Fats Domino, Early Rock ’n’ Roller With a Boogie-Woogie Piano, Is Dead at 89
Photo
Fats Domino in 1967.CreditClive Limpkin/Daily Express, via Getty Images
Fats Domino, the New Orleans rhythm-and-blues singer whose two-fisted boogie-woogie piano and nonchalant vocals, heard on dozens of hits, made him one of the biggest stars of the early rock ’n’ roll era, died on Tuesday at his home in Harvey, La., across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. He was 89.
His death was confirmed by the Jefferson Parish coroner’s office.
Mr. Domino had more than three dozen Top 40 pop hits through the 1950s and early ’60s, among them “Blueberry Hill,” “Ain’t It a Shame” (also known as “Ain’t That a Shame,” which is the actual lyric), “I’m Walkin’,” “Blue Monday” and “Walkin’ to New Orleans.” Throughout he displayed both the buoyant spirit of New Orleans, his hometown, and a droll resilience that reached listeners worldwide.
He sold 65 million singles in those years, with 23 gold records, making him second only to Elvis Presley as a commercial force. Presley acknowledged Mr. Domino as a predecessor.
“A lot of people seem to think I started this business,” Presley told Jet magazine in 1957. “But rock ’n’ roll was here a long time before I came along. Nobody can sing that music like colored people. Let’s face it: I can’t sing it like Fats Domino can. I know that.”
Rotund and standing 5 feet 5 inches — he would joke that he was as wide as he was tall — Mr. Domino had a big, infectious grin, a fondness for ornate, jewel-encrusted rings and an easygoing manner in performance; even in plaintive songs his voice had a smile in it. And he was a master of the wordless vocal, making hits out of songs full of “woo-woos” and “la-las.”
Photo
Fats Domino in 1956.CreditAssociated Press
Working with the songwriter, producer and arranger David Bartholomew, Mr. Domino and his band carried New Orleans parade rhythms into rock ’n’ roll and put a local stamp on nearly everything they touched, even country tunes like “Jambalaya” or big-band songs like “My Blue Heaven” and “When My Dreamboat Comes Home.”
‘A Good Ear for Catchin’ Notes’
Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. was born on Feb. 26, 1928, the youngest of eight children in a family with Creole roots. He grew up in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, where he spent most of his life.
Music filled his life from the age of 10, when his family inherited an old piano. After his brother-in-law Harrison Verrett, a traditional-jazz musician, wrote down the notes on the keys and taught him a few chords, Antoine threw himself at the instrument — so enthusiastically that his parents moved it to the garage.
He was almost entirely self-taught, picking up ideas from boogie-woogie masters like Meade Lux Lewis, Pinetop Smith and Amos Milburn. “Back then I used to play everybody’s records; everybody’s records who made records,” he told the New Orleans music magazine Offbeat in 2004. “I used to hear ’em, listen at ’em five, six, seven, eight times and I could play it just like the record because I had a good ear for catchin’ notes and different things.”
He attended the Louis B. Macarty School but dropped out in the fourth grade to work as an iceman’s helper. “In the houses where people had a piano in their rooms, I’d stop and play,” he told USA Today in 2007. “That’s how I practiced.”
In his teens, he started working at a club called the Hideaway with a band led by the bassist Billy Diamond, who nicknamed him Fats. Mr. Domino soon became the band’s frontman and a local draw.
“Fats was breaking up the place, man,” Mr. Bartholomew told The Cleveland Plain Dealer in 2010. “He was singing and playing the piano and carrying on. Everyone was having a good time. When you saw Fats Domino, it was ‘Let’s have a party!’ ”
He added: “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.”
Slide Show
SLIDE SHOW|7 Photos
Fats Domino, Early Rock ’n’ Roller With a Boogie-Woogie Piano, Is Dead at 89
Fats Domino, Early Rock ’n’ Roller With a Boogie-Woogie Piano, Is Dead at 89
CreditAgence France-Presse — Getty Images
In 1947 Mr. Domino married Rosemary Hall, and they had eight children, Antoine III, Anatole, Andre, Antonio, Antoinette, Andrea, Anola and Adonica. His wife died in 2008. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.
In 1949 Mr. Bartholomew brought Lew Chudd, the owner of Imperial Records in Los Angeles, to the Hideaway. Mr. Chudd signed Mr. Domino on the spot, with a contract, unusual for the time, that paid royalties rather than a one-time purchase of songs.
