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October 31, 2017 • Page 9
Appreciation
Pioneering Fats Domino Put The
Joy In Rock ‘n’ Roll
BY RANDY LEWIS
© 2017, Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — If Elvis Presley personified the sex appeal of early rock ‘n’ roll,
and Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard
channeled the danger lurking within this
unbridled form of youthful expression, then
Fats Domino was the living embodiment
of the pure joy that was an integral part of
the musical sea-change that revolutionized
world culture in the 1950s.
The argument over exactly where rock
‘n’ roll began has been debated for decades.
But I’ve long argued that well before Bill
Haley & His Comets set teens hopping in
1955 with “Rock Around the Clock,” before
Elvis first got teens quaking a year earlier
with “That’s All Right,” even before Jackie
Brenston and His Delta Cats (which in reality was Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm)
weaved wicked double entendres into a
rollicking rock workout called “Rocket 88”
in 1951, there was Antoine “Fats” Domino.
In 1949, he recorded “The Fat Man,” an
exuberant, jumping track that has all the
elements that would come to define the
genre.
Instead of the swinging rhythm that
heavily emphasized the second and fourth
beats of each measure common to so much
jump blues and R&B of the late-1940s, “The
Fat Man” was built instead on a steady
pounding beat from Domino’s left hand in
the lower half of the piano keyboard pushing the song along, the driving four pulse
that was a signature of rock ‘n’ roll.
The lyric also conveyed a sexy swagger
even though Domino didn’t cut the lithe
figure that Presley, Lewis, Richard and
others did — hence his nickname. Yet his
celebrated girth was no impediment to his
confidence in the ways of romance:
“They call me the Fat Man
“ ‘Cause I weigh 200 pounds
“All the girls they love me
“ ‘Cause I know my way around”
When I asked Led Zeppelin lead singer
Robert Plant on Wednesday, the day after
Domino’s death at age 89, about the pioneer’s influence on him and his peers, he
zeroed in on just those elements.
“How lucky for me to be a kid and grow
up with his funness and kindness, because
it came out of the records,” Plant said. “It
was a coy exuberance in the way it worked
with (collaborator/producer) Dave Bartholomew. I guess he actually kind of carried
the torch for happy singing.
“I really like so many things that came
out of New Orleans, and along with Ernie KDoe, he brought a lot of light out,” he said.
“Other singers I like from that time were
much more blues-based. He had this joy he
was transmitting.”
Roughly 30 years ago, I caught Domino
perform in his hometown of New Orleans at
the annual Jazz & Heritage Festival. He was
being feted as one of the pioneers of New
Orleans rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm and blues,
and was literally the poster boy for the 1989
edition of Jazz Fest.
Still, it was apparent he was struggling
with health issues at the time, when he was
60.
It was something of a workout for him
to ascend the stairs that led to the stage
where his piano awaited. But as soon as
he sat down at the bench that for so many
years was home to him, he turned toward
the crowd, beamed a smile as wide as the
Mississippi, applied his sausage-like fingers,
one of which was decorated with a spectacular bejeweled ring in the shape of a
grand piano, and proceeded to tickle, stroke
and pound the ivories as he spun out one
effervescent hit after another.
He personified the spirit of the city 17
years later when, even though he wasn’t
able to perform, he showed up for the closing day of Jazz Fest in 2006, the first major
cultural event following the devastation
wrought upon the Gulf Coast eight months
earlier by Hurricane Katrina.
Other early rockers tapped more into
the blues side of the blues, R&B, country,
folk and gospel amalgam that fueled what
soon became known as rock ‘n’ roll. But the
records that put Domino on the map largely
left the spiritual angst to others.
“You made me cry / When you said goodbye,” he sang in the opening line of “Ain’t
That a Shame,” his 1955 hit that spent 11
weeks at the top of Billboard’s R&B charts,
and went to No. 10 on the Hot 100 pop
chart. “Ain’t that a shame / My tears fell like
rain.”
Although the words were downhearted,
the spirit of the song was undeniably up.
The implicit message: He may have experienced heartbreak, but he wasn’t about to
let that take him down.
Like Chuck Berry, who was born a little
more than a year before Fats came into the
world on Feb. 26, 1928, Domino was nearly
a decade older than Presley and Lewis and
several other first-generation rockers. That
meant that to many teens of the ‘50s, he
came across more like a genial uncle than a
peer or an object of romantic infatuation.
Like so many of that class of rock pioneers, his career slowed considerably at the
end of the ‘50s. “Walking to New Orleans,”
released in 1960, reached No. 6 on the
Billboard Hot 100, the final Top 10 record of
his career.
Nevertheless, he placed a couple dozen
more songs further down that chart right
up through 1964, when the arrival of the
Beatles and the British Invasion rendered
so many rock artists virtually irrelevant.
Ironically, Domino’s final appearance
on the Billboard Hot 100 was his 1968
recording of the Beatles’ “Lady Madonna,”
the original being something of a tribute
by Paul McCartney and his fellow Liverpudlians to the exuberant American music
that inspired them to take up instruments.
Yet I keep going back to the unbridled
joy that Domino projected from the very
beginning.
“The Fat Man” was his first collaboration
with Bartholomew, a noted New Orleans
producer, songwriter, trumpet player,
bandleader and talent scout who first heard
Domino playing at the Hideaway Club,
then one of the hottest nightspots in New
Orleans, and soon they became songwriting
partners.
Following the first two verses, Domino
begins singing what sounds like an imitation
of a trombone or trumpet solo.
Perhaps it was a financial issue, and they
couldn’t afford to hire an additional horn
player on that first session, but hearing
Domino warbling “Wah-wah, wah-wah” over
that irresistible beat during the solo break
never fails to bring a smile to my face.
It set the tone for the quality that made
him a musical treasure: pure joy.
AVIV SMALL/ZUMA PRESS/TNS
Antoine “Fats” Domino performs at Pink Elephant at a tribute event honoring him in
2007 in New York City. The rock ‘n’ roll pioneer died Tuesday at the age of 89.
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