Background

Andy Razaf was born on December 16, 1895 Andrea Paul Razafkeriefo in Washington, D. C. , the only child of Henri Razafkeriefo and Jennie Maria Waller. His father, a nephew of Queen Ranavalona III of Madagascar, was a military officer apparently killed in the French takeover of the island in 1895. His mother was the eldest daughter of John Waller, American consul to Madagascar. He and his mother lived with his grandfather's family in Baltimore, Kansas City, Cuba, and New York City.

Education

He dropped out of school at the age of sixteen, despite the fact that he was an eager reader and a promising student. His skills as a lyricist, and as an occasional composer and performer, developed around the age of thirteen under the influence of a literate and articulate family: John Waller was a compelling orator, Jennie Razaf a poet, and Aunt Minnie Waller a songwriter and singer.

Career

Razaf worked for a while as an elevator operator on Tin Pan Alley (Manhattan's music district), and made his first sale in 1913, a song entitled "Baltimo" for the revue The Passing Show of 1913. While struggling to establish himself as a songwriter, he worked as a telephone operator, a cleaner, a butler, a custodian, and a semi-pro baseball player.

At the same time, he was contributing socially and politically progressive poems to various African-American publications such as the Emancipator and the Crusader. With the growing popularity of blues and jazz in New York City, Razaf ultimately collaborated with a number of great black musicians, including J. C. Johnson, James P. Johnson, Eubie Blake, and Thomas ("Fats") Waller. Although he never won the acclaim or wealth that a white lyricist of his talent would have, Razaf wrote and sold a number of popular and enduring songs: "My Special Friend" (1927), "My Handy Man" (1928), "S'posin' " (1929), "Ain't Misbehavin' " (1929), "Honeysuckle Rose" (1929), "Blue Turning Grey Over You" (1929), and "Black and Blue" (1929) - the last considered the first African-American "racial protest song. " In December 1929, Razaf was made an active member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

Razaf began the 1930's by collaborating with James P. Johnson on A Kitchen Mechanic's Revue for Ed Small's Paradise Club, which featured the clever parody "A Porter's Love Song to a Chambermaid. " His collaboration with Eubie Blake on the 1930 version of Lew Leslie's Blackbirds brought forth "You're Lucky to Me" and "Memories of You. " Both songs were written for Minto Cato, Razaf's lover and a star of the show. However, the 1930 Blackbirds folded shortly after opening in New York. The rest of the decade saw Razaf produce music and such great lyrics as "Keepin' Out of Mischief Now" (1933), "That's What I Like 'Bout the South" (1933), "Christopher Columbus" (1936), "Stompin' at the Savoy" (1936), "The Joint Is Jumpin' " (1937), and "In the Mood" (1939), a song for which he was paid a flat $200.

Razaf's career as a songwriter was already in decline by 1940 when the film Tin Pan Alley depicted two white criminals writing "Honeysuckle Rose" in prison. Razaf and Waller had received a small payment for the use of their song, but Razaf wrote a strong letter of complaint to Twentieth Century-Fox. The film company's lawyers published both Razaf's letter and their snide, racist response in Variety's Feburary 5, 1941, issue. Meanwhile Razaf and Eubie Blake had been working on the musical comedy Tan Manhattan, the original score of which contained a militant lyric sure to offend the white audience the show would need to make it to Broadway. After both Blake and producer Irvin C. Miller failed to talk Razaf out of including the song, Jean Razaf succeeded in getting her husband to rewrite it as "We Are Americans Too, " a tribute to patriotic African Americans.

Predictably, the show was not a success: it opened on January 24, 1941, in Washington, D. C. , and closed after a short run at Harlem's Apollo Theater in February. The 1940's were difficult for Razaf. Although he wrote some War Bond songs, including a resurrected "We Are Americans Too, " he failed to win a seat on the Englewood City Council. He ran for office out of sincere social conviction and, perhaps, professional desperation. However, the election was shaded by evidence of the tampering with registration records and polling booths, lost registration records, and a jammed key over candidate Razaf's name in one machine.

Razaf lived for the next twenty-five years in Los Angeles, where, on January 26, 1951, he became paralyzed with tertiary syphilis. He continued to work on his songs, poetry, and journalism when his pain did not prohibit it. There were some high notes. Razaf and Blake's "Memories of You" was revived as the theme of The Benny Goodman Story (1956), and Leonard Feather, a well-known jazz critic, compiled an album of Razaf songs.

Razaf died in North Hollywood, California from cancer, aged 77.

Achievements

• Razaf was a poet whose song lyrics often reveal concern with social and racial injustice. He was a master of the early "black" music that white audiences demanded in the 1910's and 1920's, but he moved beyond such music with ease and grace. He worked all his life to earn the respect of the white-dominated entertainment industry, and he sold hundreds of songs. Most of them have been forgotten, but he was revered by many of the great black musicians of the century. One has only to listen to recordings of his songs by Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong to sense the greatness of Andy Razaf as a lyricist.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Black and Blue: The Life and Lyrics of Andy Razaf

    (Chronicles the life and Prohibition-era times of the lege...)

  • 19 Original Albums

    (10CD set. Contains 19 complete original albums released f...)

Connections

He married Annabelle Miller in April 1915. Razaf divorced his first wife, whom he had abandoned years before, and on July 31, 1939, married Jean Blackwell, a librarian at the Harlem branch of the New York Public Library.

Having been divorced by Jean Blackwell after less than eight years of marriage, Razaf was married on July 16, 1948, to Dorothy Carpenter, his mother's longtime choice for daughter-in-law.

Razaf divorced Dorothy Carpenter in the late 1950's, and then, on Valentine's Day, 1963, married Alice Wilson, whom he had renamed Alicia when they first met in Chicago in 1934.

Alicia Razaf took care of her husband for nearly ten years and accompanied him to New York in 1972 for his induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He had no children from any of his marriages.

Father:

Henri Razafinkarefo

Mother:

Jennie (Waller) Razafinkarefo

Spouse:

Jean Blackwell

Spouse:

Alicia Razaf

Spouse:

Dorothy Carpenter

Spouse:

Annabelle Miller