Immediately, Mr. Domino and Mr. Bartholomew wrote “The Fat Man,” a cleaned-up version of a song about drug addiction called “Junkers Blues,” and recorded it with Mr. Bartholomew’s studio band. By 1951 it had sold a million copies.
Mr. Domino’s trademark triplets, picked up from “It’s Midnight,” a 1949 record by the boogie-woogie pianist and singer Little Willie Littlefield, appeared on his next rhythm-and-blues hit, “Every Night About This Time.” The technique spread like wildfire, becoming a virtual requirement for rock ’n’ roll ballads.
“Fats made it popular,” Mr. Bartholomew told Rick Coleman, the author of “Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock ’n’ Roll” (2006). “Then it was on every record.”
Fats Domino - Ain't That A Shame - 1955 - (subtitulada)Video by BurlFish79
In 1952, on a chance visit to Cosimo Matassa’s recording studio in New Orleans, Mr. Domino was asked to help out on a recording by a nervous teenager named Lloyd Price. Sitting in with Mr. Bartholomew’s band, he came up with the memorable piano part for “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,”one of the first rhythm-and-blues records to cross over to a pop audience
Trading Tracks on the Charts
Through the early 1950s Mr. Domino turned out a stream of hits, taking up what seemed like permanent residence in the upper reaches of the R&B charts. His records began reaching the pop charts as well.
In that racially segregated era, white performers used his hits to build their careers. In 1955, “Ain’t It a Shame” became a No. 1 hit for Pat Boone as “Ain’t That a Shame,” while Domino’s arrangement of a traditional song, “Bo Weevil,” was imitated by Teresa Brewer.
Mr. Domino’s appeal to white teenagers broadened as he embarked on national tours and appeared with mixed-race rock ’n’ roll revues like the Moondog Jubilee of Stars Under the Stars, presented by the disc jockey Alan Freed at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. Appearances on national television, on Steve Allen and Ed Sullivan’s shows, put him in millions of living rooms.
He did not flaunt his status as an innovator, or as an architect of a powerful cultural movement.
“Fats, how did this rock ’n’ roll all get started anyway?” an interviewer for a Hearst newsreel asked him in 1957. Mr. Domino answered: “Well, what they call rock ’n’ roll now is rhythm and blues. I’ve been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans.”
At a news conference in Las Vegas in 1969, after resuming his performing career, Elvis Presley interrupted a reporter who had called him “the king.” He pointed to Mr. Domino, who was in the room, and said, “There’s the real king of rock ’n’ roll.”
Mr. Domino had his biggest hit in 1956 with his version of “Blueberry Hill,” a song that had been recorded by Glenn Miller’s big band in 1940. It peaked at No. 2 on the pop charts and sold a reported three million copies.
“I liked that record ’cause I heard it by Louis Armstrong and I said, ‘That number gonna fit me,’ ” he told Offbeat. “We had to beg Lew Chudd for a while. I told him I wasn’t gonna make no more records till they put that record out. I could feel it, that it was a hit, a good record.”
He followed with two more Top Five pop hits: “Blue Monday” and “I’m Walkin’,” which outsold the version recorded by Ricky Nelson.
“I was lucky enough to write songs that carry a good beat and tell a real story that people could feel was their story, too — something that old people or the kids could both enjoy,” Mr. Domino told The Los Angeles Times in 1985.
Photo
Mr. Domino performing in 2007 on NBC’s “Today” show.CreditRichard Drew/Associated Press
Mr. Domino performed in 1950s movies like “Shake, Rattle and Rock,” “The Big Beat” (for which he and Mr. Bartholomew wrote the title song) and “The Girl Can’t Help It.” In 1957, he toured for three months with Chuck Berry, Clyde McPhatter, the Moonglows and others.
Well into the early 1960s, Mr. Domino continued to reach both the pop and rhythm-and-blues charts with songs like “Whole Lotta Lovin’,” “I’m Ready,” “I’m Gonna Be a Wheel Someday,” “Be My Guest,” “Walkin’ to New Orleans” and “My Girl Josephine.”
He toured Europe for the first time in 1962 and met the Beatles in Liverpool, before they were famous. His contract with Imperial ended in 1963, and he went on to record for ABC-Paramount, Mercury, Broadmoor, Reprise and other labels.
