats was playing a harmonium at the age of five. Born on Manhattan's West 134th Street, he grew up next door to P.S. 89. This made it easy for his mother, who had eleven other children, to lean out of the window and call, "How's Tom doin'?" His father was pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, now the largest Baptist congregation in the world, where Tom took up the organ.

At 14, Tom had a steady job on the organ in Harlem's Lincoln Theater. He made Q.R.S. piano rolls, records with blues-singer Bessie Smith and Sarah Martin. The late Arnold Rothstein backed Waller's first show, Keep Shufflin'. On records Waller began to sing as well as play, and in his expressive mouth the inane words of a popular song often came in for very searching satirical treatment. In 1929, in collaboration with Guitarist Eddie Condon and a small but vital ensemble, he made one of the greatest jazz records of all time: The Minor Drag and Harlem Fuss.

The Paris Period. In 1932 Fats balked the depression with a rapid month in Paris. There his enthusiastic friends included Marcel Dupre, onetime organist of Notre Dame Cathedral. With Dupre, Fats climbed into the Notre Dame organ loft where "first he played on the god box, then I played on the god box." In Paris Fats also came into cultural contact with a fellow pianist and expatriate named "Steeplehead" Johnson. Fats got home from the French capital by wiring Irving Berlin for funds.

Few who had funds could ever refuse him. With a piano, a bottle of gin, and a hot weather handkerchief, he is one of the most infectious men alive. With his wife Anita and their two musically gifted sons, Maurice, 15, and Ronald, 14, he lives in an eight-room English brick house in St. Albans, L.I. The house has a Hammond organ, a size B Steinway grand and an automatic phonograph with 1,500 records. Next to Lincoln and F.D.R., Fats considers Johann Sebastian Bach the greatest man in history.

Once a dewy-eyed young thing stopped Fats and inquired, "Mr. Waller, what is swing?" Said he: "Lady, if you got to ask, you ain't got it."

* Razaf's real name: Andrea Razafinkeriefo. He is the nephew of Ranavalona III, last Queen of Madagascar.

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