Here's a story that my Dad tells, about finding a collection connected with Fats Waller.

 

Once in a Lifetime

by George Wilson

It was 1978 and I was working in New York at an ad agency called Ogilvy & Mather. I had been collecting for 10 years or so and besides browsing the record bin at the local second-hand bookstore and prowling garage sales, I'd taken some small ads in a couple of jazz magazines. "78s bought, especially jazz" Something like that. I also had a radio show on the local public radio station, playing some of the 78s I'd collected, and people in the community knew my name as a collector. I knew I was reaching a certain level of mind-share when I arrived at a church rummage sale and a woman I don't think I know said, "Ooooh! You da jazz man!"

So one day I'm at work and I get a phone call from a woman in Queens who wants to sell some records. I asked her how many she had and she said about 200. Nowadays I wouldn't stir out of my chair for anything less than a thousand, but in those early days a collection was any group of records greater than two. I asked her what kind of music it was. “Mostly Fats Waller”, she said. It sounded like the kind of music I might be interested in, but no alarm bells went off in my head. No little voice saying, "This is the one, Georgie." I made a date to come to see her records.

She lived in a nice neighborhood of modest houses. She was in her 30’s, black and very nice. We sat at her dining room table and she brought out about 210 records of which 180 were Fats Waller recordings.

I noted that this was unusually dense in one artist and wondered where had she gotten the records. She replied that she had gotten them from her voice teacher Susie Payne 10 years ago and that Susie had since died and now seemed like a good time to sell them. I made an offer. She called her ex-husband, he agreed and I paid and hauled the records.

After unloading them at home, I made two startling discoveries. First, I opened a 10” album by Ted Heath of Fats Waller’s London Suite. The inscription nearly knocked me over. Inside the front cover was in inscription “Complimentary album to Maurice Waller. John E. Grimm III”. So I had apparently bought Maurice Waller’s collection and probably Fats’ collection as well.

Most of the records were in pretty poor condition, but there were some acetates of Waller solo and playing a duet with Maurice.

At the Collector's Bash that year, I was telling Dick Richter about the find and he said, " Well, you know Susie Paine was Bennie Paine's wife and he and Fats were good friends." Somehow the Paine's had gotten Waller's collection.