Fats Waller from 1938-43 radio and recordings is this week’s Phantom Dancer feature artist. You’ll hear Fats Waller broadcsting live and on V-Discs.

Greg Poppleton presents The Phantom Dancer every week. It’s your non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week. The Phantom Dancer’s been on-air over 107.3 2SER Sydney since 1985.

Hear The Phantom Dancer online from 12:04pm AEST Tuesday 18 August at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/ where you can also hear two years of archived shows.

As always, the finyl hour is vinyl.

THE FINAL CURTAIN

At the end Waller’s career in 1943, the year he died, Fats Waller had the distinction of becoming the first African-American songwriter to compose a hit Broadway musical that was seen by a mostly white audience. Broadway producer Richard Kollmar’s hiring of Waller to create the musical Early to Bed was recalled in a 2016 essay about Waller by John McWhorter, an American academic and linguist who is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he teaches linguistics, American studies, philosophy, and music history.

“Even as late as 1943, the idea of a black composer writing the score for a standard-issue white show was unheard of. When Broadway performer and producer Richard Kollmar began planning Early to Bed, his original idea was for Waller to perform in it as a comic character, not to write the music.

Waller was, after all, as much a comedian as a musician. Comedy rarely dates well, but almost 80 years later, his comments and timing during “Your Feet’s Too Big” are as funny as anything on Comedy Central, and he nearly walks away with the movie Stormy Weather with just one musical scene and a bit of mugging later on, despite the competition of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Lena Horne, and the Nicholas Brothers.

Kollmar’s original choice for composer [of Early to Bed] was Ferde Grofé, best known as the orchestrator of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” whose signature compositions were portentous concert suites. But Grofé withdrew, and it is to Kollmar’s credit that he realized that he had a top-rate pop-song composer available in Waller. Waller’s double duty as composer and performer was short-lived. During a cash crisis and in an advanced state of intoxication, Waller threatened to leave the production unless Kollmar bought the rights to his Early to Bed music for $1,000. (This was typical of Waller, who often sold melodies for quick cash when in his cups.

Waller came to his senses the next day, but Kollmar decided that his drinking habits made him too risky a proposition for eight performances a week. From then on, Waller was the show’s composer only, with lyrics by George Marion, whose best-remembered work today is the script for the Astaire-Rogers film The Gay Divorcée.”

Six months after the premiere of Early to Bed, it was still playing in a Broadway theater. At that point newspapers reported Waller’s premature death.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Two acetates of piano by Fats Waller recorded in 1943 probably in September during a private session.
The first piece is ‘That Does It’, the second one is unknown.

18 AUGUST PLAY LIST