"Honeysuckle Rose" is a jazz standard composed by Fats Waller with lyrics by Andy Razaf, written in December 1928 at Razaf's mother's home in Asbury Park, New Jersey. The tune was introduced the following year in the Off-Broadway revue "Load of Coal" at Connie's Inn in Harlem as a soft-shoe dance number. Its origin story is colorful — Waller grew impatient with the writing process and left for Harlem, and Razaf had to finish the lyrics by calling Waller on the phone at a bar. As Razaf later recalled, "We thought very little of it at the time." The composition is built on a 32-bar AABA form with a melody characterized by its catchy, syncopated phrasing and a harmonic progression that has proven exceptionally fertile for jazz improvisation. Its chord changes became so widely used that several other jazz compositions were built on top of them, most notably Charlie Parker's "Scrapple From The Apple." "Honeysuckle Rose" has been recorded over 500 times by artists spanning nearly a century, from Django Reinhardt and Coleman Hawkins to modern jazz groups, and Waller's own 1934 recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. The tune remains one of the most commonly called songs at jazz jam sessions and a cornerstone of the swing-era repertoire.