His last appearance in the pop Top 100 was in 1968, with a version of “Lady Madonna,” the Beatles song that had been inspired by Mr. Domino’s piano-pounding style. In 1982, he had a country hit with “Whiskey Heaven.”
Although he was no longer a pop sensation, Mr. Domino continued to perform worldwide and appeared for 10 months a year in Las Vegas in the mid-1960s. On tour, he would bring his own pots and pans so he could cook.
A New Orleans Fixture
His life on the road ended in the early 1980s, when he decided that he did not want to leave New Orleans, saying it was the only place where he liked the food.
He went on to perform regularly at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and in 1987 Jerry Lee Lewis and Ray Charles joined him for a Cinemax special, “Fats Domino and Friends.” He released a holiday album, “Christmas Is a Special Day,” in 1993.
Photo
Mr. Domino outside his home in New Orleans as it was being rebuilt in March 2007, less than two years after Hurricane Katrina struck.CreditAlex Brandon/Associated Press
Reclusive and notoriously resistant to interview requests, Mr. Domino stayed home even when he received a lifetime achievement Grammy Award in 1987. (He did travel to New York when he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 as one of its first members, although he did not take part in the jam session that concluded the ceremony.) In 1999, when he was awarded the National Medal of Arts,he sent his daughter Antoinette to the White House to pick up the prize.
He even refused to leave New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city on Aug. 29, 2005, remaining at his flooded home — he was living in the Lower Ninth Ward then — until he was rescued by helicopter on Sept. 1.
“I wasn’t too nervous” about waiting to be saved, he told The New York Times in 2006. “I had my little wine and a couple of beers with me; I’m all right.”
His rescue was loosely the basis for “Saving Fats,” a tall tale in Sam Shepard’s 2010 short-story collection, “Day Out of Days.”
President George W. Bush visited Mr. Domino’s home in 2006 in recognition of New Orleans’s cultural resilience; that same year, Mr. Domino released “Alive and Kickin,’ ” his first album in more than a decade. The title song began, “All over the country, people want to know / Whatever happened to Fats Domino,” then continued, “I’m alive and kicking and I’m where I wanna be.”
He was often seen around New Orleans, emerging from his pink-roofed mansion driving a pink Cadillac. “I just drink my little beers, do some cookin’, anything I feel like,” he told The Daily Telegraph of London in 2007, describing his retirement.
In 1953, in Down Beat magazine, the Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler made a bold-sounding prediction that turned out to be, in retrospect, quite timid. “Can’t you envision a collector in 1993 discovering a Fats Domino record in a Salvation Army depot and rushing home to put it on the turntable?” he wrote. “We can. It’s good blues, it’s good jazz, and it’s the kind of good that never wears out.”
Fats Domino sang songs about heartbreak and betrayal with such sly humor, they sounded like a good time.CreditClive Limpkin/Daily Express, via Hulton Archive, via Getty Images
It was boogie-woogie. It was R&B. Then it was rock ’n’ roll. Then it was pop. And it was all Fats Domino, the New Orleans musician whose easygoing image cheerfully concealed the boldness and subtlety of his music. Domino, who died in Louisiana at 89, both embodied and extended the New Orleans piano heritage of styles that are at once unswervingly propulsive and floridly improvisational; he also infused early rock ’n’ roll with New Orleans syncopations. His songs, most written with his producer and bandleader Dave Bartholomew, were often concise sketches of romantic strife involving heartbreak, betrayal, loneliness and spite. But he sang them with such sly good humor in his voice and his timing that they sounded like a good time. Here are 12 from his prime years.
‘The Fat Man’ (1949)
Fats Domino announced himself with this single: a two-fisted boogie-woogie piano intro with tremolo flourishes, verses that establish his 200-pound physique and his New Orleans locale and a falsetto vocal like a trumpet solo. Mr. Bartholomew thought at first that the piano was recorded too loud.
‘Blueberry Hill’ (1956)
Now indelibly associated with Domino, “Blueberry Hill” had been around since 1940, recorded by Gene Autry, Glenn Miller and Louis Armstrong, among others. But it took Domino’s utterly satiated vocal, atop a New Orleans backbeat and his trademark piano triplets, to make the “thrill” so thoroughly lusty.
