Google Maps: Fats Waller

from My Queen's Jazz Trail

Fats Waller: Ain't Misbehavin'

Lyrics by Andy Razaf
Music by Thomas "Fats" Waller and Harry Brooks

No one to talk with,
All by myself,
No one to walk with,
But I'm happy on the shelf
Ain't misbehavin',
I'm savin' my love for you
I know for certain,
The one I love,
I through with flirtin',
It's just you I'm thinkin' of.
Ain't misbehavin',
I'm savin' my love for you
Like Jack Horner in the corner
Don't go no where,
What do I care,
Your kisses are worth waitin' for
Be-lieve me
I don't stay out late,
Don't care to go,
I'm home about eight,
Just me and my radio
Ain't misbehavin',
I'm savin' my love for

Fats Waller: The Joint Is Jumping

biography from redhotjazz
Fats Waller (1904-1943) was the son of a preacher and learned to play the organ in church with his mother. In 1918 he won a talent contest playing James P. Johnson's Carolina Shout which he learned from watching a pianola play the song. He would later take piano lessons from Johnson. Fats began his recording career in 1922 and made a living playing rent parties, as an organist at movie theatres and as an accompanist for various vaudeville acts. In 1927 he co-wrote a couple of tunes with his old piano teacher James P. Johnson for his show "Keep Shufflin'". Two years later Waller wrote the score for the Broadway hit "Hot Chocolates" with lyrics supplied by his friend Andy Razaf. Fats' most famous song, "Ain't Misbehavin'" was introduced in this show which featured Louis Armstrong. Fats Waller's big break occurred at a party given by George Gershwin in 1934, where he delighted the crowd with his piano playing and singing. An executive of Victor Records, who was at the party was so impressed that he arranged for Fats to record with the company. This arrangement would continue until Waller's death in 1943. Most of the records he made were released under the name of Fats Waller and his Rhythm. The group consisted of around half a dozen musicians who worked with him regularly, including Zutty Singleton. Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s Fats was a star of radio and nightclubs, and toured Europe. He unexpectedtly died on board a train near Kansas City, Missouri of pneumonia in 1943.
lyrics-which don't quite follow the version above

They have a new expression along old Harlem way,
That tells you when a party is ten times more than gay:
To say that things are jumpin' leaves not a single doubt,
That everthing is in full swing when you hear someone shout.
Here 'tis:
The joint is jumpin',
It's really jumpin',
Come in, cats, and check your hats,
I mean this joint is jumpin'!
The piano's thumpin',
The dancers are bumpin',
This here spot is more than hot,
In fact, the joint is jumpin'!
Check your weapons at the door,
Be sure to pay your quarter,
Burn your leather on the floor,
Grab anybody's daughter.
The roof is rockin',
The neighbors knockin',
We're all bums when the wagon comes,
I mean, this joint is jumpin'!
Let it be! Yas!
Burn this joint, boy!
Yas! Oh, my! Yas!
Don't you hit that chick, that's my broad!
Where'd you get that stuff at?
Why, I'll knock you to your knees!
What? Put this cat out of here!
What? Get rid of that pistol! Get rid of that pistol! Yeah! Get rid of it, yas!
Yeah! That's what I'm talkin' about! Ha, ha! Yas!
Now it's really ready!
No, baby, not now, I can't come over there right now.
Yeah, let's do it!
The joint is jumpin',
It's really jumpin'!
Every Mose is on his toes,
I mean this joint is jumpin'!
Uh-oh! No time for talkin',
This place is walkin', yes,
Get your jug and cut the rug,
I think the joint is jumpin'.
Listen! Get your pig feet, bread and gin,
There's plenty in the kitchen!
Who is that that just came in?
Just look at the way he's switchin'!
Aw, mercy, Don't mind the hour,
I'm in power. I've got bail if we go to jail.
I mean this joint is jumpin'!
Don't give your right name, no, no, no, no!

Assignment Templates For Jazz Time Tale

For the template on the left the assignment involves "finding the evidence." I give still images references from the movie. On the right it's a straight comprehension assignment with movie time stamp clues.

