Vintage Rock salutes the Imperial phase of Fats Domino’s glorious career by taking a look at how his rich R&B hits added a touch of spice to the sweet-sounding gumbo served up in The Big Easy… 

“A lot of people seem to think I started this business, but rock’n’roll was here a long time before I came along… Let’s face it: I can’t sing it like Fats Domino can,” admitted Elvis Presley to Jet magazine in 1957. While the piano-playing pioneer himself might’ve been humbled by such adulation, he would concede to a Hearst newsreel interviewer that same year: “What they call rock and roll is rhythm and blues, and I’ve been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans…”

R&B or rock’n’roll, call it what you will, there’s no debating that the amiable artist’s catalogue of work for the Imperial label had a dramatic impact on the music landscape and would reverberate through the generations and inspire future rockers. A wide range of impressive names all came together in 2007 to pay homage to the big man and tackle some of his most notable hits for the Goin’ Home: A Tribute To Fats Domino album. An appropriate title given that home was where the heart was for Fats, and we start this celebratory look at the story of Antoine Domino Jr by walking to New Orleans.

The Big Easy

Born on 26 February 1928 into a French Creole family, the future trailblazer was the youngest of eight children born to Antoine Caliste Domino and Marie-Donatille Gros. Having moved from Vacherie to settle in the Lower Ninth Ward, there is no doubting that Domino’s earliest musical influence would have been the city of NOLA herself. Film-maker Joe Lauro, who became friends with the singer during the recording of his 2014 documentary The Big Beat: Fats Domino And The Birth Of Rock’n’Roll, revealed to The Guardian how: “Everything he did – his patois, his creole accent, the beats he used – reflected the city.”

Located along the Mississippi River, in the south-eastern region of Louisiana, New Orleans’ unique musical heritage is about as old as colonial America itself. The spirituals of enslaved Africans appeared in the port city from across the Atlantic alongside the sounds of European settlers from France, Spain, Ireland and Germany. The home of Afro-Creole and voodoo, of Sicilian brass bands and Dixieland ragtime, The Big Easy is celebrated as the birthplace of ‘jass’ which would later be called jazz.

Jazz roots

With its roots reaching back to the drumming rituals that took place in Congo Square, where slaves joined to play music on Sundays, jazz is synonymous with the city. In 1895, local cornetist Buddy Bolden started his first band and added blues rhythms to their loose interpretation of ragtime, effectively inventing the genre.

Some 22 years later in 1917, Nick LaRocca and his New Orleans-based Original Dixieland Jass Band recorded the first jazz record entitled Livery Stable Blues. The city was also the birthplace of such notable names as saxophonist Sidney Bechet, trumpeter Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong, and ragtime pianist Ferdinand ‘Jelly Roll’ Morton, who would later surmise: “It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the Cradle of Jazz.”

Vibrant energy

This rich history and the city’s ever-evolving vibrant energy was unescapable for young Domino. While his father played the fiddle, a more immediate role model was the jazz guitarist Harrison Verrett, who had married his sister Philones. Having played with trombonist Kid Ory and trumpeter Oscar ‘Papa’ Celestin, Verrett taught his brother-in-law his first few chords by writing down notes on the piano keys when Antoine was about 10 years old.

Talking to New Orleans music magazine Offbeat in 2004, Domino revealed how he had an innate talent for playing along to records after only a handful of listens. He said: “I could play it just like the record because I had a good ear for catchin’ notes and different things.”

Between 1938 and 1942 Antoine diligently honed his craft. Quitting school to deliver ice around the neighbourhood, he would practice in any house that had a piano… and, as he revealed to historian Michael Hurtt: “Everywhere I went, every house, they had a piano”. In his teens, he started performing for pennies in local hotspots at night.

Following the Second World War, the most fashionable music to infiltrate New Orleans was beat-driven rhythm and blues. Clubs like The Dew Drop Inn, The Tiajuana, The Caldonia and Robin Hood attracted the hottest acts and radio stations, which catered specifically for black listeners, picked up on the fresh sound. The impressionable ears of Fats could not help but be exposed to this musical movement.

