FATS DOMINO
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Main genre |
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1949–2006 |
Early rock’n’roll |
I’m Walking (1957) |
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Album released: March 1956 |
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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. |
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REVIEW
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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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Album released: Dec. 1956 |
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Tracks: 1) Blueberry
Hill; 2) Honey Chile; 3) Whatʼs The Reason Iʼm
Not Pleasing You; 4) Blue Monday; 5) So Long; 6) La La; 7) Troubles Of My
Own; 8) You Done Me Wrong; 9) Reeling And Rocking; 10) The Fat Manʼs
Hop; 11) Poor Poor Me; 12) Trust In Me. |
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This is an interesting release in
that it essentially functions as one huge A-Side contrasted with one huge
B-Side: most of the truly important and interesting songs are placed on the
first side of the vinyl, while most of the throwaways and rewrites are nested
on the second. Essentially, this is just a collection of several of Fatsʼ hit singles from late 1956 — with the B-side padded
out from a bunch of songs that go all the way back to the early Fifties. At the very least, it may be
clearly seen that in late ʼ56, Fats was in
top form and well willinʼ to compete in
the general entertainment field, even as his chief inspiration was still
coming from the past rather than the future — ʽBlueberry Hillʼ, the best
known song from this album, dates back to at least 1940 and had already been
popularized by Louis Armstrong himself, yet somehow it took Fatsʼ unhurrying piano waves and the familiar New
Orleanian backbeat of his band to turn the song into an undying classic.
Perhaps Elvisʼ cover from
1957 also contributed to this, but there is no denying that it was Fats and
nobody else who made it a truly popular standard. |
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And this time,
it is truly all about the music rather than personality — one might even
argue that Fatsʼ predictably
cheerful, imperturbable delivery does not agree perfectly well with the songʼs lovestruck-serenade nature, as he tells his tale
of faded romance with about as much outside passion as youʼd expect from a recollection of a childhood trip to
Coney Island or something. No, what really matters is that it took the
«simplistic» innovations of Fiftiesʼ rockʼnʼroll to bring out the true earworm potential of the
tune — something that used to be loose, squishy, meandering, hard-to-focus-on
because of the general melodic conventions of the era, suddenly found its way
into the deepest levels of your brain just because it became anchored to a
concise, if repetitive piano riff and a toe-tappable rhythmic foundation.
Yes, it was always a good song with an intelligent, well-constructed
rise-and-fall build-up, but millions of people had to wait until Fats to see
it. So thanks, Fats. On the other
hand, the difference between Fatsʼ version of ʽBlue Mondayʼ and the 1953 original recording by Smiley Lewis should probably be
ascribed to personality — Lewisʼ vocal delivery
is pretty standard R&B fare for the times, barely distinguishable from
the average jump-blues wailer, whereas Fats gets into his role with seductive
ease, ever so slightly varying his vocal timbre for each day of the week
mentioned in the song, going from tiredness and depression to joy and relief
and back without ever leaving the closed circle of his generally reserved and
nonchalant attitude. The whole thing just sounds so much more powerful and,
well, important than the original
that there is no doubt about it — what we are witnessing is a major step
forward in the development of rhythm and blues, making it so much fuller,
deeper, modern-sounding than Big Joe Turner and Wynonie Harris (no offense
toward either). Other
highlights on the first side include ʽHoney Chileʼ, which begins
as a variation on the superior ʽIʼm In Love Againʼ, but still manages to find its own direction due to its somewhat odd
stop-and-start structure; and ʽSo Longʼ, easily Fatsʼ best song on the issue of leaving it all behind — a short and
decisive musical goodbye that teaches you, in two minutes flat, how itʼs no use crying over spilled milk more effectively
than any advanced seance of psychotherapy. Unfortunately,
