Fats Waller: "Your Socks Don't Match"

This strange song has been occupying my thoughts today. 

For those who don't know, Fats Waller holds a cherished place in the pantheon of pre-war jazz.  While Louis Armstrong was the unbeatable soloist and singer, and Duke Ellington had the best arragements, Fats Waller was probably the greatest entertainer.

This song is an enigma.  It begins with Waller at the piano.  Waller played in an era where the piano was often the only percussion instrument, and his stride style of playing usually keeps a fast and heavy beat, with the left hand dancing between octaves like Mingus on steroids.  Here, backed by a drummer on hi-hat, Waller luxuriates a slow and easygoing blues for 1:30, actually half the song.  And it's beautifully melodic playing.

And then the rest of the band kicks in, without much more energy.  A guitar and trumpet sections keeps the blues theme going to great effect.  And Waller starts singing.  Here is the first verse, to the best I can figure it:

I like the devil in your chin
I even like that sugar way you grin
Still you ain't nowhere, you ain't any kind of cash
Dog-gone woman, your socks don't match

and later on, Waller speaks between verses, and the song turns more bizarre:

The shoes you wear, oh, they reveal your holes (!)
Seems that both of them are of different hue
They seem to be strangers baby, why don't you amalgamate and get them things together
I think you should introduce it too, yes, you gotta do them kind of thing

To put this song in some kind of weird context, this is actually a "sequel", if you will, to his bigger success, "Your Feet's Too Big".  That song played in the credits of the Michel Gondry movie Be Kind Rewind, whose plot centers around an unusual attempt to rewrite Waller's biography (and whose star Jack Black stands out in my mind as the contemporary musician who maybe comes closest to Fats' style of comedy).  But where that song is jumpy and boisterous, this one is tranquil and full of strange wordplay (notice the double entendre and the drunken pronoun-switch on the last line).  Unsurprisingly, it wasn't as successful than its predecessor.

Fats loved to screw with the lyrics of his and other people's songs.  He frequently added lines for humor, even into corny songs like "I Can't Give You Anything But Love".  I heartily recommend watching him play his most famous song, "Ain't Misbehavin'" in a scene from Stormy Weather.  It's not only worth it just to watch his mesmerizing expressions, it's probably the best recorded version of the song.