‘I’m Walkin’ ’ (1957)
Handclaps and a breezy, bluesy guitar riff conceal still another story of romantic woe, this time coupled with resentment. Sure, he wants her back, but once he has her, he might just “say bye-bye” himself.
‘Ain’t It a Shame’ (1955)
Heartbreak has rarely sounded as survivable as it does on “Ain’t It a Shame,” from the terse stop-time beginnings of its verses — “You made/Me cry/When you said/Goodbye” — to its joshing saxophone solo. Domino sings about tears, but he’s vehement when he insists, “You’re the one to blame.” Pat Boone’s opportunistic cover version remains a disgrace.
Saturday’s good times make up for the rest of the week’s hard work and hangover in this song by Mr. Bartholomew, as Domino’s piano triplets become a pile driver.
A string section eased Domino into formal 1960s pop for “Walkin’ to New Orleans,” but it isn’t hard to hear the twinkle in his eye as he hails his native city.
‘I’m Gonna Be a Wheel Someday’ (1958)
Domino’s piano sits out for this almost-rockabilly song; instead, his voice glides above a brisk rhythm guitar, gloating over the prospect of career success as romantic revenge.
‘She’s My Baby’ (1949)
Flamboyant boogie-woogie piano romps through “She’s My Baby,” spurring a rambunctious vocal that breaks into falsetto as Little Richard would a few years later.
‘Swanee River Hop’ (1953)
Stephen Foster gets a frantic makeover in this instrumental showpiece, one of Domino’s own favorites and a direct link to boogie-woogie forebears like Albert Ammons, whose “Swanee River Boogie” clearly sparked this version.
‘Darktown Strutters Ball’ (1958)
Recorded in 1958 but not released until 1991, this 1917 song was among the earliest jazz recordings (by the Original Dixieland Jass Band). Domino’s version makes “Darktown” sound like “downtown” and gives it a second-line strut; mixed in stereo instead of 1950s mono, it clarifies the swagger of Domino’s band.
‘My Girl Josephine’ (1960)
Reminiscences of a vexed relationship from long ago — “You used to laugh at me and holler ‘Hoo hoo hoo’” — are set to a New Orleans carnival beat: a little fond, a little barbed.
‘All By Myself’ (1955)
This lighthearted come-on is a two-minute slice of loose, piano-pounding rock ’n’ roll with the tempo fluctuations of a real-time performance.
New Orleans Marks Fats Domino’s Death in Its Usual Style: With a Party
Photo
The Tin Men performing a tribute to Fats Domino at d.b.a., a music venue in New Orleans, on Wednesday night.CreditAnnie Flanagan for The New York Times
NEW ORLEANS — People woke up here this week to discover that Fats Domino, one of the last links to the moment when New Orleans R&B morphed into early rock ’n’ roll, was gone. From Mr. Domino’s Ninth Ward home to uptown, from the French Quarter to Metairie, musicians across the city pondered a future without Fats, while music fans reacted in the only appropriate way to mark a death in New Orleans: by having a party.
As celebrations continued into the weekend, with tributes planned for Saturday by the pianist Davis Rogan at Buffa’s downtown and at the 89th annual Prince of Wales Second Line Parade at the Rock Bottom Lounge uptown, preparations were being made for a public Second Line parade next week in Mr. Domino’s honor.
On Wednesday, Bryan McIntosh opened the Kerry Irish Pub in the French Quarter around midday. The doors were thrown wide to the street and “Whole Lotta Loving” was turned up loud, as Mr. McIntosh readied himself for the day.
Photo
Ricky Gettridge, left, and Luqman Asadullah outside Mr. Domino’s old home in the Ninth Ward.CreditEmily Kask/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“The music’s rolling, and I’m sure I’ll be having a few shots of Jameson in honor of Fats later,” Mr. McIntosh said.
“The Fat Man changed my life,” he mused. “Back in the ’90s, I was in Dallas with my girlfriend, Jamie. We were in a nice little breakfast diner with an old style jukebox, trying to cure out hangovers with breakfast. I heard Fats Domino’s ‘Walking To New Orleans’ on the jukebox. Jamie looks at me and says, ‘I’ve been thinking of moving to New Orleans.’ Three months later we were down here and I’ve been here ever since.”
Mr. Domino was a product of the lower Ninth Ward, and his home, built in 1960, was a shrine to his success as an early rock ’n’ roll star. When Hurricane Katrina flooded his neighborhood to the rooftops in 2005, Mr. Domino was thought to have died. But days later, New Orleanians found out that he had been rescued.