the second side of the vinyl, as I already said, is largely useless — most of
it is drawn from early post-ʽFat Manʼ singles, when Fats was not yet fully free from old
school conventions and felt no qualms whatsoever about rewriting himself to
the left and to the right. Arguably the only track of interest there is ʽThe Fat Manʼs Hopʼ, a somewhat
messy and overproduced instrumental in which the bass, the piano, and the
brass section seem to play three different parts more or less independent of
each other, leading to barely controlled chaos (with the drummer so confused
that he mostly confines himself to cymbals for some reason) — however, Fats
plays some really cool rolls all over it, showcasing excellent technique
which he usually kept out of his hit singles. On the whole, though, the only
point of the second side, if it was needed in the first place, is to show you
how much more exciting R&B had become over the brief span of 3-4 years. |
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Album released: March 1957 |
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Tracks: 1) Detroit City Blues; 2) Hide
Away Blues; 3) She’s My Baby; 4) Brand New Baby; 5) Little Bee; 6) Every
Night About This Time; 7) I’m Walkin’; 8) I’m
In The Mood For Love; 9) Cheatin’; 10) You Can Pack Your Suitcase; 11) Hey! Fat
Man; 12) I’ll Be Gone. |
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REVIEW
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The B-side was
no slouch, either: a fairly modern reinterpretation of the old standard ‘I’m
In The Mood For Love’, driven by a loud pendulum-shaped bass line and waves
of brass rather than Fats’ piano... and by «modern», I actually mean
«replacing classic pre-war Hollywood crooning sentimentality with the
down-to-earth feeling of the average citizen of New Orleans on a hot, humid,
debilitating summer night», hammocks and mosquitoes included, pass the
alligators. You gotta love good old Fats when he drawls out an "I’m in
the mood for love..." with the intonation of somebody who’s actually in
the mood for a hot dog — and then it gets you thinking about what it is that
makes one’s feelings for a hot dog so fundamentally different from one’s
feelings for another human being... see, such is the power of great
reinterpretations of works of art. Anyway, the
single is perfect. What is not
perfect is the decision of the Imperial label to put it right in the middle
of Fats’ third LP — which is otherwise entirely comprised of his old singles and outtakes, dating from
all the way back in 1949 (‘Detroit City Blues’, the original A-side to ‘Fat
Man’) and up to about 1954. Essentially, this is an archival release which,
for all purposes, should have been called There Stood Fats Domino, but since it did include his latest
single, the producers could at least formally lay down a claim to some
current relevance. It does feel weird, though, when the entire first side
clearly shows old age, with muffled and muddy old production values, and then
‘I’m Walkin’ and ‘I’m In The Mood For Love’ come along loud, bright, sharp,
and clear, only to have the needle dropped once again on ‘Cheatin’. The best one
probably could say in 1957 — or, for that matter, in 2020 — about those older
tracks is how clear a picture they present of R&B’s progression from that
time, if not in terms of melodic complexity, then certainly in terms of
sharpness of sound and immediacy of effect on the listener. Compared to
‘Ain’t That A Shame’ or, in fact, ‘I’m Walkin’, something like ‘Detroit City
Blues’ sounds limp, sluggish, and sleep-inducing, even if in 1949 it may have
produced a different impression, and, to be honest, it gives us a better
demonstration of Fats’ mastery of the piano than any of his actual hits.
Against the slow tempo of the song, he does all sorts of trills, rolls, and
glissandos which actually show him quite worthy of at least an Amos Milburn,
if certainly well below Art Tatum; listen to his work on this song, on ‘Hide
Away Blues’, or on the faster moving boogie of ‘She’s My Baby’, and it
actually becomes curious how he would later all but abandon these blatant
show-offs in favor of comparatively more simplistic pop hooks. But then it’s
really only that good for the first two or three songs: once you get used to
Fats’ piano style, the relatively stiff and slow formula of the early R&B
years begins to wear off quickly, with nearly identical pieces of 12-bar
blues replacing each other with all the excitement of a parade of baby
snails. Worse, the album ends on a couple of self-referencing reprises (‘Hey!
