Review: Fats Domino - A Lot Of Dominos (1960)

Tracks: 1) Put Your Arms Around Me Honey; 2) Three Nights A Week; 3) Shu Rah; 4) Rising Sun; 5) My Girl Josephine; 6) The Sheik Of Araby; 7) Walking To New Orleans; 8) Don’t Come Knockin’; 9) Magic Isles; 10) You Always Hurt The One You Love; 11) It’s The Talk Of The Town; 12) Natural Born Lover.

REVIEW

And by «dominos», I suppose they actually mean «strings». At least there is one single defining feature that separates this LP from the others, but if that feature is called «drowning Fats’ voice and piano in superfluous string arrangements», I am not sure I am truly buying these goods. The year 1960 started out on a very nice note for Fats with ‘Country Boy’, a fast-paced piece of slightly autobiographical romance with a great blend of piano, sax, and vocals — and, as we shall see, continued well enough with at least two of his best-known classics released as singles throughout the summer and fall. But when it came to putting out his next LP, some genius had the bright idea to suggest that, since the times were a-changin’ and all that, the new generation of fans of New Orleanian music might welcome a transition to a more bombastic and at the same time more sentimental format — which, in this case, meant an orchestral touch.

Few things in the world could feel less compatible with a Fats Domino song than Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, yet this is precisely what greets us on the opening bars of ‘Put Your Arms Around Me Honey’, even if, to the best of our knowledge, Fats’ own wedding bells rang out as early as 1947, and he’d been a fairly devoted family man ever since. But even after the dissonant Mendelssohn quotation is gone, strings continue to overwhelm Fats’ playing and singing all through the song, creating a jarring discrepancy in atmosphere, so much so that I cannot get rid of the feeling of annoying sonic intereference, as if some Offenbach-playing ensemble happened to rehearse their stuff in an adjacent studio, so loudly that the echo ended up bleeding through the mikes. It isn’t that the Fats Domino sound is completely incompatible with strings; it’s that on most of these recordings, the extra strings make about as much sense as they would on, say, ‘Johnny B. Goode’. This is not Motown, this is not Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra, these are not autumnal French pop ballads about breakups; this is New Orleanian R&B, and if you want to have it with strings, at least don’t bring in Hollywood.

Sometimes the strings’ main role seems to be masking the lack of originality: a title like ‘Three Nights A Week’, for instance, is a rather blatant variation on the vibe of ‘I’m In The Mood For Love’, but with the sappy violins walking all over the main melody, it takes you a while to realize that (which probably helped the song climb up to #15 on the charts, which was still a good deal lower than ‘In The Mood’, but as long as it might have helped Fats get another diamond ring, life’s good). More or less the same can be said about wishy-washy ballads like ‘Rising Sun’ and ‘Magic Isles’, the latter of which is essentially just ‘Blueberry Hill’ with strings (they don’t even change the general atmospheric vibe too much — the same kind of fantasy setting for the protagonist’s amorous intentions).

Ironically, the idea of drowning the Fats Domino sound in strings, as it so often happens, had a relatively noble start: Dave Bartholomew originally came up with the plan to add strings to ‘Walking To New Orleans’, a song written for him by the budding Cajun songwriter Bobby Charles (already known for writing ‘See You Later Alligator’ for Bill Haley). The idea for the song allegedly came to Bobby after he, currently a resident of Lafayette, was invited by Fats to visit his house in New Orleans, but stated that he’d probably have to walk because he did not have a car (hey, no problem, last time I checked GoogleMaps, it only takes about 51 hours or so). And the idea, of course, is that New Orleans is that one special place in the world which is really worth walking to even if you have no other means of transportation. Well, okay, the lyrics seem to suggest that the protagonist merely has to walk to New Orleans because his girl has robbed him blind, but who cares about context? "I’m walking to New Orleans" and "New Orleans is my home" are going to be the two lines by default that you are going to remember by the time the song’s steady, relaxed crawl is over.

On this song, the use of strings is beautiful. They do not wash in uncontrolled torrents over Fats’ voice, instead entering into a sort of subtle call-and-response dialog with him, adding a touch of epic, supernatural beauty that manages to feel just as relaxed, lazy, and care-free as Fats himself — and helps to transform the song into no less than an anthem for New Orleans, that one city in the world where you always head back to cleanse yourself of all worries, a pleasant safe haven where nothing bad ever happens and happy people just bask around in the sun, eating beignets all day and grooving to the nearest Dixieland band. (And don’t you dare tell me this is just a poetic fantasy!) Brenda Lee would cover the song in the same year (she seems to have had a bit of a crush on Fats, actually, covering no fewer than three of his songs on her This Is... Brenda album), only a few months later, but nobody in the world except for a true New Orleanian like Fats could do it justice. Maybe Louis could have. But even Louis can’t make himself look so cute when rhyming "honey" with "money".

