Honeysuckle Rose

Written: 1929

Music by: Fats Waller

Words by: Andy Razaf

Introduced in: Load of Coal
(revue, 1929)

On the Main Stage at Cafe Songbook

Ella Fitzgerald
with
Count Basie and His Orchestra

performing

"Honeysuckle Rose"

at Jazz in Montreux
(1979)
Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie recorded "Honeysuckle Rose" on the album Ella and Basie, 1963

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"Honeysuckle Rose"

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Load of Coal was a Black revue produced by the Immerman Brothers for performance at their club, Connie's Inn, in Harlem in 1929. Waller and Razaf wrote three songs for the show: "My Fate Is in Your Hands" (a ballad), "Zonky" (an up-tempo tune) and "Honeysuckle Rose." According to Maurice Waller (Fats' son) and Anthony Calebrese in their biography of Waller, the first two were given more prestigious placings in the show while "Honeysuckle Rose," a soft shoe, "was relegated to the chorus as a forgettable tap number." As a result the song had to wait to achieve popularity, and eventually its status as a standard, until it became the centerpiece of a film short bearing its title and Paul Whiteman played it on the radio. It did not make the charts until Fletcher Henderson recorded it in 1933. By 1935, versions by Red Norvo, Waller and the Dorsey Brothers had also charted.

The earliest of roots for "Honeysuckle Rose" is related by Barry Singer in his biography of Razaf. The song, or at least its title, was born at the Club Alabam on West 133rd street in Harlem as far back as the winter of 1924. The young Razaf had won himself the chance not only to perform a song but to write both words and music for it.

The whole business was staged by the Club Alabam dance director, Elida Webb, for full chorus and an "eye-pleasing bevy of show girls," billed as "The Honeysuckle Rosebuds." The title of Razaf's tune was in fact, "Honeysuckle Rose."

Razaf would "junk this original lyric and melody" right after the show closed but put the title away apparently as "worthy . . . of further consideration." Five years later when it came time to finish up the third song for Load of Coal, Razaf stitched his old title and a few other elements to Waller's chorus. He then telephoned Waller to run it by him and they put the finishing touches on the song, including a new version of the eight bar bridge because Waller, not having written down his original, had forgotten what he had written the day before.

After untold minutes of desparate humming and shouting, Razaf left the phone for a moment to try what they had on the piano. By the time he returned, Waller had hung up.

Neither Razaf nor Waller knew they had written an immortal song. "We Thought very little of [it] at the time," Razaf later recalled.

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