AN AMERICAN MUSICIAN
The Andriana Manantena Paul Razafinkarefo was a prince of the 350-year old kingdom of Imeria - a great-nephew of the ruling queen - as well as the grandson of the US consul. His newly-widowed and pregnant teenage mother fled the brutal 1894 invasion of Madagascar by the Army of France during the partition of Africa. She escaped to her native USA after her father was captured by the French and imprisoned in Marseille.
The young Andy Razaf grew up in Harlem. In 1912 he left school to write songs, working as an elevator operator in a West 28th St building which housed music publishers. He began writing lyrics for nightclub singers, as well as for the U.S. Treasury's War Bonds drive. At the same time, he wrote poems which appeared in the Voice, an African-American newspaper run by the early black radical Hubert Harrison. Razaf soon took an editorial job with Marcus Garvey's 'Negro World,' at the time the world's largest black newspaper.
After the war, he resumed working with pianists Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson, and Fats Waller (among many others). He was a featured vocalist on a number of recordings by Fletcher Henderson and others.   During the early 1920s, Razaf associated with the gangsters operating out of nightclubs, including the notorious Dutch Schultz. He continued, however, to write about racial injustice. His 1929 song "Black and Blue" (from the musical revue Hot Chocolates) was recorded by Louis Armstrong and Ethel Waters. It concludes with the lines:
"My only sin is in my skin | What did I do to be so black and blue?"
Quite a few of his hundreds of songs were big hits for Fats Waller, Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington and others. His catalog includes many Tin Pan Alley favorites: “In The Mood,” “Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good To You,” “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Knock Me A Kiss,” “Mr. Christopher Columbus,” and “Ain’t Misbehaving.” His work appeared on Broadway and in the movies.
In 1951, Razaf suffered a serious stroke which caused moderate physical disability for the rest of his life, although he continued to write song lyrics and articles for black media. He was married four times. He became a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972, a year before his demise from kidney-failure.

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