It Happened In Camden, NJ: Fats Waller Brought Jazz & Blues To Singer/Songwriters Of Modern Era | VictorRecords.com

Thomas Wright Waller (better known as “Fats”) was a pioneer in the field of jazz and blues/jazz infused pop music. Widely recognized as a master stride piano and organ player, his magic became clear when he combined these skills with his work as vocalist and songwriter. By the age of 15 he was playing organ at a silent movie theatre in Harlem and giving a young Count Basie organ lessons. He was also making numerous Vaudeville and club appearances during this era. 

He started making records for Victor Talking Machine Co. in 1926, he signed an exclusive contract in 1934 with Victor and never recorded for another label for the rest of his career. In 1927 Waller recorded the very first jazz organ compositions on a full size Estey organ that the Victor Talking Machine Co. owned for making religious recordings. When Fats told Victor’s recording studio engineers that he wanted to use the organ to record a POP (Jazz) record - they were shocked. Considered groundbreaking, Fats decision proved fateful and transformed the ORGAN from a solely religious instrument - into an instrument suitable for pop recording. His major influence in bringing the organ to pop music meant later organ heavy records like ‘Smoke On The Water’, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, ‘One Headlight’, ‘I’m A Believer’, and thousands more - owe a debt of gratitude to this singular moment in music history at Victor Trinity Studios in Camden, NJ.

He also collaborated on several musicals. Known for incorporating humor and frivolity into his act, he went on to enormous international success not only in live performances and recordings but in film as well.

Some of his better known songs released on the Victor and Bluebird labels (Victor’s Blues and Jazz subsidiary) include “Honeysuckle Rose’, ”I Can’t Give You Anything But Love”, “Blue Turning Grey Over You”,  “The Joint Is Jumpin’”, and “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” It was noted later on that Waller had copyrighted nearly 400 songs in his career.  Waller recorded 282 compositions for Victor from 1926 to 1942.

Fats was notorious for his hard living and drinking - and his love of the ladies. He could very easily be called the prototype rock star - often downing a bottle of whisky before a recording session in Camden, NJ’s Victor Studios. -certainly; Fats Waller proteges Little Richard and ‘Fats’ Domino (who would later record in Camden, NJ as well) would agree. In fact, so would Paul McCartney - whom purchased Fats’ publishing catalog in the 1970s and has administrated it ever since. Paul McCartney’s affinity for Fats Waller’s music can be seen not only in The Beatles performances of his songs - but also in the writing of ‘Smile Away’ from McCartney’s beloved ‘RAM’ album (1971) which bears an unabashed kinship with Fats Waller’s ‘You’re Feets Too Big’.

Fats Waller’s greatest contribution to music, truly, is his prototypical meshing of three genres; Jazz, Blues, and Pop - a style that would go on to become the integral backbone of writers like Lennon/McCartney, Jagger/Richards, Buddy Holly, Carol King, and thousands more in the popular music realm of the last 60 years - his uniting of these three elements, particularly in his vocal focused records (Ain’t Misbehavin’, Your Feets Too Big etc) would become the platform from which the modern Singer/Songwriter grew in relation to blues and jazz - and together with writers like George & Ira Gershwin, and Cole Porter - Fats Waller was a large part of the driving force that transformed popular music from the vaudeville sound we hear often lampooned as ‘old music’, to the modern day singer/songwriter/producer from Glenn Miller to The Beatles, to Carly Simon, to Brian Setzer, to Taylor Swift, to Billy Eilish.

Fats passed away on December 15, 1943 on a cross country train ride at the age of 39…but his legacy lives in all of American music’s DNA (even when it might not know it!).

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