[The following has been adapted and condensed (with stylistic revisions) from "Transatlantic Re-soundings: Fats Waller’s London Suite and the Jazz Atlantic," by George Burrows, published in Atlantic Studies, Volume 15, Number 3, July 2018]
The London Suite, comprising six piano pieces, each dedicated to London districts, was composed and recorded in 1939 by American pianist, entertainer, vocalist and bandleader Thomas “Fats” Waller (1904-1943). It is an unusual series of works, unlike anything else composed by this jazz icon.
Other than performing the suite himself in a London recording studio, Waller never got to hear the complete work performed by others or see it commercially released during his too-brief life. Wartime circumstances delayed the issuance of the recordings until 1951—eight years after Waller's premature death at age 39. In the late 1940s, before Waller's sides were heard publicly, British trombonist-bandleader Ted Heath obtained the piano score for the suite and—without having the original recordings for reference—produced an orchestrated swing version, which was issued in 1948 on a 78 rpm album by London Records. When Waller’s piano versions were finally released, critics were confounded by its comparative lack of propulsive jazz energy, a quality offered in overdrive on Heath’s orchestral interpretations.
Waller was a charismatic showman and a brilliant jazz stylist, who had refined his performance skills through Harlem "cutting" contests with the likes of stride piano giant James P. Johnson. He had become a professional organist at age 14, and begun recording at age 18 in 1922. Waller performed frequently in Harlem’s theaters and nightclubs, as well as on film. His recordings, some with small bands, others solo (on piano or pipe organ), demonstrate a confident keyboard virtuosity, although his sophisticated technique can seem overshadowed by his wry vocals and comedic banter.
In trips to England aboard luxury ocean liners in July 1938 and March 1939, Waller sat in on piano with the ship's band, whose repertoire blended electrifying American jazz with more refined European styles, which evolved out of classical music. In an interview, Waller reflected on his 1938 European tour, saying: "Throughout the British Isles and Scandinavia, audiences like to listen. Unlike the jitterbugs [in the U.S.], they will often stop dancing as a band builds up to the climaxes. I never saw such an intelligent appreciation of swing. For years I’ve been trying to sell the idea of softer stuff [in the U.S.], but I’ve never been able to get away with it until now. I used to tell ’em down at Victor [Records], I ought to tone down, but they’d say, 'No, go ahead and give ’em that hot primitive stuff; that is what they want.' But I don’t think so any more. I think Europe’s way is the right way, and I think it’ll take over here, and I hope it does before we lose our eardrums."
Waller sensed that Europe was where he could make and record music that rebuffed Victor’s insistence that he pander to the hot-jazz cravings of American "jitterbugs." His high-seas encounters with British musicians and with European club- and concert-goers encouraged him to pursue a more delicate, composed style of jazz. The London Suite was Waller’s musical testament—a sextet of serious, mood-inflected impressions. Writer Alyn Shipton noted, "Only one of these pieces ["Piccadilly"] is an up-tempo stride showstopper. The others are medium or slow in pace, and tread a narrow line between being as inconsequential as cocktail-bar music on the one hand and sending up the light classics on the other, while not failing to remain jazz performances." Scholar George Burrows called the London Suite "a hybrid musical style. Its mix of stylistic markers of 'hot' jazz with melancholic 'sweet' music that references European classical music made the suite distinctive in Waller’s output and reflective of a hybrid musical aesthetic that came with his transatlantic musical tourism."
