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Week of Waller: Day Six
Honeysuckle Rose (A La Bach-Beethoven-Brahms-Waller)
This recording represents two timeless struggles. The first is a battle between low and high art. One calls the other elitist, secretly wishing admittance into an esteemed and exclusive club. Meanwhile, those in that esteemed and exclusive club will always resent the widespread popularity never earned despite (or perhaps because of) their nuanced styles, refined tastes, and high ideals.
The second struggle exists on a more personal level, and it is quite simply this – every clown wants to be taken seriously. From Woody Allen to Jamie Foxx, a successful comedian eventually tries on a dramatic role, publishes a novel, or releases an album of ballads. Perhaps it’s because comedy begins as an act of self-defense. Funny people are funny out of necessity, diverting attention from some other inner-conflict.
Or it could be related to comedy’s lowbrow connotations. In this way, this second struggle is perhaps just a variation of the first.
Either way, Waller’s success as a clowning showman, in combination with the institutionalized racism of the day, sadly prevented him from pursuing his serious work in the U.S. Thankfully, two trips to London, where jazz was recognized as high art long before it was in the States, produced some fantastic pipe organ recordings (some of which appear in David Lynch’s Eraserhead (What would Fats have thought of that?)) as well his longest and most ambitious composition, the seventeen-minute “London Suite.”
What we have here is Waller reinterpreting one of his most famous compositions in the style of three European composers. But of course! Waller’s strong left hand (practically reinventing what is known as stride piano) was born out of necessity. Playing piano at Harlem rent parties, Waller had to swing, and swing loud. But his agile right hand, with its dainty trills and mincing, affected glissandos, could practically fill the room with the dust of a dozen powdered wigs.
