Fats Waller: Your Feet's Too Big

Track

Your Feet's Too Big

Group

Fats Waller & His Rhythm

CD

The Very Best Of Fats Waller (RCA 63731)

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Musicians:

Fats Waller (piano, vocals), Gene Sedric (reeds), Cedric Wallace (bass), Slick Jones (drums),

John Hamilton (trumpet), John Smith (guitar)

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Composed by Ada Benson and Fred Fisher

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Recorded: November 3, 1939

Albumcoververybestoffatswaller

Rating: 98/100 (learn more)

Here is the Harlem rent party side of Fats Waller. Full-bodied stride piano is mixed in with singing, shtick and comedy, but jazz is the key ingredient, the glue that holds everything together. Waller imitates some heavy, feet's-too-big footsteps for the keyboard intro, and Gene Sedric takes a hot and sweet clarinet solo at the midpoint, but most of this track is Waller's fast and loose delivery of a novelty song transformed into an iconic moment in American music. A taste of New Orleans counterpoint closes the proceedings. Well, it's not really the close, since Waller caps it off with a final bit of monologue: "Your pedal extremities really are obnoxious. One never knows, do one?"

Reviewer: Ted Gioia

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