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...It was the Northeastern, which he'd never heard of...

...There was yet another dimension to Fats...

...Spirituals and Bach, as well as jazz...

...A man of chronic, stunning generosity, he insisted on inviting me to dinner, and gave me hours of his time...

...Fortunately, while the record business was sufficiently prosperous to afford such indulgence to posterity, RCA reissued a bonanza of Waller in its Bluebird series...

...A few years later, I got to hear Fats "live," and to talk to him...

...One two-record set is devoted entirely to Fats Waller Piano Solos (AXM2-5518...

...Fats came out of the robust, two-handed stride style of Harlem piano...

...Box 156, Hicksville, NY 11802...

...It's just that he knew he could do a lot more than most of his listeners could even imagine...

...During that conversation, he suddenly became introspective, speaking not so much to me as, aloud, to himself...

...A pupil of James P. Johnson, Fats influenced many younger players, among them Count Basie, who was also his pupil...

...It was a method very much favored by the so-called gentry...

...He said he wished he had more of a chance to play the organ in public...

...But I've always particularly admired the other Jan Peerce, the one who was born as Jacob Pincus Perelmuth on New York's Lower East Side...

...Box 390, Brooklyn, NY 11215...

...The music encompasses Irish freedom songs, tales of violent love, children's songs, music of and for drinking, and an account, "Lovely Willie," of a particular kind of class warfare...

...Fats wouldn't hear of a plain interview...

...There are eight singers, and each brings distinctive sound and phrasing...

...Francis, a supple drummer, used to lead one of the house bands at the Savoy Ballroom, where the dancers were at least as innovative as the musicians and created many steps which, in somewhat diluted form, became popular throughout the land...

...In any case, what Fats did leave on recordings is just as enlivening as it was then—more so, actually, because there's nothing any more quite like his pungently urbane, high-spirited, hot jiving and sweet romancing...

...Gene "Honey Bear" Sedric, who played with Waller for a long time, has told of nights when Fats really began to stretch out musically, but "many people in the audience would think that he was lying down and they'd yell, 'Come on, Fats!' He'd take a swig of gin or something and say resignedly, 'Aw right, here it is.' " Don't get the wrong movie scenario here...

...As Louis Armstrong said, "I've seen Fats Waller enter a place, and you could see a gladness in the faces of all the people in the joint...

...One of them can neither read nor write but, as Diane Hamilton notes, "his education in song is something which many a scholar can envy and admire...

...While I was still a schoolboy, I interviewed him for my college paper...

...They're still available...

...But Fats was one of the classic horn-like vocalists, improvising with a daring and subtlety that most people didn't fully hear because he and they were having such a good time...

...And if you want to start with just one album, there is Fats Waller: A Legendary Performer (RCA CPL1-2904 e), which includes such Waller marvels as "The Jitterbug Waltz," "Handful of Keys," and the song that sent me off, fortified, to school on so many mornings, "Your Feet's Too Big...

...You don't have to be Jewish to be plunged into this soul music, any more than you have to be black to find at least part of yourself in the blues...

...The singing, for instance...

...The warmth of that voice and that beat, along with Fats's sly irreverence as he turned lyrics inside out, stayed with me all day in the coldly correct classrooms of Boston Latin School...

...Francis has kept on keeping on since then, and his band remains resilient, relaxed, and ceaselessly conducive to dancing, even if you're sitting down...

...The music was the man, all right...

...Fats was not continually suffering the pain of being misunderstood...

...Another way of sounding roots in music is Singing Men of Ulster (Innisfree/Green Linnet SIF1005,70 Turner Hill Road, New Canaan, CT 06840...

...Unlike some jazz players who more or less "set" their solos, Fats never played anything the same way twice...

...hooka Here" (Honeysuckle Rose Records, P.O...

...M Jan Peerce was good enough in goyishe music to have been picked by Toscanini in 1938 for the tenor solo in Beethoven's Ninth...

...Courting a young girl, Willie was removed by her father's sword from competition for her hand...

...The soloists are crisp and tangy, the ensemble passages soar, and the tunes are sempiternally fresh—from Duke Ellington's "In a Mello-tone" to "I've Got the World on a String...

...One last thing about Fats...

...Field recordings made between 1956 and 1962 in Ireland by Diane Hamilton, these are extraordinarily vivid and variegated illustrations of centuries-long interweaving of Gaelic, English, and Scottish song...

...Then there is the indispensable, nonpareil Complete Fats Waller, three two-record albums (AXM25511, AXM2-5575, AXM2-5583) that range from "A Porter's Love Song to a Chambermaid" to the magnificently expectant "Lulu's Back in Town" and his near-miraculous transformations of "Us on a Bus...

...INDIGENOUS MUSIC . NatHentoff A Big Handful of Keys When I was a schoolboy, a Boston disk jockey had a commendable habit of playing a Fats Waller recording every morning just before eight o'clock...

...None of that was what people expected of him...

...He had become too successful at making people grin...

...Fats never got enough credit from "serious" critics as a jazz singer...

...But if the fooling around bothers you, there are many passages in which Fats does not mock the lyrics, but rather illuminates them, sometimes with poignancy...

...Well," he said as his first set was about to begin, "got to go feed my face...

...Now, in his late seventies, Peerce has recorded, in Jerusalem, one of his most emotionally seizing albums, Jan Peerce Today...

...For an exceptional set of collector's items, there is the newly released, boxed three-record set, "Oh Mercy...

...Another tradition—that of the hot jazz combo playing for folks who take their dancing with exultant seriousness—is continued by Panama Francis and the Savoy Sultans (Stash ST 218, P.O...

...As the singer explains, "Murder was the recognized way to dispatch an unpopular suitor some eighty years ago...

...Previously unavailable, except to radio stations forty and more years ago, these sessions were recorded in 1935 and 1939 and include both small combo and solo performances of many of the tunes that Fats especially liked to play...

...Cantorial Masterpieces (Vanguard VSD 71277) with the Beersheba Chamber Orchestra...

...He was also, of course, a formidable pianist—when he thought that's what the audience wanted to hear...

...How can so much fun be art...

...And he had a number of large-scale compositions in mind...

...His imagination was far too lively to bear the predictable...

...He was an incorrigible improviser...

...He fooled around too much, they thought...

...But none of that was show biz...

...And still, there is that gladness, that sheer pleasure in listening to his music...

...He also sang at the Met for twenty-six seasons, as well as with many symphony orchestras...

...he thoroughly enjoyed what he did...

...That Peerce's recordings of Yiddish theater songs and Jewish religious music continue to reverberate through the decades, so powerful in his vocal instrument and so deep are his roots...