As most serious roll collectors know, the QRS company had an
arrangement with Fats Waller whereby they released rolls under the
Waller name, although the rolls had in fact been made by J. Lawrence
Cook, who could imitate the Fats style of piano playing reasonably
well.

Some years ago I carried out some research into these "fakes" and
published a list of all the titles concerned together with other
information I managed to unearth.  At the time I was confident that
the list was complete, however an item purporting to be played by Fats
Waller appeared recently on Dan Inglima's roll auction list.  I checked
it against Bob and Ginny Billings' magnificent QRS rollography (if you
do not have a copy, get one now !!) and discovered that it was indeed a
Cook/Waller roll which was missing from my compilation.

The roll concerned is QRS 7787, WHEN MY BLUE MOON TURNS TO GOLD AGAIN,
release date December 1942.

So far as I know only two copies of the list were published on the web,
one is in the MMD archives and the other on Ian McLaughlin's web site.
I have written to both webmasters requesting them to add the above
details.

One final comment: I made a ridiculously high bid for the roll and won
it.  Sadly, it turned out to be one of the most boring piano roll
arrangements that I have ever heard, nevertheless printed on the box
label are the magic words, 'Played by "Fats" Waller' .

John Farrell
stridepiano@tesco.net
http://homepages.tesco.net/~stridepiano/

 [ See John's well-researched and exhaustive list at
 [ http://mmd.foxtail.com/MMMedia/fatswaller1.html  -- Robbie