King Of The Jukebox

Laying the foundations for this exciting new direction was Louis Jordan. Having started his career with the big band swing jazz of the 1930s, ‘The King Of The Jukebox’ popularised the bouncy jump blues phenomenon. Eschewing the more polished style of his contemporaries, the dynamic Arkansas-born saxophonist and leader of the Tympany Five developed a dance-oriented hybrid of jazz, blues and boogie-woogie, which would morph into R&B.

As the burgeoning rhythm and blues sound started to develop and spread, many of its prominent vocalists remained deeply rooted in gospel music. One such singer, Roy Brown, was a leading light in the Louisiana scene and a significant influence on Domino. He settled in NOLA in 1947 after stints performing in California, Texas and Shreveport in Louisiana, and remains an important figure in the genesis of rock’n’roll. His Good Rocking Tonight, with its “Well I heard the news, there’s good rocking tonight!” refrain, is an early contender for the first rock record ever committed to wax.

Blues shouter

Written for Nebraskan R&B singer Wynonie Harris, another huge inspiration for Domino, Brown decided to perform the track himself for De Luxe Records in 1947 after the blues shouter had rejected it. However, as Brown’s version began to develop interest around New Orleans, Harris soon changed his mind and would go on to top the Billboard R&B chart with his rendition. Significantly, Elvis also recorded and released the song for Sun in 1954 after seeing Harris on stage in Memphis.

Another hugely important figure in the development of Domino’s approach was Amos Milburn, one of the first performers to switch from sophisticated jazz to the louder jump blues. Hailing from Texas, his bawdy tales of boozing and partying on numbers like Bad, Bad Whiskey, Trouble In Mind and One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer had an immeasurable influence. As did the booming presence of Big Joe Turner.

Irresistible rhythm

Working Kansas City venues such as The Kingfish Club and The Sunset alongside the boogie-woogie pianist Pete Johnson, Turner scored a big hit in 1938 with Roll ’Em Pete. The pair went on to regularly perform with pianists Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis, helping to propel boogie-woogie further into the mainstream. Other notable Turner recordings, including Piney Brown Blues, Chains Of Love, Shake, Rattle And Roll, Cherry Red and Flip, Flop And Fly, would prove hugely significant in the development of R&B.

At the very heart of this blossoming contemporary music was the sound of a piano, and Domino was a keen disciple of many leading purveyors who pounded out that irresistible rhythm on the keys.

Aforementioned exponents Johnson, Ammons and Lux Lewis often appeared as a trio and became the leading boogie-woogie players of the day. While their styles differed, all three possessed enormous swing, drive and power. In his book, The Blues – From Robert Johnson To Robert Cray, writer Tony Russell said that the members of the ‘Boogie Woogie Trio’ all shared, “a technical virtuosity and melodic fertility that can make this the most exciting of all piano music styles.”

Fellow pioneer, Isidore ‘Tuts’ Washington, made a name for himself as a prominent performer for dance bands in New Orleans. Similar to Domino, Washington had taught himself to tickle the ivories as a youngster before developing his skills under Joseph Louis ‘Red’ Cayou. Working with guitarist Smiley Lewis in Thomas Jefferson’s Dixieland band in the mid-1930s, Tuts became an expert boogie-woogie player.

Tickle the ivories

After the war, Washington and Lewis hit on a winning formula and released several popular songs such as Turn On Your Volume, Baby and its flip, Here Comes Smiley; Tee-Nah-Nah backed with Lowdown; and The Bells Are Ringing and Dirty People.

Lewis was not only the first artist to record Blue Monday in 1954, but he’d also go on to score R&B chart success with his crossover hit, I Hear You Knocking, in 1955. His revamped take on Louis Jordan’s 1939 jump blues track, Keep A-Knockin’, is dominated by the piano triplets of Huey ‘Piano’ Smith. Born in the Central City neighbourhood of New Orleans and having played piano for Guitar Slim and Earl King, Smith would also make a hugely significant contribution to the developing R&B sound with his group The Clowns.

