Review - Fats Domino: Rock And Rollin' With Fats Domino (1956)

Tracks: 1) The Fat Man; 2) Tired Of Crying; 3) Goinʼ Home; 4) You Said You Loved Me; 5) Going To The River; 6) Please Donʼt Leave Me; 7) Rose Mary; 8) All By Myself; 9) Ainʼt It A Shame; 10) Poor Me; 11) Bo Weevil; 12) Donʼt Blame It On Me.

REVIEW

Compared against all the wealth of the New Orleanian piano-playing tradition, Antoine Domino Jr. could hardly be called a ʽgreatʼ musician even next to such commercially oriented entertainers as Professor Longhair, let along more sophisticated fellow jazzmen. There is quite a serious chance that if you decide to sit through all the 12 tracks on this album in a row, his unabashedly simplistic and straightforward style of finger-banging will cease to hold your attention long before we get to his biggest hit. Yet it was precisely this simplicity, one might even say this austerity of approach that somehow catapulted ʽThe Fat Manʼ to national attention in early 1950. No superfluous complications, no virtuosity, just a steady, unrelenting pumping, with Earl Palmer locking himself into (allegedly) the first ever backbeat-only groove and the piano lines sacrificing melodic exploration in favor of non-stop intensity: primitive, primal, and premial.

ʽThe Fat Manʼ, credited to Fats and his long-term collaborator Dave Bartholomew, was musically a re-write of the older standard ʽJunker Bluesʼ, Champion Jack Dupreeʼs lament on the hardships of a drug-addicted lifestyle. For a guy like Fats, such subjects were a no-go — his was a cheerful and optimistic New Orleanian vibe, teaching you to accept life as it comes, but try to limit your troubles to unfaithful women... and even then, not to take it too much to heart, because, after all, there is no such heartbreak that a nice filé gumbo wonʼt cure. "They call me, they call me the fat man ʼcause I weigh two hundred pounds — all the girls they love me ʼcause I know my way around" — the first verse ever sung by Mr. Domino could just as well have been carved on his grave, as it seems to describe his nature to a tee.

If there is one thing that makes The Fat Man truly stand out from his rockʼnʼroll brethren of the Fifties, it is precisely this kind of personality — New Orleanian to the core, as opposed to the darker and sterner Chicago approach or to the country-western overtones of most of the white rockʼnʼrollers. This is unquestionably rockʼnʼroll, yes, but without a whiff of that rebellious spirit, without any incentives to crash and burn, driven exclusively by an optimistic, idealistic, good-natured desire to wallow in pure fun, even if all that wallowing might mask a set of troubles and sorrows. "Ainʼt that a shame, my tears fell like rain", he sings on his signature hit, but does anybody actually feel those tears falling like rain? Not in the vocals — not in the music — not in the atmosphere of the song, which, with its constantly mounting tension and burly sax solos, is as cheerfully party-spirit as it goes. This all might make Fats look like a wary conservative, steadily keeping one foot in the pre-rockʼnʼroll era... but then again, what exactly would be wrong with that, other than, perhaps, strip him of the right to sit on exactly the same bench as Little Richard and Chuck Berry?

The real problem is that Fatsʼ catalog in general is somewhat disappointing. Rock And Rollinʼ With Fats Domino, released in early 1956, remains his best album because it simply collects most of his quintessential singles, originally issued over a time span of six years, from ʽThe Fat Manʼ in 1950 to ʽBo Weevilʼ in 1956; and even on this collection, the songs for which were clearly hand-picked for quality, you get plenty of repetition — ʽPoor Meʼ and ʽDonʼt Blame It On Meʼ, in particular, are transparent re-writes of ʽAinʼt That A Shameʼ, quickly rushed out after the original became a hit, according to widespread practice of the times: Little Richard and Chuck Berry in their respective prime would be battling that practice, but Fats clearly had no such ambition. Likewise, ʽGoinʼ Homeʼ and ʽYou Said You Loved Meʼ are the exact same song, and ʽRose Maryʼ is a totally unnecessary slowed down version of ʽThe Fat Manʼ, without the rushed excitement and the sexy falsetto wah-wahs of the original, though, granted, with an unusually long and complex piano solo for compensation (probably the single best piece of evidence for Fatsʼ technique on the album).

Still, distill the record down to its small handful of truly essential originals — ʽThe Fat Manʼ, ʽPlease Donʼt Leave Meʼ, ʽAinʼt That A Shameʼ, ʽAll By Myselfʼ, maybe ʽBo Weevilʼ — and you are left with the finest that New Orleanian-tinged rockʼnʼroll, or, maybe, rather rockʼnʼroll-tinged New Orleanian pop music can offer. Rough enough around the edges (the musicians do not always seem to gel perfectly with each other, which actually adds a bit of chaotic charm), but soft and always friendly at the core, all these songs are insanely catchy — after all, their basic chord structures were not so much invented by Fats as appropriated from tried-and-true musical formulae — and, I would guess, even perfectly appropriate for the spirit of the early 21st century. When Fats sings "meet me in the parlor about half past one, weʼre goinʼ out to have some fun", you know what he really means is taking a ride on the Ferris wheel and sharing an icecream or two — something way too meek for somebody like Johnny Burnette and the RockʼnʼRoll Trio, who deleted that verse and replaced it with ʽGood Rockinʼ Tonightʼs "meet me and a-hurry behind the barn, donʼt be afraid ʼcause Iʼll do you no harm". Ever the courteous gentleman, that Mr. Domino Jr.

Personality, indeed, is everything: there were plenty of people who would later cover these songs with far superior musical arrangements, and there were people who were well able to impose their own impressive personalities onto them — John Lennonʼs 1975 rendition of ʽAinʼt That A Shameʼ, for instance, turned the song into a veritable venomous diatribe — but nobody could match or replace that charming New Orleanian accent, or that air of slightly lazy, overtly friendly nonchalance that permeates both the nominally happy and the nominally sad songs on this record. You could even argue, in a way, that Fats was more the originator of the "amicable star-at-the-bar" concept, one which would later extend way beyond core New Orleanians like Dr. John and all the way to people like Randy Newman, than he was the originator of the rockʼnʼroll sound. At the very least, this Rock And Rollinʼ With Fats Domino always sounds more like Sharing A Drink With Fats Domino to my ears — which makes even the repetitive numbers fully forgivable, because who really cares if your next shot tastes absolutely identical to the one you just took before?

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