📍West 134th Street, Harlem, New York, NY 10030, USA
1904 – 1922“I was born Thomas Wright Waller in Harlem in May 1904, the youngest of eleven children of Edward and Adeline Waller, only five of whom lived past childhood. My parents had come up from Virginia, and my father was a lay preacher at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and ran a trucking business. My mother was a church organist, and she taught me the piano when I was six. I grew up in Harlem as it became the capital of Black America, and I was a big, jolly boy, so everybody called me Fats. I played the harmonium for my father's open-air services, and taught myself the pipe organ at church. My father thought jazz was the devil's music, and wanted me to be a minister, but I couldn't keep away from it. At fifteen I heard Mazie Mullins playing the organ for the silent films at the Lincoln Theatre on 135th Street, and I fell in love; soon I left school and was the theatre's organist myself, earning thirty-two dollars a week. My mother died when I was sixteen, and I was heartbroken. Around then I met James P. Johnson, the great stride pianist, who took me in and taught me everything, and I studied his piano rolls by slowing them down and following the keys. I went on to write Ain't Misbehavin' and Honeysuckle Rose with Andy Razaf, recorded hundreds of songs with my band, Fats Waller and His Rhythm, and played the organ at Notre-Dame in Paris. I always played with a smile and a joke, and Harlem remembers the preacher's son who made the whole world laugh and dance.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today