Fats Waller & His Rhythm Boxed Set = “If You Got To Ask, You Ain’t Got It” – 3 CD Overview of his career with 100-p. illustrated booklet – Bluebird/Legacy

This beautifully-packaged set is a sort of compilation of a compilation.  In the 1990s Grammy Award winning jazz producer Orrin Keepnews compiled a series of 3  3-CD album sets and 3 2-CD sets, devoted to the entire career of Fats Waller – a total of 15 discs.  Each had a similar 22 or 23 tracks per disc. Now Legacy asked Keepnews to do it again, but keep it to only three CDs, which is what is at hand. There were a number of alternate takes  and repeats in the original sets – although the vast majority of the hundreds of sides Fats made were first takes! NoNoise processing was used to clean up the old 78s.  I didn’t notice any serious sonic improvements in the restorations of similar tracks in the new boxed set.

The big plus of the new package is the very attractive tall-format sepia-toned booklet,  full of rare photos from the collection of Fat’s last manager, Ed Kirbeby.  Waller and his musicians on the road are depicted in the great images. The text is mostly a 15,000-word essay by Grammy winner Dan Morgenstern, which paints a wonderful picture of this irrepressible larger-than-life performer. He also provides a track-by-track analysis of all 66 selections. Producer Keepnews adds his words about condensing his previous 320-track Waller collection into this 66-track box. His success in both projects is right up there with the Grammy-winning box sets he did for Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans.

The three CDs are organized to reflect three different elements of the Waller phenomenon.  Disc 1 is “Fats Waller Sings and Plays Fats Waller” – his original tunes are the focus here, among them Honeysuckle Rose, Squeeze Me, and Ain’t Misbehavin’. Next is “Strictly Instrumental” – his amazing stride piano virtuosity, as well as on the pipe organ and with his versatile band mates. Even in this section we get a taste of Waller’s hilarious comments over the music during Lounging at the Waldorf – he’s playing a sort of concierge showing visitors around the hotel. Ten of the tracks are unaccompanied piano solos, with every note just right and perfect tempi.  Waller may have led a wild life of partying, drinking and eating, but when in the recording studio he was ever on the ball and completely professional. The third element of the set is titled “Fats Waller Sings and Plays Around With Tin Pan Alley.”  This one displays his spectacular showmanship with both tunes from the Great American Songbook as well as corny numbers the record label asked him to record. His sendup of some of the tunes made them big hits in spite of their lack of quality.

If you don’t already have any of the 90s projects and you didn’t bite on 2004’s 2 CD set commemorating Waller’s 100th birthday, by all means snap this new package up.  You may want to anyway just for the terrific and fascinating booklet.

 – John Henry