Fats

Fats Waller. Even when he couldn’t get his feet off the ground, he walked on clouds. He was irrepressible in his joy when it came to music, voices, the sweet and sour smells of backstage life; his clergyman father’s disapproval of his son’s chosen style of music only brought more joy to Waller’s enterprise. This didn’t mean he denied the truth–listen to “Black and Blue”–but Waller didn’t wallow. Why do that when there were other options, such as good looking women and good music and rent parties and stories to be told and his big face? One loves him as one does a relative–the uncle who slips you a five against your mother’s wishes. You bury your child face in his big suit that smells, equally, of sweat and violet candy and hair tonic, and that is the smell you look for forever. Waller’s songspiels–his patter–is as significant as Brecht and Weill’s, and just as joyful in its made-up-ness. When Fats died, his family carried out his wishes, which was to be cremated, and have his once solid body spread over Harlem, which changes and does not change, like home.