There’s always been a special place in my affections for
Fats Domino whose music never fails to lift the spirits. It’s especially sad
that his death has been announced today – tonight’s movie will be “The Girl Can’t Help It”. In my early
teenage years the price of an LP was well outside my spending power but an EP
(Extended Play) with 4 tracks playable at 45 rpm was just about affordable. The
first EP I ever bought, some 50 years ago, was Be My Guest by Fats Domino.
This was my introduction to New Orleans Rhythm ‘n’ Blues and a voyage of
discovery that would lead to Professor Longhair, Huey ‘Piano’ Smith, Ernie
K-Doe, Chris Kenner, the Meters, the Showmen and Dr John over the next few
years. The Domino method of dancing your
blues away was an unusual strategy to find favour with one whose dancing days
gave rise to rather more mirth than admiration. Two qualities stand out. First,
the irresistible rhythms unique to New Orleans and second, the joyous sound of
massed horns, for which credit must go to the arranger, Dave Bartholomew (who
will celebrate his 99th. birthday on Christmas Eve). Both features
became essential parts of the musical vocabulary of Jamaican Ska. Domino was
raised in the Roman Catholic church and thus was never exposed to the visceral
power of the gospel traditions.
Musicologists argue that African musical traditions survived more
strongly in Southern Louisiana than anywhere else in America. The rhythms and vocal styles were closer to
African originals than elsewhere.
The process whereby African-American music was neutralised
and cleansed for a white audience was described to perfection by Chip Taylor in
his 1971 recording, (I Want) The Real Thing.
The UK music business was very active in this process churning out a succession
of records in which the passion and spirit of the original recording was
systematically eliminated by a mediocre and enfeebled performer. Domino’s recordings escaped this treatment
for the simple reason that their appeal depended entirely upon a quality of
delivery and personality that could not be replicated. It was impossible to
dilute something so intense and be left with anything remotely worth listening
to. The few attempts to cover Domino
hits in the UK sank without trace. In the US there’s a role of infamy headed by
Pat Boone, Ricky Nelson and Teresa Brewer all of whom profited from hi-jacking Domino
material and draining it of vitality.
In New Orleans there was no place
for the dark and down-home, hard times, lyin’, cheatin’ and dyin’ crapshootin’
blues from the Delta. There was no great
audience for the smooth toned supper club and coffee lounge blues styling of
the likes of Nat King Cole. There was a
positive, optimistic, up-beat and life-affirming defiance in the air that found
expression in a refusal to submit to the iniquity of racial segregation and a
denial of the subservience that the white establishment attempted to impose.
Rick Coleman’s biography, Blue Monday, is a fascinating account of
the way that Domino’s concerts in the 1950s became the focus of a long sequence
of riots and civil disturbance. There
was nothing in Domino’s performances to incite the crowds other than the music.
The principle provocation came from the police whose heavy handed attempts to
enforce racial segregation were calculated to incite resistance. Alcohol fuelled aggression and inter-racial
conflict also played a part. The irony of this is that the Domino songbook was
exclusively dedicated to good-time music with not a trace of insurrection or
subversion.
Domino became one of the great
survivors of his generation of R & B performers. Despite the excessive consumption of alcohol
and an addiction to gambling Fats continued at the top of his game while his
band members and close associates perished in their numbers from drug and
alcohol related illnesses. His touring days
ended in 1995 enabling him to retire his infamous hot-plate and cooking pot in
which he brewed up decades worth of pigs’ feet in creole sauce with which to
feed himself and his band. Famously he survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005 at
the age of 77 when a rescue boat plucked him and his family from the second
floor of his home in the Lower Ninth Ward.
He went on to perform at Tipitina’s in New Orleans in May 2007. He retained a reputation for geniality and
modesty despite occasional episodes of seriously grumpy behaviour, marital
infidelities and a chronic failure to turn up for scheduled appearances.
