RIP Fats Domino

A wellspring, a legend.

http://www.nola.com/music/index.ssf/2017/10/fats_domino_dies.html

RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j2_ilRG6o4

And a thoroughly likeable performer.

You will find people that disliked Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck, etc, for fair reasons or foul..

But, Fats Domino sounded like a smile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NNz77Vg2cQ

RIP

I count 79 singles charting in the Hot 100, most of them crossing over from the R&B chart. A giant, strangely neglected in conventional histories of rock 'n' roll.

Aw. Not to jinx it but Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard are both still alive. Amazing that all of these cats - Fats, Lewis, Little Richard and Berry - outlived Prince and Bowie, Prince and Bowie in many ways being dual apotheoses of what those forefathers set in motion.

RIP

Always loved the idea of Randy Newman writing this for him -- and him actually doing it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB-oMM6Gxho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C-jXJl0Zrg

I was reminded just now that Fats's mentor/songwriter Dave Bartholomew is still with us -- at 98!

The clip-clop intro into the determined march of Walking to New Orleans is such a thrill. RIP.

Back when I used to frequent jumble sales to pick up cheap singles.. (1973 or just after)..

If you ever got a Fats single (obv not Blueberry hill), you could never work out which was the a or b side just by playing them. Either could be..

by most accounts i've read a sweet, humble guy -- which ironically probably accounts (to some extent) for his lower profile among the early rock pioneers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sos36UCszDI

From the very first Rock Hall class we're down Don Everly, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard. RIP Fats

Thanks to the wonder that is the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, I got to see Fats do two fairly rare performances in the 90s. What a performer, what a voice, what a catalog of greatness. RIP.

Fats Domino sounded like a smile.

^^^ this.

I read a good comment earlier that Fats disproved the popular theory that good rock'n'roll has to possess strong elements of danger and youth.

What's a good best-of?

Try this playlist

https://open.spotify.com/user/sterlewine/playlist/7jR6w06eBRUde0bUrbfD0Y

I bet Chubby Checker is gonna rip him off and die now too

RIP

xxxp
You can't go wrong with The Imperial Singles collections imo.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DM_wdMGWkAAgjUB.jpg:small

-- bob marley leonard cohen

The Bear Family Box is one of my most treasured sets -- he was one of the best!

This one's like Jonathon Richman (who is also probably the only other R & R performer who could get away with this song) 25-30 years ahead of schedule. RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AhRvyj80fM

I like this interview with the guy who made the recent doc about him (which I'd love to see):

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/inside-rock-legend-fats-dominos-world-crawfish-cards-boogie-woogie-20160226

It gets into why he was sort of low-profile, compared to the other rock'n'roll legends -- his quiet life, how he mostly liked to play music and cook and eat, and hang out with his family and friends. A really New Orleanian, basically.

It was years before I knew enough about New Orleans to realize that he'd been my gateway to NOLA music and culture. He was the pop crossover member of that great New Orleans boogie-woogie piano lineage.

Love this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpwC2vXcOM

I picked up Fats Rocks a few years back, thinking it'd be nice to have but not critical, but holy cow it's just super fun from start to finish!

From the NYT obit:

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.

Fats otm

This is from 2011, when the RnR HoF started interviewing musicians for their oral history project. Because Fats didn't want to leave New Orleans, everyone had to come to him:
http://img.wennermedia.com/article-leads-horizontal-800/rs-196843-R1236_FOB_Willie_HOF_C.jpg

Holy wau at that photo, I just can't even...

(whozat on the left?)

Jerry Lee Lewis.

It was one of life's great wonders that these four were still going until this year.

Yes.

(should have guessed, just didn't look like him. Terry Jones or Lloyd Webber maybe)

it's weird looking at that photo and realizing that only one of those guys was not arrested/convicted of a sex crime

(JLL probably the worst, dude is almost certainly a murderer)

Wow, I was just writing a bit about Domino and Dave Bartholomew for a passage in my dissertation yesterday. How many people today would pick out Fats Domino as the guy with the most hit records of everybody in the photo Tarfumes posted above? And it's not even a close competition - Domino had 10 more top 40 singles than Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis put together. And as tylerw points out, the shy, even deferential personality that allowed him to cross over so massively in the 1950s is probably the same thing that accounts for his half-disappearance from the popular consciousness. Which really is a shame, no pun intended - he made great records; he turned Professor Longhair's rumba boogie into the prototypical New Orleans R&B/rock and roll style; his success reestablished New Orleans as a major musical city decades after Armstrong. And this is OTM:

I read a good comment earlier that Fats disproved the popular theory that good rock'n'roll has to possess strong elements of danger and youth.

RIP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V53fWPabgPo

I love this Hank Williams cover of his... just !!

Wow--so wrapped up in work these days, missed this till right now.

He's fascinating: the Mount Rushmore-level founder who was always sort of an afterthought. Like Richie Cunningham, "Blueberry Hill" is my favorite. Another guy from the '50s I likely discovered via American Graffiti.

He's not an afterthought to me - he's probably my favorite of the early rock 'n rollers. RIP

I didn't mean that he deserved to be, just that he generally was; the idea of who invented the form seemed to primarily narrow to Elvis/Berry/Little Richard/Lewis over the years (even though Domino predated them all).

Popularized the form might be more accurate--invention is obviously a long and complex story.

Yep. But it is pretty remarkable that his sound was fully formed from 1950 on. Like he said, at a certain point people just started calling it rock 'n' roll.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/little-richard-on-fats-domino-he-could-make-a-piano-talk-w510300

I didn't mean that he deserved to be, just that he generally was

That's how I understood your post. I agree that he somehow never seems to be featured in the front rank of innovators, maybe because there's a gentleness in his music that doesn't fit with the idea of rock 'n roll as louder and meaner than what came before. Doesn't really bother me though, because I pay as little attention to arguments about "significance" as possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqIyu_L_tPk

I pay as little attention to arguments about "significance" as possible.
― o. nate

Wholeheartedly agree with this--although, if I'm honest, I'll occasionally take a greater interest in a musician or filmmaker than I otherwise would because I know the work is historically significant...I'll be a little more patient in trying to figure out what I'm missing. Up to a point; then I'll just say "Not for me" and move on.