Here is where you will find a previous post with part 1 of the movie

Here is where you will find a previous post with part 2 of the movie

Addisleigh Park In Queens

a slide show I made (the original is bigger and more viewable) of many of the historic homes I pinpointed on my Queens Jazz Trail Map. The nusic is "Flying Home" by the Lionel Hampton band featuring former Addisleigh Park resident and great tenor sax player Illinois Jacquet
from a great nyc history site forgotten-ny

Southern Queens' ascendance as a mecca for jazz musicians began in 1923 when Clarence Williams, a successful musician and entrepreneur from Plaquemine, Louisiana, purchased a home and eight lots at 171-37 108th Avenue. Anticipating the increasing popularity of jazz in the north, Williams moved first to Chicago in 1920 and then to New York with his wife, singer Eva Taylor, in 1923. Desiring open spaces reminiscent of his upbringing in the Louisiana delta, Williams made his home in Queens. He would be the first in a lengthy line of jazz musicians to come to southern Queens.
Addisleigh Park is a small part of the larger St. Albans neighborhood in Queens. Addisleigh is mostly clustered in the named streets (unusual for Queens) located north, south and west of Farmers and Linden Boulevards.
There are precious few memorials to St. Albans/Addisleigh Park's jazz heritage. This now-fading mural on the northern side of Linden Boulevard as it passes under the Long Island Railroad depicts many of the jazz and entertainment giants who resided here.
Having grown up in New Jersey, Count Basie arrived in NYC in 1923 and joined Fats Waller's (see below) band as an organist in 1924. After playing with Benny Moten's band, forging a new swing-based sound in Kansas City in 1927, he returned to the big apple in 1936 as the leader of the Count Basie Orchestra, which featured Lester Young and Herschell Evans on sax, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry Edison and vocalists Billie Holiday, Jimmy Rushing and Helen Humes. Their residence at the Woodside Hotel in Harlem inspired 1938's "Jumpin' at the Woodside."
Count Basie's home on Adelaide Road and 175th Street, St. Albans
In the 50s, Basie formed a new band that included the new sound of bebop and more blues-y elements. Basie's pop hits include "One O'Clock Jump," "Blue Skies," and the #1 "Open the Door, Richard!" in 1947; in 1963 he enjoyed a Top Five album with Frank Sinatra, "Sinatra-Basie." Count Basie moved to the new neighborhood of Addisleigh Park in 1946.
ELLA FITZGERALD (1918-1996)
"Among all of us who sing, Ella was the best". -- Johnny Mathis
"I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them."
--Ira Gershwin
Ella Fitzgerald performed for 58 years, won 13 Grammy Awards and sold in excess of 40 million records. "The First Lady of Song" was born in Newport News, VA, and was orphaned young in life. She was discovered in an amateur contest sponsored by Harlem's famed Apollo Theatre in 1934 and was soon the featured vocalist in Chick Webb's band.
Ella lived on Murdock Avenue between 179th and 180th Street. She moved to Addisleigh Park in the 1950s. "I was delighted when Ella moved here. I could go up to her bar at her house and drink up all of her whiskey, and then go through somebody's yard and go home."­Illinois Jacquet
Ella enjoyed her first big smash in 1938 with "A-Tisket, a Tasket" and led Webb's band for three years after his death in 1939. After enjoying dozens of hits on the Decca label, including "I'm Making Believe" in 1944, "I Love You For Sentimental Reasons" in 1946 and "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Louis Jordan in 1949, Ella moved on the the new Verve label in 1955 and reinterpreted classics by Cole Porter, Duke Ellington and Rodgers and Hart on albums featuring Nelson Riddle arrangements.
MILT HINTON (1910-2000)
The dean of jazz bassists, "The Judge" was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi and moved to Chicago with his family in 1921. After working through the 1920s a s afreelance musician with such legendary jazz artists including Zutty Singleton, Jabbo Smith, Eddie South, Erskine Tate, and Art Tatum, he joined Cab Calloway's band in 1936, remaining with Cab for 15 years. Milt Hinton lived at 113th Avenue and Marne Place.Hinton was a Queens resident from 1950 until his death in 2000.
Striking out on his own in the early 1950s, Hinton went on to play on thousands of recordings and toured extensively, performing with such giants as Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, and even pop musicans such as Bette Midler and Paul McCartney. Milt Hinton was also an educator and author, teaching at Hunter and Baruch Colleges. He also became an exhibited photographer, having taken over 60,000 images from his years on the road; many were published in his his book "Bass Line."
