Andy Razaf was born Andreamentania Paul Razafinkeriefo on December 16, 1895 in Washington D. C., months after his mother had fled Madagascar because the government there had been overthrown. His father Henri Razafkeriefo, a member of the nobility, was killed after the French captured the island, exiled his aunt, the Queen and abolished the nobility.
When Razaf was sixteen, he quit public school to support his mother and seriously write songs. His first published song was "Baltimo" which was used in the show, "the Passing of 1913." Razaf kept the abbreviated form of his name after a song publisher shortened it because it would never be pronounced correctly or remembered by the public.
In 1923, Razaf met Thomas "Fats" Waller after hearing him play in a contest at the Roosevelt Theater in Harlem. From that moment on the two had a very profitable and congenial partnership. Over the next twenty years the song writing team of Razaf and Waller produced floor shows, Broadway musicals and many memorable hits, including "Ain't Misbehavin", "Honeysuckle Rose" and "Black and Blue". In 1930 Razaf collaborated with Eubie Blake to write the score for Lew Leslie's "Blackbirds of 1930", a musical show. That same year proved to be the lyricist's most prolific, producing such hits as "S'posin'" and "My Handy Man." Razaf also collaborated with J. C. Johnson and the stride pianist James P. Johnson.
Although Razaf never attended college, he was self-taught and highly educated. Numerous hours spent in the public library at 135th Street motivated him to write a poem entitled "Reflections in a Public Library." In 1941 he married the head librarian Jean Blackwell, Chief (1948-1980) of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, formerly the 135th Street Branch Library. His love of the Schomburg Center prompted a library official to offer him a scholarship which Razaf declined for lack of time. Razaf was married three times, but had no children.
After his marriage to Jean Blackwell the couple moved to Englewood. In 1947 he decided to run for City Council. Although he lost, it marked the first political effort by a black person in that city.
Razaf moved to California in 1948. He was stricken by paralysis brought on by tertiary syphilis that confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Despite his physical handicap, he continued to write poems, lyrics and letters; his stationery depicts him in his wheelchair with the words, "From the Wheelchair of Andy Razaf." Although he experienced daily agonizing pain, Razaf still found time to appear every Thursday on radio and write a column, "Time Out for Thinking", for a Los Angeles weekly.
After the war, Razaf was honored by the United States Department of the Treasury for special songs written for its War Bond Drive. He continued to receive citation from numerous organizations. His poem, "A Mixed-Up World", appeared in the Appendix of the Congressional Record in 1959 at the request of his former Congressman, Frank C. Osmers, Jr., of New Jersey. The Los Angeles Library Commission honored him after he donated his book and map collection to their Vernon Branch in 1963. In 1972 he returned to live in New York and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
On February 3, 1973 Andy Razaf, one of Tin Pan Alley's greatest songwriters and author of over 1000 tunes, died at the age of seventy-seven in North Hollywood, California.