Blueberry Hill
By JON PARELES and WILLIAM GRIMES
Fats Domino in 1967. Elvis Presley once pointed at him and said, “There’s the real king of rock ’n’ roll.” Credit Clive 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.”
Fats Domino in 1956. Credit Associated Press
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.”
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.”
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.”
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
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.
Mr. Domino performing in 2007 on NBC’s “Today” show. Credit Richard 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.
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.
Mr. Domino outside his home
in New Orleans as it was being rebuilt in March 2007, less than two
years after Hurricane Katrina struck.
Credit
Alex 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.”
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