# 73: Off Time (1929)
Lyrics by Andy Razaf; music by Thomas “Fats” Waller and Harry Brooks, From the Broadway musical revues, Hot Chocolates (1929) and Ain’t Misbehavin’ (1978)
In tribute to African American Music Appreciation Month – here is “Off Time.” This is another good Jazz Age song, about music and dance, to get yourself bustling on a sluggish morning.
The great African American songwriting team of lyricist Andy Razaf and Thomas “Fats” Waller particularly flourished from 1929 through 1932. Their most famous songs from that period are “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Honeysuckle Rose.”
In the same show as “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” a revue called Hot Chocolates, was this neglected gem, “Off-Time.”
Nobody paid much attention to “Off-Time” in 1929. I have found only one recording from that year.
But when a musical revue was created around the music and personality of Fats Waller in 1978, Ain’t Misbehavin’, “Off-Time” was one of a handful of obscure Waller tunes suddenly thrust into the spotlight. The show won numerous awards, including the Tony Award for Best Musical. Productions flourished around the world – first professional, and eventually amateur as well.
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“Off-Time” is one of the many dance craze songs of the early-to-mid twentieth century. Although there were earlier predecessors with the cakewalk and the waltz, this kind of lyric flourished particularly from about 1908 onwards, when boisterous social dances came into a huge vogue all across the USA.
Perhaps the most famous of these dances was the Charleston – and the song about it, “The Charleston,” was from a 1923 Broadway musical revue with a score by African American writers James P. Johnson and Cecil Mack.
In 1923, the Charleston dance suddenly swept the nation and then the globe. Its rhythms inspired songs like “Yes Sir! That’s My Baby” – and “Off-Time.” You can especially hear it in the line, “That’s off-time, oo-oo, that’s off-time.” It is that CLAP-clap rhythm – conducive to the words Charleston and off-time.
The show that “Off-Time” was from was an all-Black musical revue on Broadway, with the material taken from the nightclub floors shows at Connie’s Inn, one of the great Harlem venues for white customers and black performers during the Harlem Renaissance.
Putting this nightclub material into the revue Hot Chocolates, smack dab into the middle of the theater district, 44th Street, made this show – with its six-month successful run – a central part of mainstream USA entertainment culture.
Waller and Razaf gave it a great score, with “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Black and Blue” being the leading songs.
Let me put in here an explanation of the title, “Off-Time.” The complex rhythmic aspects of jazz, which include syncopation, are the supposedly “off” elements in the “time” (i.e. beat and rhythm). The musicians emphasize places off of the “main” beat of 1-2-3-4, such as 1-2-3-4 or 1-and-2-3-and-4. Exhilarating!
People in that era found a heady euphoria in this new American sound of jazz – free, exuberant, happy, and profound. And you can hear that in the songs with lyrics that are about jazz music. That’s the enthusiasm within “Off-Time” that inspires me.
Recordings
Mostly, you will encounter “Off-Time” in productions of Ain’t Misbehavin’.
In that revue, the song “Off-Time” is embedded in a sequence of five songs that pretend to be a radio broadcast during, perhaps, 1942. The original Broadway performers rendered it on the cast album and then on the Tony Awards telecast, in a shortened version with just two songs.
The male performers are Ken Page and Andre DeShields, the women are Armelia McQueen, Nell Carter, and Charlaine Woodard (who gets the tap dance solo).
Here is that video.
And here is the same arrangement, from the original Broadway cast album. As in the Tony Award clip, the end of “Off-Time” goes back to the song that started the sequence, “The Ladies Who Sing with the Band.”
For a truly Jazz Age feel for the tune, we go to this 1929 instrumental recording by Jimmy Noone:
At 1:39, the band plays so wonderfully, very “off-time.”
And here is a Swing Era recording, from 1938, led by Gene Sedric (who played on many of Fats Waller’s small group jazz recordings) and His Honeybears, a pick-up group. The vocal (not very faithful to the melody!) is by Myra Johnson. The track is on the Internet Archive, at:
https://archive.org/details/JV-14351-1938-Qma27UdzMRzNX85QU7NxCLQE1ZKjBkJtbS6b1iJYG5UKzu.mp3
Learning the song
“Off-Time” is in the public domain in the USA, so I can give the lyrics.
Here are the lyrics to verse and refrain:
Verse: In these scientific days, Everyone’s futuristic. So you’ll find it always pays, When you are modernistic. Here’s the dance That’s got ‘em guessin’. Now’s the chance, To take a lesson. Peculiar, goodness knows – Here’s the way it goes. Refrain: First hesitate, then syncopate, While on the off-beat you punctuate – That’s off-time, oo-oo, that’s off-time. Work to the left, work the right, Sway like you’re on the tail of a kite! Tap off-time, oo-oo, rap off-time. Mix it with slow motion, Stir it up with pep. Get a sudden notion. For a strutting step. Up off your heels, down on your toes, Don’t watch the floor, just follow your nose. That’s off-time, oo-oo, that’s off-time.
The funnest part, to me, is the second line of the A-sections. I especially like the line, “Sway like you’re on the tail of a kite,” while the music sways and jerks in this swinging way!
The verse is, melodically, in a kind of free-style, flowing AABBC structure.
In the verse, the words futuristic and modernistic seem self-explanatory – or, almost so.
Futuristic meant, in this case, innovative. It also had the connotation of the modern art movement Futurism, which flourished in Italy in the 1910s and was influential for decades later. (Still is, for that matter.)
Modernistic has to do with modern art and thought – a break with the past that was felt among artists and thinkers from the late 1870s onwards and especially associated with the 1920s.
The melody of the refrain is AABA – that most typical structure of the era.
The lyrics of the refrain should be clear to all – presuming you have kept in mind my discussion of what syncopation is, above. So, “to synocpate” is to create dance or music that is syncopated.
“To strut” means to walk with an easy rhythm and, perhaps, an air of smug confidence.And, as so often, I love how the B-section release creates this sense of joy, and an energized return to the main A-section melody.
You can see, at that point in the video, that the women in Ain’t Misbehavin’ do the dance step called trucking – sliding forward on the balls of your feet while one finger, pointing toward the ceiling, is spun or wagged in the air. That could be considered a kind of strut.
Keep struttin’!
Best wishes, Mike G.
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To learn more about Andy Razaf (the son of a prince) and Thomas “Fats” Waller and the mysterious Harry Brooks, to see and hear more of the (very few) rendititons of “Off-Time,” and learn more of its place in Jazz Age, subscribe to the 365 Songs of Cheer bonus articles!
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