Word: waller
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Early to Bed (music by Thomas ("Fats") Waller; book & lyrics by George Marion Jr.; produced by Richard Kollmar) reached Broadway last week after tangling with censorship in Boston, where the show's locale was hastily changed from a Martinique bordello to a gambling casino. In Manhattan the producer decided to gamble on the bordello. Without it - since the point of the story is that Madame Rowena's establishment is mis taken for a girl's school - the plot could hardly have unwound, which might have been a very good thing. For, without letup, the book grinds...
Otherwise Early to Bed is a brisk Broadway show, produced with pre-Pearl Harbor opulence and making up in snap and lure for what it lacks in style and wit. The girls are beautiful, the costumes bright, the dancing fast & furious. Though "Fats" Waller's score provides no new Honeysuckle Rose and, in general, is bet ter danced than sung, it is pleasantly satisfying. The Ladies Who Sing With a Band is a gay spoof of female mike-blasters, This Is So Nice is a likeable ditty, There's a Man in My Life, a warming love song...
Hazel Scott was slated, but fortunately couldn't make it. Any substitute would be an improvement, and Una Mac Carlisle is a very great one. She's a protege of Fats Waller, contributing mightily to his classic record of "I Can't Give You Anything But Love." Una is no world-better as a pianist, but she is a fine singer...
...rolls that accurately ghosted the performances of other jazz improvisers. He did this by listening to their phonograph records, carefully transcribing what he heard into a musical score, then playing his score on Imperial's perforating machine. Today Imperial issues pianola rolls by such jazz artists as Fats Waller, Ted Baxter and Pete Mendoza. All are ghosted by J. Lawrence Cook...
...piano is one who might be called the originator of present day jazz piano, James P. Johnson. It was Jimmy who developed the powerful, rhythmic style of the left hand, and the melodic right hand. His pupil, Fats Waller, is far more famous, but there is growing opinion that Jimmy is less stereotyped, and more flexible...