Both Domino and Smith were greatly affected by the innovative work of fellow New Orleanian Roy Byrd. Better known as Professor Longhair, ‘Fess’ added Latin spices and Caribbean flavour to the Cajun gumbo he was cooking up at the piano. While he might’ve only scored one national hit, Bald Head in 1950, he too helped pave the way for those who followed. Russell wrote: “The vivacious rhumba-rhythmed piano blues and choked singing typical of Fess were too weird to sell millions of records; he had to be content with siring musical offspring who were simple enough to manage that, like Fats Domino.”

Enter Cosimo Matassa

It was around the same time when Longhair cut Bald Head, that Domino first walked through the doors at J&M Studio to rewrite rock history.

The brainchild of young chemistry student dropout, Cosimo Matassa, J&M was initially located in the back room of a Federal-style building on the edge of New Orleans’ French Quarter and would play a pivotal role in developing the city’s sound.

Born in April 1926, Matassa was the son of Sicilian immigrant John Matassa who owned a jukebox operation called J&M Amusement Services, which he ran with his business partner Joe Mancuso. On deciding chemistry wasn’t the career path for him, Matassa would help install or fix jukeboxes in the city’s bars and ensured they were
kept topped up with the latest tunes. The budding entrepreneur would sell any old used discs and noticed a gap in the market, so approached Mancuso with the idea of opening a record store.

Making magic

Located on the corner of Rampart and Dumaine, J&M Music Shop had a 15ft by 16ft space at the back which 18-year-old Matassa decided to utilise by installing a small studio. While practising his production skills he offered the space to local musicians and students wanting to make amateur recordings. “The first thing we had was a dual Presto disc recorder,” Matassa told Rhythm And Blues In New Orleans author John Broven. “If you listen to the way the drums sound on the very earliest things, you can tell they were done on one microphone… that the records sounded decent at all by today’s standards is a miracle.”

With New Orleans a hotbed for musical talent, J&M soon started to garner attention and became an essential destination for record labels hoping to discover the next big thing in jazz and blues. Among the first notable talent seekers to travel south were New Jersey’s David and Julius Braun of De Luxe Records in 1947. During an early visit the Braun brothers discovered, signed, and recorded Paul Gayten and Annie Laurie.

Special guest

Gayten was an esteemed piano player and bandleader in New Orleans where he had established a residency at The Robin Hood with his trio. In 1947 the collective recorded two of the first NOLA hits of the R&B era, True (You Don’t Love Me), and a cover of the Buddy Johnson blues ballad Since I Fell For You, with his fiancée Laurie on vocals. “Annie Laurie did the first really good record that I liked,” Matassa revealed to Broven. “[She] was just fantastic, I mean nobody will ever make another version like that.”

It was during a Sunday afternoon concert in summer 1947, that Gayten invited Domino to join him and Laurie on stage for a showstopping rendition of Albert Ammons’ intricate Swanee River Boogie. Gayten had been tipped off by Rip Roberts, the city’s leading African American music promoter, that a “special guest was in the audience,
a young man who really plays the piano”.

It was while playing for those pennies in the Ninth Ward clubs that Domino mastered the Ammons number which ultimately gave him his first taste of fame. However, it wasn’t just Roberts who’d spotted the youngster’s remarkable talent during his scintillating small barroom performances. After being introduced, an impressed local bandleader called Billy Diamond offered him the opportunity to sit in with his band, The Solid Senders, at the happening Hideaway Club. It was Diamond who first nicknamed him ‘Fats’ after the renowned pianists Fats Waller and Fats Pichon.

The Fat Man

Another early New Orleans artist picked up by the Braun brothers during their scouting mission in The Big Easy was the influential frontman of Dave Bartholomew & The Dew Droppers. Nicknamed ‘Leather Lungs’ for his ability to hold a note, Bartholomew named his first group after the famed Dew Drop Inn where he would become resident bandleader. Making his first De Luxe recordings at Matassa’s in September 1947, he worked behind the scenes at the studio and became a key catalyst to the growing success of J&M, directing and playing on countless sessions as well as being the chief in-house songwriter.