Fats Waller was reportedly the first African American to live in Addisleigh Park. He resided at Sayres Avenue and 174th Street. His home had a built-in Hammond organ and a Steinway grand. His derby tilted rakishly to one side, Fats Waller plinked the 88s and dotted his playful, high-spirited jazz-pop songs with bawdy ad-libs. Waller, one of the 1930s' consummate crowd-pleasers, was born in Greenwich Village in 1904, was playing piano by ear at age six, and at his reverend father's encouragement, learned violin, bass violin and organ. Waller got his professional start at 'rent parties' (where admission was charged to help out with rent payments) and vaudeville. In 1927, he collaborated on his first hit show, "Keep Shufflin'", and his next show, "Hot Chocolates" contained his first big hit, "Ain't Misbehavin.'" Waller went on to score and perform in dozens of shows. His biggest hit, "It's a Sin to Tell a Lie", came in 1936, and he wrote and performed time-tested classics like "Honeysuckle Rose," The Joint Is Jumpin,'" and "Lulu's Back in Town." Waller suffered from drinking and overweight problems his entire life. He also considered himself a serious musician, but racism in the period prevented him from realizing these ambitions. Soon after finishing work in "Stormy Weather" in 1943 he collapsed and died of bronchial pneumonia.
LENA HORNE (1917-)
Lena Horne was born in Brooklyn in 1917 and has been performing since she was a teenager. She danced and later sung at the Cotton Club beginning in 1933 and made her first recordings in 1937 with Teddy Wilson's orchestra. She joined Charlie Barnet's orchestra in 1940, and while Barnet's behavior was exemplary (he was one of the first white bandleaders to hire African Americans) she tired of the draining segregation and racism that was such a constant durng that time. Upon signing with MGM in 1940, she shrewdly had a clause written in that prevented her from depicting domestics, in a jungle native role, or other cliché images. Her appearance in 1943's Stormy Weather was a sensation; her rendition of the title song was her biggest hit and remains her signature song. Lena Horne left Hollywood in the early fifties to concentrate on her singing. Like many of her contemporaries, Lena Horne resided at 178th Street between 112th Avenue and Murdock Avenue beginning in the 1940s. During the Joe McCarthy era, she was blacklisted for her left-wing associations, but in 1956 she was taken off the list and resumed her career. She found great success during the sixties and seventies. In 1981, she appeared on Broadway in her own show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which became the longest-running one-woman show in the history of Broadway. She continues recording to this day. Lena Horne lives in New York City.
Saxophonist John Coltrane, who along with Charlie Parker is regarded by many fans as the greatest jazz performer in history, lived on Mexico Street near Quencer Road; Mercer Ellington, Duke's son, who took over the Ellington Orchestra after his father's death and wrote Duke's biography, lived on 175th Street near 113th Avenue; saxophonist Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Foch Boulevard near 171st Street; saxophonist Illinois Jacquet and his brother, trumpeter Russell Jacquet, in nearby houses on 179th Street near 112th Avenue; and saxophonist Earl Bostic, pianist/organist Wild Bill Davis, bassist Slam Stewart, trumpeter Cootie Williams, saxophonist Oliver Nelson, drummer James "Osie" Johnson, saxophonist Lester Young, and singer Rose Murphy also lived in St. Albans. In the 1960s, The Godfather of Soul, James Brown, lived in this house which formerly belonged to Bart Williams, trumpeter with Duke Ellington, on Linden Boulevard and 176th Street , and Brook Benton (who sung one of your webmaster's favorite songs, "A Rainy Night In Georgia", and wrote "A Lover's Question" and "The Stroll,") lived on Murdock Avenue near 175th Street.

Jazztime Tale-Pt 2: Fats Waller

Jazztime Tale-Pt 1: Fats Waller

from an amazon reviewer Ruby Dee narrates this story

I have shown this wonderful little movie to my k-2nd grade students for the past 17 years. Even though the animation technique is fairly primitive, these XBox kids find it highly engaging. The movie does a good job of showing the early days of Fats' career, when he was skipping school to play music for the silent films, before he became the great ragtime pianist we all know him as. It also brings out his minister-father's objections to jazz without dwelling on them. There is a delightful section that shows what silent films were like, complete with dialogue boxes and a heroine tied to an ominous logging saw! The main story, which acts as a vehicle to introduce us to Thomas "Fats" Waller is a sweet, fairly believable story of two girls, one black, one white, who meet and become friends in Harlem, NY. I highly recommend this video for anyone interested in Waller or NY in the 1920's, and especially other Music teachers out there.