AIN╒T MISBEHAVIN╒, by Ed Kirkeby (Peter Davies, 35s.)
Fats Waller╒s face, fourteen versions of which appear on the cover of Ed Kirkeby╒s Ain╒t Misbehavin╒ (Peter Davies, 35s.), was the kind you can carve on an orange; squeeze it one way and it laughs, another and it weeps or looks puzzled. This battery of expressions was part of his stock-in-trade as an entertainer, for the cheerful little earful, or harmful little armful (he weighed a steady twenty stone), was in the laughter business as much as the jazz business. Like many fat people, he soon 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.
One looks to his first full-length biography to see what, if anything, lay behind this life-long facade. Ed Kirkeby managed Fats for the last five years of his life: the last forty pages or so are based on his personal diary, but for the first thirteen chapters he presumably draws from Duncan P. Scheidt and Sinclair Traill, who are billed as collaborators. Perhaps in consequence the book lacks the focus of an integrated view of its subject; the character of Fats as a roaring boy, a jazz version of Dylan Thomas or Brendan Behan, is accepted without much query. From his early days as Wurlitzer organist at New York╒s Lincoln Theatre to the last engagement in Hollywood, Fats was perpetually having a ball; he was the kind of person parties start up around with almost gruesome relentlessness. On getting up in the morning, he took four fingers of whisky (╥my liquid ham and eggs╙), followed by another four fingers when he had shaved. At recording sessions he invariably had a quart on the piano and another quart in reserve. About women the account is more reticent, but ╥cute chicks╙ appear sufficiently frequently to suggest that Fats denied himself
little in this way also. When Mr. Kirkeby finally got him on to the train after his illness in Los Angeles and several consecutive all-night all-day parties to mark his departure from the Zanzibar Room, fresh gaiety arose when he entered the club car. By the time the train had reached Kansas City, Fats was dead. He was thirty-nine.
Three extenuating qualities can be discerned from this anecdotal and not particularly distinguished account of his life. First, people loved him: Kirkeby, meeting him after twenty years in the recording business, recalls that ╥the great round brown face smiled across at me, and I knew that, without the slightest doubt in the world, here was a man I would love to the end of my days╙. This enormous charm surmounted his unpaid debts, broken contracts, neglected alimony, betrayed wives: at his funeral ten thousand people listened to the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jun., and traffic was stopped for three blocks. After his death, Louis Armstrong said, ╥Every time someone mentions Fats Waller╒s name, why you can see grins on all the faces.╙ Groups of friends, meeting to console each other for their loss, ended by roaring with reminiscential laughter.
Secondly, he was a natural musician. As a jazz pianist he stands between James P. Johnson, who taught him, and Art Tatum, who learnt from him, but it is he who has the greatest variety of mood, from feather-light whimsicality to the solid springing tenths in the left hand that never let the rhythm falter for a moment. A facile composer, he could turn out a ballad practically on demand in exchange for whisky, hamburgers, or ╥trash╙: on July 17, 1929, he sold Irving Mills nineteen numbers (including ╥Ain╒t Misbehavin╒╒) for $500, less than a good week╒s salary. The casual little records he made in the ╒thirties (╥My Very Good Friend the Milkman,╙ ╥When Somebody Thinks You╒re Wonderful╙) have outlasted more ambitious works, and are still played on Housewives╒ Choice.
Lastly, one closes the book feeling that for all his success there was a part of Fats that had lost its way and wanted to go home. His father had been an Abyssinian Baptist pastor and his mother had helped in the services: Tom, as Fats was christened, had played the organ. Throughout his life, hymns and spirituals on a Hammond and Wurlitzer indicated that his deeper feelings were involved; in the small hours (Waller hated to sleep alone) he would announce ╥Now for my favourite tune╔╙ It proved to be ╥Abide With Me,╙ one of his mother╒s songs. She had died when Fats was sixteen, and his unhappy first marriage had immediately followed. Towards the end of his own life, Kirkeby reports elsewhere, he composed a melody that so ╥shook his soul╙ that he could never find words good enough to fit it. The title gave him no difficulty, though. It was ╥Where Has My Mother Gone?╙
