Twenty-Four Robbers by Fats Waller

Fats Waller was born in 1904. The son of a preacher, he began playing the piano at 6-years old and the organ in his father's church by age 10. When he was eighteen he recorded his first piano solos. By 1926, his stride piano style had made him so famous that he was kidnapped by 4 men at gunpoint and taken to a house where he turned out to be the "special guest" at Al Capone's birthday party! He supposedly played for 3 days and received thousands of dollars in tips from Capone and other birthday revelers. Waller died of pneumonia in 1943.

Twenty-Four Robbers is currently one of my favorite "fun" swing songs (they're all fun, but this one is especially so, thanks to Waller's bouncy stride rhythm and entertaining lyrics):

Last night, the night before,
Twenty-four robbers came to my door,
Opened the door and let them in,
I hit em in the head with a bottle of gin!
Just can't understand
Twenty-four robbers fighting one man,
One of them took the silverware,
It wasn't very good, so I really don't care.
I'm gonna warn you,
I'll tell you what to do,
You better lock your door,
Or the robber men might come back again.
I can't sleep anymore,
Put a big chair right by my front door,
Bought a shotgun and stood it there,
To keep those robbers out of my hair.

If you didn't get enough of Frida Segerdahl yesterday here she is in two videos with Skye Humphries dancing to one of my favorite songs right now, Fats Waller's Twenty-Four Robbers. The choreography is similar in both videos, but some of the styling is different and the camera angles are of course different. Enjoy!

Download Twenty-Four Robbers by Fats Waller from iTunes here: