[Dixielandjazz] "Early to Bed” - In Search of a Lost Fats Waller Musical

[Robert Ringwald]

In Search of a Lost Fats Waller Musical
by John McWhorter
New Yorker blog, November 7, 2013
A Broadway show about a whorehouse in Martinique with music by Fats Waller sounds
intriguing. Until recently, however, "Early to Bed" was largely a lost musical. As
someone who has always liked both theatre music and old jazz, I always wondered why.
"Early to Bed" was actually a big hit when it opened, in 1943, but the show ran in
the middle of a musicians' strike against American recording companies, and therefore
there was no cast album -- not even recordings of single songs. All we have from
that year are a few tracks of Waller, who died just as the show settled in for its
yearlong run, playing and singing a handful of the songs himself.
And then, "Early to Bed" also opened the same year that "Oklahoma!" kicked off the
Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, introducing the new, grown-up Broadway musical,
with a story that made basic sense and songs that advanced the narrative instead
of just decorating it. "Early to Bed," however, epitomized the old way: the plot,
such as it was, operated more on the level of televised variety shows like Carol
Burnett's. The writer, George Marion, Jr., was a top-class craftsman of that form
-- he had previously done the script for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers's breakout
film "The Gay Divorcee" -- but times change, and scripts like the one for "Early
to Bed" do not beckon for a revival.
But what about the songs? The artistry of Fats Waller, after all, has continued to
fascinate generation after generation. Here is the man who wrote deathlessly catchy
songs like "Ain't Misbehavin'," "Honeysuckle Rose," and "The Joint Is Jumpin'," and
dozens of other melodies that stand up to repeat listenings. A couple of the "Early
to Bed" songs were performed here and there on the cabaret circuit back in the fifties.
The 1978 Waller revue, "Ain't Misbehavin'," also dusted off a few. But there were
thirteen songs in "Early to Bed." How did the eight or nine remaining songs sound?
There has long been a cadre of people digging up forgotten scores and sharing their
rediscovered delights with a new audience; masters like the Gershwins, Cole Porter,
Jerome Kern, and Richard Rodgers would be stunned that today there exist full-length
recordings of even lesser-known scores of theirs, from overture to curtain. Well,
what about jazzy little "Early to Bed"?
The theatre company Musicals Tonight finally did a small-scale revival in 2009. Dated
though the script was, Waller is always Waller, and his tunes shone through like
sunlight. Four songs, however, remained lost, with no sheet music or surviving material
other than their titles in old programs. Musicals Tonight members actually found
a chorus member from the original show, pushing ninety, who could still give approximations
of how those four went, which is what the revival used. But that only left me, obsessive
as always, wondering if any more could be done. It also seemed to me that the "Early
to Bed" material could be served well, in 2013, by a concert-style presentation focused
on the songs.
So I got to work. It required more than libraries, I found. After Waller's death,
his son apparently saw good times and bad. During one of those bad stretches, he
gave his lawyer a box with some of Waller's working papers in lieu of payment. These
days, the lawyer's son has the box. Luckily, the last name is unusual enough that
I was able to find his phone number online and track him down in Tenafly, New Jersey.
Of all things, these papers are the original sketches for the "Early to Bed" score,
complete with first tries, instrumental breaks, melodies that never made it into
the show, and so on.
My favorite thing in these papers was a catchy tune for one of those four lost songs,
"The Girl Who Doesn't Ripple When She Bends" (which is, I assume, an allusion to
stockings). In the original show, it was sung by the chorus girls as a calisthenic
workout and then tap-danced to by a black hoofer (in fact, it was the chorus member
I mentioned, who passed away recently). As interesting as that sounds, I decided
that in 2013 it would be better to reinterpret the song as a vocal trio a la the
Boswell Sisters. I also did that for the sexy travel rave-up number "Martinique,"
which was recorded only as a piano solo by Waller but, from my head, now sounds like
the Andrews Sisters.
All of my work has been in preparation for a performance by the people who have been
doing a group cabaret show with me at Cornelia Street Cafe, in the Village, for the
past few years. We're devoting a show to "Early to Bed," as rendered by me at the
piano, with my wife and four of my veteran performers.
When I play songs from the show for people I know, a common response is "I didn't
know Waller wrote songs like that!" He didn't just spin out a dozen variations on
"Honeysuckle Rose." "Early to Bed" was basically a white show -- with a black couple,
often described as "dusky" in reviews, for "hot" numbers during the set changes --
and so Waller was required to go beyond his usual musical vocabulary. And he did.
"Long Time, No Song" is a ballad that begs for an orchestral setting (Nelson Riddle
would have had a great time with it); "Martinique" is a Latin number; and the title
song is a warm little jam that sounds like nothing else I have ever heard by Waller
(of course, there's a reason to get to bed early!).
Before the opening of the "Early to Bed" tryout in Boston, Waller dragged a friend
to a bar to show off his score. The friend recalled, "He was excited about every
song, stopping to repeat, again and again, phrases and chords he particularly fancied...
filling the room with etudes of ecstasy, sentimental songs and rocking riffs. 'Early
to Bed' was a triumph for Fats, every song was a gem." You can see how carefully
Waller worked in his papers, which are full of discarded sections and codas, with
multiple drafts for most of the melodies.
In short, the "Early to Bed" tunes are good. Waller had a knack for melody and harmony
beyond the ability of any number of composers who, then and later, had shows produced
on the Main Stem. There were plans for him to do more musicals after it; if Waller
had lived, he surely would have had a new career as a Broadway composer -- in which
case, he would also have been the only black man in that position.
For now, we can salute him by keeping alive the music, a fascinating coda to a career
cut off too soon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noY91PSj_LM
__________
John McWhorter teaches linguistics, Western Civilization, and American Studies at
Columbia University and writes for The New Republic and Time.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/11/in-search-of-a-lost-fats-waller-musical.html
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