preferred to take the song at a slow swing tempo. In later years, “Here’s That Rainy Day” served as a dramatic ballad showpiece for Freddie Hubbard and Bill Evans. In contrast, Richard “Groove” Holmes turned it into a medium-tempo funk feature, Dick Hyman transformed it into a stride piano piece, while Philly Joe Jones took the Van Heusen standard at a fast clip in a boppish vein. All these treatments work and bring out diff erent facets in the composition.
Yet the harmonic structure may be even more adaptable than the rhythmic context. Few jazz pieces are better suited for reharmonization than “Here’s That Rainy Day,” and over the years I’ve taken great pleasure in tinkering with the chord changes in various ways, fi nding myself deeply engaged by the range of moods and emotional stances this song can support. Good examples of this aspect of the song can be heard on Denny Zeitlin’s trio performance from 1967 and Martial Solal’s duet with Dave Douglas from 2005.
recommended versions
Frank Sinatra, from No One Cares , Los Angeles, March 25, 1959
Wes Montgomery, from Bumpin’, Englewood Cliff s, New Jersey, March 16, 1965 Denny Zeitlin, from Zeitgeist , Hollywood, March 18, 1967
Bill Evans, from Alone , New York, Septembr–October 1968
Gary Burton and Stéphane Grappelli, from Paris Encounter , Paris, November 4, 1969
Freddie Hubbard, from Straight Life , November 16, 1970 Dorothy Donegan, from Makin’ Whoopee , Paris, March 16, 1979 Michel Petrucciani, from Pianism , New York, December 20, 1985 Martial Solal and Dave Douglas, from Rue de Seine , Paris, July 6–7, 2005
Honeysuckle Rose
Composed by Fats Waller , with lyrics by Andy Razaf
Anecdotes tell of Fats Waller writing songs off the cuff , in the taxi, at the re- cording studio, or in the publisher’s offi ce, where just a few minutes would suffi ce for the maestro to put everything in order. Even if such accounts are embellished, the historical record is clear on the cavalier attitude that Waller took toward these works once they were written—selling them for a song (or, to be precise, less than the value thereof). Or even forgetting them. “You don’t remember the melody?” lyricist Andy Razaf reportedly berated Waller when he presented the pianist with the newly written words to “Honeysuckle Rose.” “Lord man! Good thing I do.” Waller had seen this tune as a negligible item, a
144 Honeysuckle Rose
soft-shoe piece for Load of Coal , a 1929 revue at Harlem’s Connie’s Inn. He had hardly sat down at the piano and tossed off a few notes for Razaf before running off to another appointment.
Shortly after the song’s debut, “Honeysuckle Rose” was featured on Paul Whiteman’s Old Gold Show in a vocal version by Mildred Bailey. A last-minute decision to double the tempo resulted in an uninspired performance. Harry Link, a publisher and sometime Waller collaborator present that day, later griped that this botched opportunity set the song back some 15 years. But the historical record tells a diff erent story—“Honeysuckle Rose” was widely adopted by jazz bands during the 1930s. McKinney’s Cotton Pickers recorded it in 1930, Frankie Trumbauer in 1931, and Fletcher Henderson in 1932—each of these preceding Fats Waller’s fi rst studio recording of the song in 1934. The Hender- son version was a well-known hit, as was Waller’s own 1934 rendition. A recorded jam session from 1937 that features the composer alongside Tommy Dorsey and Bunny Berigan also sold well. Red Norvo, in another integrated re- cording session from 1935, presents the song in a successful collaboration with Teddy Wilson, Chu Berry, Bunny Berigan, and Gene Krupa, while Norvo’s then wife Mildred Bailey made her competing 78 later that same year.
Hollywood gave “Honeysuckle Rose” an additional boost in the 1940s. It showed up as a song-and-dance feature for Betty Grable in the 1940 fi lm Tin Pan Alley —incurring the anger of Razaf with its depiction here as the creation of an oddball white songwriter in jail, who composes “Honeysuckle Rose” on the harmonica. Waller brushed off Razaf’s concerns, claiming that any publicity was good publicity. Jazz fans were more pleased with the song’s inclusion in Thousands Cheer (1943), where Lena Horne performed it, backed by Benny Cart- er’s band.
