Fats Domino dead at 89
Fats Domino, Rock and Roll Pioneer, Dead at 89
Genial singer behind "Blueberry Hill" and "Ain't That a Shame" helped popularize early rock and roll
Those hits, which also included "I'm Walkin'," "Blue Monday"
 and "Walking to New Orleans," sounded like nothing that came before. 
Thanks to his New Orleans upbringing, Domino's signature songs fused 
Dixieland rhythms, his charming, Creole-flecked voice, and his 
rolling-river piano style. His hits, most co-written with his longtime 
producer and partner Dave Bartholomew, became rock standards, covered by
 Led Zeppelin, Cheap Trick, Randy Newman, Ricky Nelson, and John Lennon,
 among many others. Lennon, who remade "Ain't That a Shame" (first called "Ain't It a Shame" on Domino’s recording) on his 1975 Rock & Roll
 album, said the song had special meaning for him: It was the first tune
 he ever learned to play, on a guitar bought for him by his late mother.
 "It was the first song I could accompany myself on," he said in 1975. 
"It has a lot of memories for me."
"After John Lennon and
 Paul McCartney, Fats Domino and his partner, Dave Bartholomew, were 
probably the greatest team of songwriters ever," Dr. John told Rolling Stone in 2004.
 "They always had a simple melody, a hip set of chord changes, and a 
cool groove. And their songs all had simple lyrics; that's the key." 
Domino himself, who preferred to let his music rather than image do the 
talking, was typically modest about his accomplishments: "Everybody 
started callin' my music rock and roll," he once said, "but it wasn't 
anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playin' down in New 
Orleans."
Born in 1928, Antoine Domino was playing piano and 
performing in New Orleans honky tonks and bars by the time he was a 
teenager. At 14, he dropped out of high school, taking jobs like hauling
 ice and working at a bedspring factory as a way to supplement his 
music. Domino's career was effectively kicked off at New Orleans 
Hideaway Club. While playing piano in local bandleader Billy Diamond’s 
band, Diamond nicknamed Antoine "Fats" — partly in homage to 
keyboard-playing predecessors like Fats Waller and partly because, as 
Diamond told one crowd, "I call him ‘Fats,’ ‘cause if he keeps eating, 
he’s going to be just as big!" Domino was initially hesitant about the 
nickname, but it stuck.
Later, at the same club, Domino 
met Bartholomew and Imperial Records head Lew Chudd, who signed Domino 
to his label. In 1949, Domino cut his first Imperial single, "The Fat 
Man," a rewrite of the drug-addiction song "Junker’s Blues"
 that many consider one of the earliest rock records. Although it didn’t
 make the top 40, "The Fat Man" was a huge R&B hit and established 
Domino’s sound and image for decades to come. 
From then on, Domino’s hits kept 
coming. He scored nine gold singles, although he never had a No. 1 
record on the pop chart. (Frustratingly, Pat Boone’s vanilla remake of 
"Ain’t That a Shame" did go No. 1 in pop in 1955.) In his memoir, Chuck 
Berry wrote admiringly that, in 1955, Domino was making $10,000 a week 
on tour.
From the start of his career, Domino wasn't a 
larger-than-life figure like Presley or Lewis. Married at 20, he was a 
notorious homebody who eventually had eight children (all of whose names
 began with the letter "A"). Asked by Rolling Stone in 2007 about
 riots that took place during early rock and roll shows that featured 
him and other acts, Domino simply replied, "I don't know. It wasn't 
anything in the music, so it must have been something in the audience."
Yet Domino's influence was tangible. In 1968, Paul McCartney wrote the Beatles' "Lady Madonna" with Domino in mind (Domino would cut his own version that same year). To ensure that bass guitars on his records could be heard above his rumbling piano, Bartholomew would double the bass and guitar parts — a technique later picked up on by Phil Spector for his Wall of Sound. Domino's dexterous piano style, influenced by pioneering predecessors like Waller and Professor Longhair, also reverberated. "Anytime anybody plays a slow blues," Dr. John told Rolling Stone, "the piano player will eventually get to something like Fats. It was pre-funk stuff and it was New Orleans and he did it all his way. He could do piano rolls with both hands. He was like Thelonious Monk in that way."
In 1960, Domino released his last top 10 
hit, "Walking to New Orleans." Soon after, he left Imperial and 
continued recording for a number of other labels. As with his 1950s 
peers, he scored few hits from that point on — but more due to changing 
times than from the scandals or army duty that derailed Presley and 
Lewis. As Rolling Stone writer Charles M. Young wrote about 
Domino’s less-than-dark side, "Offstage, he gambled a bit, had a thing 
for fancy cars and jewelry and was known to cook beans in his hotel 
room."
Domino continued to record and tour 
for decades after his initial success. In 2005, he was back in the news 
after his Lower Ninth Ward home was flooded to the roof during Hurricane
 Katrina. After initial reports that he was missing, Domino was 
eventually rescued and, with his wife Rosemary and one of their 
children, lifted into a boat. "I ain't missin' nothin’," Domino said 
after the rescue. "Just one thing that happened, I guess. I'm just sorry
 it happened to me and everybody else, you know?" In the storm, he lost 
most of his possessions, including almost all of his gold records. 
As disastrous as it was, Katrina also gave Domino a renewed life. Alive and Kickin',
 a new album released a year after the storm, became one of his most 
acclaimed works (RS named it one of the top albums of the year). In 
2007, he released Goin’ Home, an all-star Domino tribute album 
featuring covers by Elton John, Nell Young, Tom Petty, Robert Plant, 
Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Lenny Kravitz, and Lucinda Williams.
Of
 his partner’s contributions to rock history, Bartholomew said Domino is
 "just like the cornerstone — you build a new church and you lay the 
cornerstone, and if the church burns down, the cornerstone is still 
there."
 
 
 
 
 
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