The evolution of the project was detailed in 1950 business correspondence between Waller’s manager, Ed Kirkeby, and Ben Kemper of RCA Victor. Kirkeby wrote:
"In 1939, Fats and I made our second trip to England to play a tour of the Moss Empire Theatres. While in London, Fats had been commissioned by Jimmy Phillips of the Peter Maurice Music firm to write six piano solos for a contemplated music folio that they wished to publish. One morning we ambled over to a private studio that had been retained for an hour by Phillips so that Fats could work on the compositions. Upon our arrival, Fats was in no mood to bother about technical things, so I suggested that he work on an idea I had advanced to him while coming across on the Queen Mary—a descriptive portrayal of London life as depicted by well-known sections of the city, such as Piccadilly, Soho, and Limehouse. Fats immediately responded to the idea, and became so inspired that he composed and recorded the entire London Suite in the hour we had allocated by the studio. I described to him each section of the city, one after the other, and those word pictures were sufficient to enable him to capture the mood and perform a feat which further establishes Thomas Waller as a pure inspirationalist, and one of the great musical geniuses of his time. I immediately made arrangements for Fats to record the suite for HMV to put it in permanent form."
HMV withheld release of these recordings, and that, compounded with the difficulty of shipping recorded master discs safely across the Atlantic to the US during the war, meant that Victor did not release them stateside either. In the absence of a commercial release of the suite, Kirkeby consulted with Phillips, without success, to get Glenn Miller’s arranger, Jerry Gray, or arrangers for Paul Whiteman to introduce Waller’s suite to the American public.
Waller's unexpected death in December 1943 compelled Kirkeby to push for the release of Waller’s quintessential HMV recordings. However, in April 1944 RCA Victor informed him that the masters had been destroyed in the London Blitz and, hence, they were unable to produce the stampers necessary to mass-produce commercial discs.
Kirkeby wrote to Phillips in May 1944 asking if Peter Maurice Music had retained copies of Waller's original London Suite demos. Phillips replied affirmatively and shipped the discs to Kirkeby. They arrived with some damage, and Kirkeby forwarded them to RCA Victor for remastering, which was completed in October 1946. However, because of the poor quality of one of the source discs, neither Victor nor HMV saw fit to issue Waller's recordings of the suite. Heath's orchestral version appeared in 1948, sleeved in a spiffy album designed to exploit the American market. Thus, the musical portrayals of London, recorded in the UK by Waller, an American, were exported to the composer's home country by a leading British swing band.
In Heath's version, the movements of Waller’s suite were resequenced, and each movement seemed arranged to showcase the dynamics, textures and timbres of Heath’s powerful band, with brash trumpets, and chamber-jazz passages in which the rhythm section backs improvising soloists. As Burrows notes, "Rich orchestrations, altered chord voicings and harmonies and driving rhythms replaced the melancholic, sweet-yet-serious tone of Waller’s piano recording with a much more driven and hot-swing sensibility."
At first, Heath's recordings were critically acclaimed. When Waller’s original, modest 1939 pressings of the London Suite were released in 1951, a reviewer for UK's Gramophone magazine wrote, “I cannot help feeling that it was more effective as orchestral music than it is as the piano work as which it was originally written.” American critics also hailed the Heath version. So did the public—over a million copies of the 1948 album were sold, and in 1954 Heath produced a second recording of the suite for the then-new high-fidelity LP. The 1954 version featured new arrangements by Reg Owen.
However, Waller's original approach soon earned a reevaluation. By the time Heath's makeover hit the market, reviewers had access to Waller’s 1939 recordings, and many became critical of Heath's overhauls. Paul Sampson, writing in the Washington Post, suggested Heath’s 1954 version was an improvement on the 1948 one, but Sampson stressed, “It is hard for a big band to capture the lilt of these compositions, and in some of the sections the arrangements are too heavy and too loud.”
Compared to Waller's restrained, melancholic touch, Heath’s bombastic British swing eventually came to be judged as inauthentic and heavy-handed. Waller—alas, posthumously—was reassessed as a figure capable of “serious” music that transcended the flamboyant and comedic entertainment which had defined him as a jazz musician.
– I.C.
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A pdf of the Burrows research can be downloaded at:
researchportal.port.ac.uk/files/7936010/WallerArticlePUREversion.pdf
Mr. Burrows permitted and approved my adaptation of his text, but he is not responsible for my changes and additions.
