Joe Sullivan

This 10" long-playing record came out in 1954. The music was recorded by pianist Joe Sullivan with bassists Bob Casey or Walter Page and drummer George Wettling in June and September, 1952. The material consisted of songs that were composed by Fats Waller, who passed away before he had a chance to record any of them himself. True to Waller's persona, the titles communicate almost as much as the music itself: "What's Your Name?" "An Armful of You"; "Solid Eclipse"; "Breezin'" (an exhilarating opus that would resurface during the Second World War as "When the Nylons Bloom Again"); "Can't We Get Together?"; "Never Heard of Such Stuff"; "There'll Come a Time When You'll Need Me" and the axiomatic "If You Can't Be Good, Be Careful." These incredible recordings languished in obscurity for decades; almost nobody noticed when they appeared briefly in the year 2000 buried among 121 other tracks on Mosaic's limited-edition seven-CD set entitled The Columbia Jazz Piano Moods Sessions. Happily, the Classics label included Joe Sullivan's Fats Waller studies on The Chronological Joe Sullivan 1945-1953 [Classics 1353], which was released in January 2004. Anyone even remotely interested in Fats Waller, Joe Sullivan, human nature and jazz piano in general should obtain these wonderful renderings and weave them into the fabric of everyday life. ~ arwulf arwulf, All Music Guide