Charlie Parker had even more infl uence in keeping the Waller song current among younger jazz players during this period. An amateur recording of Parker practicing over the chord changes to “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Body and Soul” gives us our earliest glimpse into techniques that he would use to shake up the jazz world a short while later. The dating of this recording is uncertain, with some claiming it was made as early as 1937 and others placing it as late as 1940. But Parker’s melodic lines appear to reference a 1938 Chu Berry–Roy Eldridge recording as well as the melody of Jimmy Van Heusen’s 1939 song “I Thought about You”—implying a recording date toward the end of this period. The per- formance itself is portentous, revealing both Parker’s emulation of Lester Young but also the new melodic ideas the young saxophonist was then in the process of developing. An early indicator of where these eff orts would lead can be heard on the recordings Parker made with Jay McShann’s band in Wichita, Kansas, in November 1940. Here Parker again plays “Honeysuckle Rose,” and his solo is crammed full of modernistic phraseology, so busy with activity that one suspects Bird was unhappy to have only a single 32-bar chorus to display all
Honeysuckle Rose 145
his musical ideas. Parker would later borrow chords from “Honeysuckle Rose” to serve as the basis for the A theme of his own frequently played composition “Scrapple from the Apple.”
During the 1930s and 1940s, Waller’s standard managed to transcend the stylistic barriers that divide the jazz world. Around the same time Parker made his amateur recording of “Honeysuckle Rose,” both Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins were featured on disk with their diverging interpretations, Jelly Roll Morton recorded the song with a Baltimore combo, Benny Goodman performed the piece (in Fletcher Henderson’s arrangement) with his swing band, and Louis Jordan gave the piece an R&B-ish treatment with his Tympany Five. Fats Waller also continued to record and perform the song in a wide range of set- tings. Dan Morgenstern has suggested that the composer “must have played this tune every working day of his life.” Certainly he came to think more highly of it than when he had tossed it off as a throwaway tune to meet a pressing deadline.
In later years, “Honeysuckle Rose” appeared less often in the repertoire of modern jazz players—when they worked over these chords, it was often in the guise of Charlie Parker’s “Scrapple from the Apple.” But Thelonious Monk’s 1956 recording of “Honeysuckle Rose” off ers a fresh updating, as did the un- usual pairing of Bill Evans and Bob Brookmeyer on a two-piano treatment from 1959. But, sad to say, the composition that once produced so many classic re- cordings has typically shown up in rote versions during more recent years. In the closing decades of the twentieth century, the best-known recordings of “Honeysuckle Rose” were typically by artists in their seventies and eighties— Lionel Hampton, Stéphane Grappelli, Benny Carter, etc.—who had fi rst per- formed it before World War II. Even when younger players cover “Honeysuckle Rose,” they rarely move beyond the approaches pioneered by these past mas- ters. Occasionally an ambitious performer pushes against the confi nes of “Hon- eysuckle Rose”—hear, for example, Uri Caine’s two takes from his 1997 album Blue Wail —but, for the most part, this once fl exible song has become far too stiff and unyielding.
recommended versions
McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, New York, February 3, 1930
Fletcher Henderson (with Coleman Hawkins), New York, November 9, 1932 Fats Waller, New York, November 7, 1934
Red Norvo (with Chu Berry and Teddy Wilson), New York, January 25, 1935 Mildred Bailey, New York, December 6, 1935
Count Basie (with Lester Young), New York, January 21, 1937
146 Hot House
Fats Waller, New York, April 9, 1937 Coleman Hawkins, Paris, April 28, 1937 Charlie Parker, Kansas City, circa 1939
Jay McShann (with Charlie Parker), Wichita, Kansas, November 30, 1940 Thelonious Monk, from The Unique , Hackensack, New Jersey, April 3, 1956 Bill Evans and Bob Brookmeyer, from The Ivory Hunters , New York, March 12, 1959 Mary Lou Williams, from Solo Recital , live at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Montreux,
Switzerland, July 16, 1978
Stéphane Grappelli, from Vintage 1981 , San Francisco, July 1981 George Shearing, from In Dixieland , New York, February 1989
Uri Caine (two takes, “Honeysuckle Rose #1” and “Honeysuckle Rose #2”), from Blue Wail , New York, December 1–2, 1997