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Yesterday I mentioned Fats Waller in my post about Art Tatum. Fats was a master of the stride piano, in addition to being a singer, a bandleader, a songwriter and a comedian . Notice, during the instrumental break in this video, the strong bass movement in Fats’ left hand. Stride piano was driven by the left hand. I was a more sophisticated style of playing, because of the varied chord changes, than the later boogie woogie piano, which stuck to a I IV V progression but had an even more driving left hand.

I have heard that Fats clowned around while recording songs that he was given by his record company, when he didn’t like them. I think it is more likely that Fats clowned around all the time. Here he is singing his own “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” This is a “Soundie,” a short film made for a kind of video jukebox that was popular in the 1940s. The woman sitting on the piano is singer Myra Johnson. She also appeared in a 1936 film short with Jimmie Lunceford and his orchestra, which was made to play between feature films in movie houses.

There were two grand masters of the jazz piano in the 1930s, Thomas “Fats” Waller, who pioneered the stride piano style, derived from ragtime, which developed into the boogie woogie piano of the forties and grew into rock and roll; and Art Tatum, who introduced the harmonic variations and melodic complexities that led to bebop and modern jazz. Waller is often quoted as saying, when Art Tatum came into the club he was playing, “I only play the piano, but tonight God is in the house.”

This clip is of an appearance on Spike Jones’ television show in 1954, near the end of Tatum’s life. He usually performed and recorded solo, as he is here, because it was hard to find musicians who could keep up with his lightening fast playing and his unexpected, improvised harmonies.

Jimmie Rodgers invented country music. Before he recorded his songs, which were influenced by early jazz, blues and tin pan alley recordings, “hillbilly music” consisted of fiddle tunes and traditional Scots Irish ballads. Rodgers worked at various railroad jobs, including brakeman, until he was forced to quit because he had tuberculosis. He was able to sing, despite having this pulmonary disease.

He made his first recording,“Sleep, Baby, Sleep,” and “The Soldier’s Sweetheart” in 1927 for the Victor Talking Machine Company. (later RCA Victor) He recorded solo, just his voice and his guitar, because the band that he had been working with had an argument and broke up, as they were traveling from their Blue Ridge mountain resort job to Bristol VA to make the recording. Demand for this record led Victor to bring Rodgers into it’s home studio in Camden New Jersey where he recorded “Blue Yodel” also known as “T For Texas” which propelled him to stardom.

In all Rodgers recorded 110 songs including “Waiting for a Train,” “Daddy and Home,” “In the Jailhouse Now,” “Frankie and Johnny,” “T. B. Blues,” “My Blue-Eyed Jane,” “Miss the Mississippi and You,” and a series of twelve sequels to “Blue Yodel.” Jimmie Rodgers was the first person inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

This video clip is from a 15 minute short film, made in Camden N.J. by Colombia Pictures in 1929, called “The Singing Brakeman.”