Fats Waller Anniversary Concert, Queen Elizabeth Hall

Every year now for more than two decades, the Southbank Centre has played host to a celebration of the life and works of one of history's most talented jazz musicians, Fats Waller, the piano virtuoso and progenitor of the Harlem Stride style who brought the world jazz standards like Ain't Misbehavin' (a Grammy Hall of Fame inductee) and I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter.
Famously recording a great many of his now-classic songs in just one take, band and all, Fats was known as a consummately relaxed performer, laughing and joking his way through every minute he spent at the keys – a trait never more emphatically demonstrated than in 1926, when he was abducted and, at gunpoint, hustled through a side-door into the birthday party of Chicago kingpin Al Capone. Unperturbed, Fats began to play, and play, and play, staggering blind drunk from the building a few days later with thousands of dollars in tips bulging from every pocket.
In the intimate surroundings of the Purcell Room, fans will be led through a career retrospective of the portly jazz icon in the capable and dedicated hands of Keith Nichols, ragtime pianist, accordionist, four-decade stalwart of the UK jazz scene and long-time authority on, and tribute act to, the great Fats.
Nichols and his band popped up at the legendary Ronnie Scott's in early January with a Sunday lunchtime selection of the big man's biggest numbers, and they have been involved with the Southbank's anniversary gig for a number of years, so you can be sure you'll be treated to an authentic, reverent and fond revue of the all-too-brief life and times of one of the undisputed finest in jazz history.