This Week's Freebie from The 1937 Flood

This week we offer another tune from a recent rehearsal.

There are lots of stories about the great jazz songwriter Fats Waller. Our favorite is about the time he was kidnapped off the streets of Chicago. 

 Now, 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. 

It was three years later that Fats — who copyrighted more than 400 songs in his oh-so-brief lifetime (he died at just 39!) — wrote our favorite Waller composition. Here’s our 2020 rendition of “Ain’t Misbehavin’” from a recent Flood rehearsal.