Fats Waller: Young Fats at the Organ 1926-1927 - Volume 1 (RCA)
Purchased decades ago at a yard sale for possibly 50¢
A new year, a blog post. The concept of New Year's Day as a holiday seems strange to me, disconnected from any religious or cultural meaning besides the changing of a number on the calendar. It's a time to consider renewal and the future, as we're approaching the bleakest point of the year for weather. That and partying, for some people.
So too the future is on my mind. There are things I anticipate happening in the next year that I'm not yet prepared to express publicly. As for resolutions, I've decided that I should probably spring for a new album more often, in whatever format that might be. Most of the new releases I've bought in recent years are reissues (such as the Ralph Records retrospective mentioned in an earlier post) or things like newly issued live recordings of John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk. I'll still snoop for interesting old used vinyl, but I'm reminding myself just how much I already have. Make use of that.
I am again posting here again as much out of an act of self-discipline as anything else, a continuing resolution. Creating and maintaining disciplined routines outside of my job are becoming increasingly important to me. Maybe somebody reading will find what I have to say interesting, I don't know. I suppose today I'm in autobiographical mode more than musical analysis.
For the first day of the new year, I suppose I wanted to put on something that would calm my mind. So much of what I like in music has to do with energy, intensity, contrasts, brisk motion. It's not easy to find something in my personal library that is more laid back and relaxed. I considered putting on some Morton Feldman again, even though that music can have a quiet but firm intensity to it. But no, something else. I have a stack of recently purchased LPs I continue to intend to get to, but nothing in that stack. Perusing through my collected vinyl, somehow I came to the decision that Fats Waller on organ was what I wanted.
On the surface, this music might sound cute. It can't help but evoke a sense of the past and nostalgia, through no fault of its own. Listening to the opening track, "Soothin' Syrup Stomp" (maybe my favorite track on this collection), I've almost certainly heard this recording used as a bed for online streams of silent movies. It's also impossible for me to disconnect these recordings with their appearance in the film Eraserhead. What was David Lynch's purpose in using them? Nothing in the film was done by accident. The hotel lobby, the small studio apartment with its radiator, seems to come out of the past, as does this music.
As I write this, my wife is upstairs catching more news about the horrible mass murder in New Orleans while I'm downstairs quietly listening to Fats. Escapism? Psychic self-defense? I don't know. I think I've always identified with Henry from Eraserhead to some extent*, and maybe his choice of listening is the right call.
It seems silly and redundant to state how great Fats' playing is. You either know, or you don't know his music at all. There's an added bit of a novelty to hearing him on a pipe organ rather than his more native piano (I assume that, at least). Most jazz organ playing is done on something like a Hammond B3, an instrument that wouldn't be invented for about a decade after these recordings. The pipe organ, and probably the early recording technology, give these sessions a very different character than later jazz organ albums. Again, it sounds like it's from that past, reaching out for renewed attention.
Alberta Hunter joins in, singing two songs including the old standard "Sugar" (not the Stanley Turrentine tune familiar to Pittsburgh jazz audiences). She sounds on mark but, me being me, I prefer Fats by himself.
If you've read this far (and even if you haven't), I wish you a good, healthy, positive year to come. I think we all deserve it.
* I had an Eraserhead t-shirt at one time, and somebody once asked me if it was me in the image. It wasn't a photo image of Henry, but come on, my hair isn't like that.
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