In 1949, while playing in Houston, Texas, Bartholomew met Lew Chudd, who owned Los Angeles-based independent label Imperial Records. Initially focused on Spanish-language music, Chudd was looking to sign new country and R&B acts. There was no one better positioned than Bartholomew to become Imperial’s eyes and ears in New Orleans.

Imperial phase

It was while hunting for talent at the Hideaway he saw music’s ‘next big thing’ give a life-changing performance, which resulted in ‘The Fat Man’ signing with Imperial. When interviewed by the Cleveland Plain Dealer back in 2010, Bartholomew said: “My first impression was a lasting impression. He was a great singer. He was a great artist. And whatever he was doing, nobody could beat him.”

Entering J&M on 10 December 1949 with musicians from Bartholomew’s band – drummer Earl Palmer, bassist Frank Fields, guitarist Ernest McLean and sax players Herbert Hardesty, Clarence Hall, Joe Harris and Red Tyler – Domino’s Imperial debut rolled out just days after it was cut. Taking Champion Jack Dupree’s Junker Blues, Bartholomew had the foresight to change the lyrical content from “they call me a junker, because I’m loaded all the time”, to the radio-friendly, “they call me the fat man, ’cos I weigh 200 pounds”, and teens across the US were seduced by the riotous The Fat Man and the hottest new sound in New Orleans. Reaching No.2 on the US R&B chart, the track went on to sell a million copies within four years.

“If Dave Bartholomew were never to play another note,” wrote music historian Jeff Hannusch in his book, I Hear You Knockin’, “he could sit back and bask in the knowledge that he was very much responsible for shaping today’s music.”

Hotbed for talent

Despite its unrefined conditions, J&M attracted a host of indie labels and numerous artists from outside New Orleans such as Little Richard, Ray Charles and Jerry Lee Lewis. Matassa would continue to record legendary singles for local talent including Huey ‘Piano’ Smith’s Rockin’ Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu, Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry’s Ain’t Got No Home, Shirley & Lee’s Let The Good Times Roll and Irma Thomas’ It’s Raining. He moved operations around the town, first to 525 Governor Nicholls Street before 748 Camp Street, and would change the name to Cosimo’s. However, it was that initial combination of Matassa, Bartholomew and Domino that set in motion a monumental change in direction for the future of music and what we call rock’n’roll. Fats told Hurtt: “Cosimo’s wasn’t a big studio but somehow or other they got a good sound out of it.”

Following on from the The Fat Man, Domino would release 22 singles for Imperial and score a further 10 US R&B
Top 10s between 1950 and 1954, but everything would explode a year later.

After Presley had shaken things up in Memphis with his cover of Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup’s That’s All Right in 1954, a rock’n’roll revolution had started to sweep across the airwaves. Ain’t That A Shame, originally labelled Ain’t It A Shame and one of the first numbers he didn’t record in New Orleans, propelled our star to the top of the US R&B chart and No.10 on the Pop chart. “Rock’n’roll just kind of formed around him,” Joe Lauro reflected to The Guardian. “Up ’til 1955, he sold records to the black audience, but his hit Ain’t That A Shame crossed over and brought him to the attention of a white audience.”

Ain’t That A Shame

Domino was one of the first black artists that the white kids took to their hearts. However, like many black acts of
the time, he would endure terrible racism. As a result of such mistreatment, he often refused to play shows that were segregated and sometimes the volatile environment would result in headline-grabbing riots.

Rick Coleman, author of Blue Monday: Fats Domino And The Lost Dawn Of Rock ’n’ Roll, told American Standard Time: “Many of his young white audiences from 1956 on had never seen a black performer before and hadn’t danced or sat beside blacks. Domino and his band members subconsciously had the attitude of ‘New Orleans musicians against the world,’ partly because they had been through discrimination, riots, and other hardships together and they prided themselves on rocking the house. They bonded with their music, partying, and New Orleans soul food.”

Star on the big screen

Domino’s star status among all audiences was cemented when rock’n’roll took over Hollywood. Ever since Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock had played over the credits of Blackboard Jungle, studios had looked towards the Hot 100 for acts to appear in their movies.

