Ain't Misbehavin'
#76 / Video Extra
If there is a great composer from the 1920s and '30s whom we would resurrect in a heartbeat, it would be the incomparable Fats Waller. We've never met a Fats Waller tune we didn't love, especially this one.
It was late Floodster Joe Dobbs who got us playing "Ain't Misbehavin'" — oh, it’s been two decades ago now — and the song still regularly shows up at our rehearsals and shows, as it did just last week in this performance at Michelle Lewis Hoge’s wedding near Cincinnati:
Fats Waller wrote the song in 1929 and recorded that year for Victor Records. For the next 90 years, it has been recorded by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Kay Starr, Ray Charles. The list goes on and on.
In 1978, it was the title tune of a successful Broadway musical, and in 1984, Fats' original 1929 recording received the Grammy Hall of Fame Award. A few years ago, the song also was included in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress.
Postscript: Fats and the Mob
There are lots of stories about Fats. One of our favorite is about the time he was kidnapped off the streets of Chicago. It was 1926 and Fats was just leaving a gig in the early morning when four men grabbed him, bundled him into a car and sped off to a hotel.
Ordered inside and, with a gun to his back, he was pushed toward a piano and told to play. It was only then that Fats realized that he was the “surprise gift” at Al Capone’s birthday party! Now that is a command performance.
