Review: Fats Domino - This Is Fats (1957)
Tracks: 1) The Rooster Song; 2) My Happiness; 3) As Time Goes By; 4) Hey La Bas; 5) Love Me; 6) Don’t You Hear Me Calling You; 7) It’s You I Love; 8) Valley Of Tears; 9) Where Did You Stay; 10) Baby Please; 11) Thinking Of You; 12) You Know I Miss You.
REVIEW
So why spoil a good thing if it ain’t working anyway? This Is Fats half-borrows its title from This Is Fats Domino!, plunging buyers into inevitable confusion, and its formula from Here Stands Fats Domino: take one recent hit single and surround it with a bunch of A- and B-sides scrambled together from years past. But this time around, neither the recent hit single is all that good nor the past stuff is all that valuable, given that the best tracks had already inevitably been used for the previous LPs.
The single was ‘Valley Of Tears’, a Domino/Bartholomew original which marries a nice little country vocal melody to New Orleanian R&B and a gospel backing choir — it is not bad, and it quickly gained popularity among other artists, with everybody from Brenda Lee to Van Morrison recording cover versions, but it also tries to present Fats as a crooner rather than a belter, and that soulful sentimentality is not exactly his style; besides, nothing about the song’s melody is particularly innovative, with its only point of interest being the «crossover» attitude. I am actually far more attracted to the B-side: ‘It’s You I Love’ is fast, funny, repetitive, stupid, and 100% New Orleanian in style and attitude. "We’ll get married, go to Paris, come here, kiss me, it’s you I love" — somehow I feel that good old Fats had a much easier time picking girls with that attitude than "Everyone understands me in the valley of tears".
There is also a relatively recent 4-song EP included here, whose titular track is ‘The Rooster Song’ — a fun novelty number which plays upon the legacy of ‘Ain’t That A Shame’ but switches it all to nursery rhyme mode ("There was an old lady from Houston / She had two hens and a rooster / Her rooster died, the old lady cried / My hens don’t lay like they used to" — and even though it is hard to believe, I do not think there is a hidden sexual innuendo anywhere in here). A curious mini-highlight of the EP is a sped up, upbeat instrumental take on ‘As Time Goes By’, which Fats and his sax player transform from solemn melancholic nostalgia to light-and-cheerful nostalgia (boy, what I’d give to hear Fats Domino put out an LP of The Cure covers — now that would be the challenge of the century).
The rest of the material once again stretches all the way back to 1950, when Fats was recording stuff like the ancient Creole song ‘Hey (Eh) La Bas’ (is there a single New Orleanian musician who hasn’t covered it at one point or another?); but at least that song is naturally memorable, which is more than I can say about the rest of the material — formulaic R&B patterns without any specifically interesting vocal, guitar, sax, or piano moments. As usual, it all sounds nice but is strictly for Fats’ big fans. In the end, ‘Valley Of Tears’, ‘It’s You I Love’, and (just for a laugh) ‘The Rooster Song’ is probably all you need to hear from this record.
Only Solitaire: Fats Domino review page