Andy Razaf

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Andy Razaf, born Andriamanantena Paul Razafinkarefo, was an American lyricist, born on 16 December 1895 in Washington, D.C. His father was a nephew of Queen Ranavalona III of Madagascar, his mother the daughter of the first African American consul on that island. After the French invasion of Madagascar, in which his father was killed, his mother fled to the United States. Razaf left school at sixteen, became an elevator boy in a building in Tin Pan Alley and wrote his first lyric a year later.

Music and breakthrough

His most important partner was the pianist and composer Fats Waller. Together they wrote Ain't Misbehavin', Honeysuckle Rose, The Joint Is Jumpin', Keepin' Out of Mischief Now and Black and Blue. He also worked with Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson, Don Redman and others. The lyrics of In the Mood are also part of his work. He sometimes wrote the music himself too and in the late 1920s recorded records as a singer, often with ukulele, sometimes with James P. Johnson and Fletcher Henderson. As a young man he published poems in newspapers of the New Negro movement.

Influence

The Songwriters Hall of Fame list counts 215 songs by him, and one biographer arrived at more than eight hundred. In 1972 he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Razaf died in 1973 in North Hollywood. His lyrics, quick, playful and sometimes sharp, turned Waller's swing into a song that everyone could sing along to.

Listening

In School of Rock

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