![]() Most of Domino’s hit recordings bear the songwriting credit “Domino-Bartholomew,” as his producer, arranger and co-writer was Dave Bartholomew, a fellow Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member. The crossover, occurring as it did one year after the landmark Supreme Court school integration ruling, paved the way for the subsequent pop crossovers of Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elvis Presley, with similarly booming sounds. But Domino’s hit crucially signaled the fact that-unlike in the early jazz era, when black jazzmen were rarely heard on pop radio-this time black originators, led by Domino, were going along for the ride from the start. Domino’s breakthrough occurred at the same time as Bill Haley & the Comets’ massive hit “Rock Around the Clock.” White rockers like Haley and Pat Boone (who took his milksop version of “Ain’t That a Shame” to number one on the pop charts) were borrowing the heavily rhythmic dancing style of rhythm & blues as their own (along with the r&b term “rock”). A long time ago you say, ‘Oh, that’s a shame, the way they’re doin’ this.’ So in a couple of months I came up with ‘Ain’t That a Shame.’ Dave and I and got together and put on the music, and that was it.” The song’s planet-crushing booms virtually deafened shocked adult pop radio listeners accustomed to wall-to-wall “Que Sera Sera,” but grabbed a youthful audience-both black and white. Domino says that he got the idea from people talking: “You see somebody beat a little baby boy. “Ain’t That a Shame” certainly had humble origins. I would argue that he, along with the other greats who recorded blood-rushing rockers at Cosimo Matassa’s New Orleans recording studios from the late 1940s to the 1960s-Dave Bartholomew, Roy Brown, Professor Longhair, Smiley Lewis, Lloyd Price, Shirley & Lee, Ray Charles, Joe Turner, Guitar Slim, Little Richard, Earl King, Huey Smith, Frankie Ford, Ernie K-Doe, Aaron Neville, Irma Thomas, The Meters, and others-changed the world as much as the early New Orleans jazz greats. This historical neglect (due in part to Domino’s own distaste for interviews) was such that I published the first ever biography on him- Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock ‘n’ Roll-only last year, over fifty years after his historic crossover to the pop charts in 1955 with “Ain’t That a Shame.” ![]() He is sometimes disregarded with a dismissive footnote in music histories or even missing altogether. ![]() John, Harry Connick, Jr., Allen Toussaint and Wynton Marsalis, are still going strong in the early 21 st Century.īut somehow the crucial lynchpin between the two eras, the man who sold more records than any of the above, Antoine “Fats” Domino occupies a curious place in the honor rolls of music. The early 20 th Century legends of New Orleans music included Buddy Bolden, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Lonnie Johnson, Louis Prima and Mahalia Jackson others, like the Neville Brothers, Dr. The tragedy of Hurricane Katrina only emphasized the fact that New Orleans was perhaps the wellspring of popular music in the 20 th Century-the source, or a major tributary, of jazz, blues, gospel, rhythm & blues, rock and roll, funk and soul. John, Harry Connick, Jr., Allen Toussaint and Wynton Marsalis, are still going strong in the early 21 st Century.
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