SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL PUBLIC RADIO STATION DURING FALL FUND DRIVE

Whether you listen to Riverwalk Jazz on the radio airwaves, streamed through our website or on XM Satellite Radio, we couldn't put our weekly broadcast series together without your local public radio station.

Check it out. Support your local station now during their fall fund drive. Here's how:

• Send in your contribution through your station's website.

• Call the station during the fund drive.

• Or just send 'em a check in the mail.

• And, say you're contributing in the support of Riverwalk.

If your local station doesn't carry Riverwalk Jazz now, your contribution might just make the difference for a decision to start carrying it.

I WISH I WERE TWINS:
THE FATS WALLER BLUEBIRD SESSIONS

Uplink: 10/28/2004

Photo courtesy of the Red Hot Jazz Archive.

Thomas "Fats" Waller was a huge man, with a musical gift to match his size. Fats earned his reputation in the late 1920s as the greatest of the stride pianists. He later became widely respected as a gifted composer of nearly 400 popular songs like "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Honeysuckle Rose."

In 1932, right at the depths of the Great Depression, RCA Victor introduced the Bluebird label. The Bluebirds were priced at an affordable 35 cents apiece. From 1934 to 1942, Fats Waller recorded hundreds of these 78 discs for Bluebird with the six-piece combination he called his "Rhythm."

Fats' blend of hot, rhythmic piano playing and hi-jinx tomfoolery clicked with the public. Many of his Bluebird records sold in the millions.

Our show is a celebration of the Fats Waller Bluebird sessions. Joining the Jim Cullum Jazz Band are master pianist and award-winning composer, Dick Hyman; and vocalist Rebecca Kilgore.

Dick Hyman and Rebecca Kilgore

Fats' son Maurice Waller wrote: "[By 1935], Waller fans were buying the records just to see what the funny man would add to the song. The records were beginning to take on the characteristics of live stage performances…."

"Records were selling so fast that the [record] company had pulled them off the road to do a day's recording. On the list of material that Victor handed the band was "I'm On A See Saw," a song detested by my father. He objected to doing the number, but the company's decision prevailed. Forced to do material he so disliked, Dad resorted to one of his WWL tricks [from his days at a Cincinnati radio station], satirizing the lyrics as he sang them. Ironically…the comic interpretations make the discs best sellers. And when, due to the popularity of the songs, he had to perform them onstage, Dad added the extra dimension of his mugging."

Fats Waller and His Rhythm.
Photo courtesy of the Red Hot Jazz Archive.

The "Rhythm" was primarily a studio band, and recording dates had to be worked into the musicians' different schedules. Waller's genius carried the band, enabling them to record as many as ten sides in a single day, often consisting mainly of new material. Rarely did band members know in advance which tunes they would be recording.

This chaotic approach succeeded in part because of consistency in core personnel which included Waller, Herman Autrey on trumpet, Eugene Sedric on clarinet, and Al Casey on guitar. The chaos no doubt contributed to the spontaneity which characterizes many of the Rhythm's recordings.

In spite of the lack of rehearsal and sheer volume of their recorded output, Fats and His Rhythm produced and maintained an amazingly consistent level of high quality.

Fats Waller was a beloved figure in jazz who was always ready for a party. After his death, Louis Armstrong said, "Every time someone mentions Fats Waller's name, why you can see grins on all the faces." Phillip Larkin wrote: "Fats was perpetually having a ball; he was the kind of person parties start up around with almost gruesome relentlessness."
 

PIANO MAN: EARL HINES,
THE FATHER OF MODERN JAZZ PIANO

Uplink: 10/21/2004

Earl Hines. Photo courtesy of the Red Hot Jazz Archive.

Earl Hines has been called the first modern jazz pianist. His style, with its advanced sense of rhythm and syncopation, stood out from that of other pianists of the 1920s. 

This week on Riverwalk Jazz we celebrate Hines' musical legacy with live performances of his music by our special guests Dick Hyman and John Sheridan. And, Broadway playwright and performer Vernel Bagneris (left) brings to life Hines' own reminiscences as collected by jazz writer Stanley Dance.

Born near Pittsburgh in 1903, Earl Hines started playing professionally in Pittsburgh around 1921. In 1923 he moved to Chicago and worked with Erskine Tate's Vendome Orchestra and with Carroll Dickerson. 

He met Louis Armstrong in 1926 at the local musician's union hall and the two became friends. Hines worked briefly in Louis Armstrong's Stompers and, along with Zutty Singleton and Armstrong, tried unsuccessfully to manage their own club in Chicago. 

1928 was the year that everything fell into place for Hines. He recorded his first ten piano solos including versions of  "A Monday Date," "Blues in Thirds," and "57 Varieties." Hines worked much of the year with Jimmie Noone's Apex Club Orchestra. 

The good luck and great timing that brought Hines and Armstrong together in Chicago resulted in a series of spectacular recordings made in 1928, including the famous Hot Five and Hot Seven recording sessions that produced "West End Blues," "Fireworks," and "Basin Street Blues." 

On the night of his 25th birthday, December 28, 1928, Earl Hines opened the glitzy Grand Terrace Ballroom in Chicago, leading his own 10-piece orchestra. Coast-to-coast live radio broadcasts from the Grand Terrace soon made Earl Hines a household name in America.

Hines would continue to lead his own big bands for 20 years. He featured future jazz stars such as singers Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan, and bop pioneers Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

In 1948 Hines joined the Louis Armstrong's All-Stars and toured with them for three years, and then moved to San Francisco and formed a hot jazz band that featured Chicago cornetist Muggsy Spanier. He continued the Dixieland band throughout the '50s, but by the early '60s, Hines was out of the jazz mainstream. 

In 1964 he staged a major comeback that lasted through the rest of his career. Jim Cullum recorded Hines for the Audiophile label in 1971. "We did it at the home of legendary recording engineer Ewing P. Nunn in Milwaukee. Hines recorded enough solo piano material for three LPs over the course of one and a half days. Of all the tunes we recorded, only one had to be re-done, the rest were captured in the first take."

Earl Hines died in 1983 in Oakland, CA.