Like many of his peers, the larger-than-life Domino made small musical cameos on the big screen. He can be seen performing Ain’t That A Shame, I’m In Love Again and Honey Chile in Shake, Rattle & Rock! and Blue Monday in The Girl Can’t Help It. He pops up again with Wait And See in the 1957 flick Jamboree!, and Imperial was, of course, delighted with the exposure, as each scene-stealing turn resulted in another hit.

Blueberry Hill

In the UK, Domino scored 16 Top 40 hits and spent 87 weeks on the hit parade. Released here through Decca on their new London American label, his first track to break the Top 40 was I’m In Love Again in August 1956 when it reached No.12. It is remarkable to think, given Domino’s huge impact and catalogue of songs, that he only registered one UK Top 10 hit when Blueberry Hill peaked at No.6 in February 1947.

First recorded in the 1940s by a variety of artists including the ‘Singing Cowboy’ Gene Autry and the New Orleans-raised jazz vocalist Connee Boswell, it was Louis Armstrong’s 1949 version of Blueberry Hill which inspired Domino. Fats explained to Hurtt how Chudd had had his reservations: “I liked that record ’cause I heard it by Louis Armstrong and I said, ‘That number gonna fit me’. We had to beg Lew Chudd for a while. I told him I wasn’t gonna make no more records ’til they put that record out. I could feel that it was a hit.”

It’s a good thing he argued his case because Blueberry Hill would be his biggest release. Not only did he score his only UK Top 10, but he would also hit No.2 on the US Hot 100, spend eight weeks at No.1 on the R&B Chart,
and sell a reported three million copies. As Carl Perkins once said: “In the white honky-tonks where I was playin’, they were punchin’ Blueberry Hill… and white cats were dancin’ to Fats.”

Carry a good beat

In total, Domino recorded more than 60 US singles for Imperial, placing 40 tracks in the R&B Top 10 and 11 in the Pop chart. Talking to the Los Angeles Times in 1985, the modest performer said: “I was lucky enough to write songs that carry a good beat and tell a real story, too – something that old people and the kids could both enjoy.”

When Imperial was sold in 1963 Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records. “I stuck with them until they sold out,” he would admit in 1979. While he continued to make records for his new label, The Beatles-led ‘British Invasion’ lessened Domino’s chart success.

When Fats toured Europe for the first time in 1962, he was still the headline attraction and when he met The Fab Four in Liverpool they were suitably in awe. I’m In Love Again was the song which introduced George Harrison to rock’n’roll, while Ain’t That A Shame was the first song John Lennon learned how to play. He went on to cover the track for his 1975 Rock ’n’ Roll album, as would Paul McCartney on 1988’s CHOBA B CCCP, where it featured alongside renditions of I’m In Love Again and I’m Gonna Be A Wheel Someday.

While the hits disappeared for Domino, he would have one last hurrah with a cover of Lady Madonna, lifted from his 1968 album Fats Is Back. Released as a single, he scored his 77th and final US chart hit. In the 1994 book Many Years From Now, McCartney remembered how he came to write the Beatles chart-topper: “Lady Madonna was me, sitting down at the piano trying to write a bluesy boogie-woogie thing… It reminded me of Fats Domino for some reason, so I started singing a Fats Domino impression. It took my other voice to a very odd place.”

Rock royalty

In 1986, Domino was listed as one of the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and would join the National Rhythm & Blues Hall in 2016. Joe Lauro said: “This guy was a major star. The only person who sold more records in the 50s was Elvis. But Fats was happy living a quiet life at home in the neighbourhood he was born in.”

Fats Domino enjoyed a remarkable career at Imperial and remained a humble guy with a heart full of love… a love for his cherished New Orleans, where he stayed until his passing on 24 October 2017, and a love for the sublime sound of R&B. “As far as I know, the music makes people happy,” he once said, “I know it makes me happy.”

It is reported that when a journalist referred to Elvis as ‘The King’ during a press conference at the Las Vegas International Hotel in 1969, Presley pointed towards Fats at the back of the room and exclaimed: “No, that’s the real King of Rock’n’Roll…”

And we’ll certainly raise a bowl of bubbling gumbo to that.

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