Alas, outside of this song I have to work my way through second-rate compositions that are made to sound even worse with the aid of strings — looking for the few unspoiled numbers that remain. ‘Shu Rah’ is one of those, a boppy throwaway that, amusingly, opens with almost the exact piano chords John Lennon would later use to bring Paul’s ‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’ to life, and consistently keeps on entertaining with a solid yakety-sax solo — but this is really one for the kids. Fats’ take on ‘The Sheik Of Araby’ is not bad, but here’s one song that had already been done to death by gazillions of performers prior to 1960; also, somehow I just don’t believe in Fats Domino as the Sheik of Araby as much as I believe in his ability to walk all the way to New Orleans from any random point in the world. (And let’s admit it, he’d really need the exercise). But ‘My Girl Josephine’ — which we just as often know as ‘Hello Josephine’ — is, of course, an absolute (and, also, thankfully string-free!) classic, another textbook example of how to manipulate the standard 12-bar blues structure into a uniquely catchy pop concoction. The guitar riff that runs throughout has the same charmingly-naggin’ power as, say, Elvis’ ‘Mystery Train’, and Fats’ vocal delivery has a fun, «dashing» quality to it, determined yet friendly, enough to forgive the slightly stalker-ish vibe of the lyrics. (Compare the soon-to-follow Jerry Lee Lewis cover, where the stalkerish vibe is multiplied by a dozen Myra Gale Browns — the Killer sure takes his macho duties more seriously than the Fat Man).

But now, ladies and gentlemen, I just want to skip everything else and head straight to what I consider the most overlooked, and one of the most impressive performances in the entire Fats Domino history. As classic as ‘My Girl Josephine’ and ‘Walking To New Orleans’ really are, the major highlight is saved for last. Might it be known that the average length of a Fats Domino studio per­formance is around two and a half minutes; ‘Natural Born Lover’ clocks in at a gigantic four minutes and forty seconds, despite only having two verses of lyrics — and there is no better song in Fats’ catalog to, so to speak, «humbly aggrandize» the legend of the Fat Man. It’s a veritable tour de force for Fats, showcasing his true strength as a piano player (the song opens with thirty seconds of very impressive runs on the ivories), a minimalistic singer, and the charismatic embodiment of the carefree spirit of New Orleans.

Even the strings, this time around, feel perfectly at home; ‘Natural Born Lover’ is a beautiful, poetic anthem to personal freedom — again, disregard any literal reading of the lyrics (such as «she done me wrong, but I’m still free to pick any other hoe I want») and the "no more crying, no more sighing" bit easily attains the effect of "there will be peace in the valley", as we visualize the hero of the song continuing his long, steady, and hopeful walk back to New Orleans... or was that actually «long, steady, and hopeful ascent to the Kingdom of Heaven?» The shocking length of the song itself demands that it be taken seriously, as Fats’ own early equivalent of «progressive rock», and I wouldn’t even be surprised to learn that the recording was the result of a self-analytical session, as in, «I’m going to make myself understand what it is about myself that moves people and I’m going to make the most Fats Domino-est song in the world!» "I’m a natural born lover / Since I got rid of all my trouble / Yes I’ve done got over at last" is something they should have probably etched on his grave when he finally passed away. Too bad the song, tucked away (in an abbreviated version) as the B-side to ‘My Girl Josephine’, never appears on any basic Fats Domino compilations, continuing to function as a «deep cut» for the man when, in reality, it is his personal equivalent of a ‘Hey Jude’.

With both ‘Walking To New Orleans’ and ‘Natural Born Lover’ on the same album, A Lot Of Dominos almost has the feel of a «swan song» — a record on which the artist, partly through a conscious decision and partly through the hand of fate, sums up his own achievements and his current status and makes his own musical testament. Of course, technically Fats would still go on to have a long, productive career, and his string of hit records, though inevitably descending lower and lower on the charts, would continue until the start of the British Invasion (or, perhaps more accurately, until the rise of a new wave of soul, funk, and R&B that made his sound completely outdated). But in all honesty, that would be more like a consequence of general momentum — there is, after all, no reason to stop working at 32, unless you decide to die in a plane crash or go to jail for trafficking minors across state borders. As it is, for all its orchestral flaws, A Lot Of Dominos is pretty much the last Domino album on which he tried to both broaden and «monumentalize» his formula. Everything that comes later is, at best, pleasant recapitulation.

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