The refurbished Domino home on Caffin Avenue at Marais Street, a vivid yellow structure with musical notations and dominoes as visual motifs, is still a must-see for tourists. And on Wednesday afternoon, musicians and fans gathered outside it, leaving flowers and playing his songs.
But on Frenchmen Street in the Marigny neighborhood, the music hadn’t started yet. The tuba player Matt Perrine was getting ready to offer his own tribute to Mr. Domino with Alex McMurray and the Tin Men at d.b.a., a live music venue.
“It’s odd to say this, but I feel like I did when Prince died,” Mr. Perrine said. “When somebody who I respect that much dies I try to figure out how big a hole is left,” he said. “This one looks like a chasm. I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like to recover from his loss.”
“I had to break the news to my dad,” said Don B. Bartholomew, a son of Mr. Domino’s frequent collaborator, the bandleader Dave Bartholomew. “He took it terribly hard. I called him about one o’clock today. I knew he would be getting calls and I didn’t want him to hear it from the public. But it was so difficult to tell him.”
Mr. Bartholomew now runs the studio in the city’s Seventh Ward where his father and Mr. Domino used to write and rehearse. On Wednesday afternoon he was working out arrangements for his family to participate in memorial events. Down the block some of his neighbors were out on the porch, playing Mr. Domino songs and drinking beer.
Inside the studio’s office, where the sleeves of Mr. Domino’s rock ’n’ roll records from the 1950s were on display, Mr. Bartholomew remembered the man he thought of like an uncle.
“Fats was in this studio when it was just a rehearsal space. They would be in here jamming, writing songs, rehearsing for tours,” Mr. Bartholomew said. “I remember going to the airport to meet him. It was very impressive, all the gold rings, high fives, he’d slip some bills to us kids. We’d go to his house in the Ninth Ward, and he was always in his room cooking some food. To me, he was the world’s greatest piano player. I think of him as the real king of rock ’n’ roll.”
Over at the Circle Bar overlooking Lee Circle, where a controversial statue of Robert E. Lee was removed earlier this year, the roots-rock band the Iguanas were preparing for their early evening performance, working out which of Mr. Domino’s songs to include.
“Every time I sing one of his songs, especially lately, I think about how he might not be around for much longer,” said Joe Cabral, a band member. “Now that he’s gone the songs take on a different meaning.”
Photo
Musicians in New Orleans on Frenchmen Street in the Marigny neighborhood.CreditAnnie Flanagan for The New York Times
Meanwhile, the Creole String Beans were rehearsing at Funky Nolastudios for a Friday night gig and preparing some of Mr. Domino’s material. “I’m trying to stay happy in spite of the news,” said Derek Huston, a saxophonist. “I saw Fats dozens of times. I would go to Jazz Fest to see him and put my kids on my shoulders in the interests of raising them right. ‘See that man up there? He was born in New Orleans just like you were.’ The greatest things in life need to be celebrated.”
Out in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, Mr. Domino’s old friend, the drummer and vocalist Bobby Cure, was preparing a tribute to Mr. Domino at the Max. “Every other song will be Fats Domino tonight,” he promised. “We always play Fats. ‘Blueberry Hill’ always gets the biggest response. Everybody sings the first line, and they all get up and dance.”
Mr. Cure promoted Mr. Domino’s performances in neighboring Chalmette, La., during the 1980s and his band often opened for Mr. Domino’s.
“We played together at the closing of Pontchartrain Beach,” he said, referring to a local amusement park that was shuttered in 1983. “We’ve been friends ever since.”
Jimmy Messa, a regular performer on Bourbon Street at the Tropical Isle, said he was stunned by the news of Mr. Domino’s death. “I lived in Chalmette all my life and work in the French Quarter,” he said. “I’d pass by Fats’s house in the Ninth Ward every day.” Mr. Messa said that one day a taxi driver told him: “ ‘I know Mr. Fats. He calls me and gives me his grocery list, and when I bring him his groceries he gives me a $50 tip’.”
Back at the Circle Bar, Mr. Cabral looked out the door as night fell over the city and pondered the obelisk where Lee’s statue used to be. “I would like to see a statue of Fats Domino atop it one day,” he said. “Who wouldn’t?”
No comments:
Post a Comment