Fat Man’, ‘I’ll Be Gone’) whose main attraction consists of a call-and-answer
session between Fats and his backing band — and the punchline is always about
being called «fat man», which I have nothing against if it’s fully
consensual, but the joke gets boring fairly quickly, and besides, cheap
vaudeville entertainment is something you’d think a guy like Fats was
supposed to take us away from, not rub our noses in it. In the end,
most of this material should probably rest in the archives, sitting next to
the shelf on which one lays down, for instance, the pre-‘Tutti Frutti’ era of
Little Richard. You can always embrace a bit of revisionism, of course, but
the truth is, Fats Domino is not very interesting when he does ‘Detroit City
Blues’ because he did not invent this formula, he mastered it as an
apprentice — old school R&B is always more exciting if you receive it
firsthand from the likes of Big Joe Turner and Wynonie Harris. ‘I’m Walkin’,
on the other hand, is 100% Fats, and this is why that single song completely
trumps all of the man’s pre-1955 material. |
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Album released: Aug. 1957 |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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Album released: September 1958 |
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Tracks: 1) The Big Beat; 2) I’ll Be Glad When You’re
Dead, You Rascal You; 3) What Will I Tell My Heart; 4) Barrel House; 5)
Little Mary; 6) Sick And Tired; 7) I Want You To Know; 8) 44; 9) Mardi Gras
In New Orleans; 10) I Can’t Go On; 11) Long Lonesome Journey; 12) Young School
Girl. |
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REVIEW
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Let us begin
with the singles — all of which charted, but not too high, failing to crack
the Top 10 even on the R&B charts, let alone the Pop register (and both
of my single-CD Greatest Hits
collections ignore them completely). ‘The Big Beat’ is indeed utterly
unoriginal, more or less a sped up and boogiefied version of LaVern Baker’s
‘Tweedlee Dee’ whose only outstanding feature is a surprisingly excessive
amount of reverb on Fats’ vocals, which somehow produces more of a lulling
than a Gene Vincent effect — maybe this is why people did not rush out to buy
the record, even if it is still perfectly danceable. ‘Sick And Tired’ is
classic angry girl-bashing 12-bar blues redone as a fast-paced merry New
Orleanian shuffle — nice, but relatively inefficient, and besides, who really
wants to buy a song called ‘Sick And Tired’ from New Orleans’ most famous
good-time entertainer? ‘Little Mary’ is definitely more like it ("I want
you, I need you, you got me spinning like a top"), but it adds nothing
to the legacy of ‘Please Don’t Leave Me’ other than sharper sound quality. Finally, ‘Young
School Girl’, building upon the melodic structure of ‘Blueberry Hill’, comes
on like a cold shower on the heads of all unhappy teens: "The school
bell is ringing / Vacation time is gone / No more watching the late show /
From now on". With the lyrics delivered in the sweetest, most caring
fatherly tone, without the least trace of irony, the song is like a perfect
family antithesis to Chuck Berry’s ‘School Days’, and unless somebody like
Stanley Kubrick would come up with a brilliant idea to use the song in the
soundtrack for Lolita, it is hard
for me to see how any young person in 1958 could get even the least excited
about it. (By the way, did you know that the names of Antoine ‘Fats’
Dominique Domino Jr.’s eight children are Antoine, Anatole, Andre, Antonio,
Antoinette, Andrea, Anola, and Adonica? I sure did not). With all the
A-sides being thoroughly «okayish» rather than outstanding, it would be
presumptuous to expect anything of higher quality from the B-sides and
outtakes. Fats is being quite charming on the old standard ‘What Will I Tell
My Heart’ (there is just something magical about the unabashed sentimentalism
with which he croons out the title), and that old outtake ‘Long Lonesome
Journey’ also has him playing against type on a slow, moody, soulful blues
which is closer to the emotional book of Ray Charles than our merry prankster
from New Orleans. But that brooding, heartbroken vibe does not come naturally
to Fats, not any more than Professor Longhair’s deep wildman vibe, which
makes Fats’ cover of ‘Mardi Gras In New Orleans’ essentially useless. Even the
instrumental ‘Barrel House’, from which you could theoretically expect
something exceptional, disappoints — beyond the wobbly, repetitive riff
introduced from the beginning, Fats does relatively little else on the track,
letting his sax player shine for a few bars instead. Not difficult to see why
this particular track had been dusting away in the archives for so long: it
is more like a warm-up session for the players before getting anywhere
serious than something worthy of being focused upon all on its own. Bottomline:
there is precious little that is «fabulous» about The Fabulous ‘Mr. D’, although it is nice to see that Imperial
Records still obviously cared about consolidating their artist’s back
catalog. On the whole, 1958 was not a very good year for Fats, though this is
hardly a big surprise — if you ask me, it is much more of a surprise that the
man would manage to eventually return to the respectable sections of the
charts than his slide into pleasant mediocrity and self-repetition at a time
when even the rock’n’rolling youngsters of America were being subtly drained
of their original enthusiasm... and Fats had been doing that for almost a decade by then. |
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Album released: September 1959 |
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Tracks: 1) You Left Me; 2)
Ain’t It Good; 3) Howdy Podner; 4) Stack And Billy; 5) Would You; 6) Margie;
7) Hands Across The Table; 8) When The Saints Go Marching In; 9) Ida Jane;
10) Lil’ Liza Jane; 11) I'm Gonna Be A Wheel Someday;
12) I Want To Walk You Home. |
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REVIEW
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And then, right
at the end of 1958, something happened — I have absolutely no idea what it
was, but all of a sudden, it was like Fats got himself a new life on the
black market. The «revival» was heralded with ‘Whole Lotta Loving’, a short,
fast, concentrated explosion of cheerful energy, with perfectly coordinated
boogie-woogie piano rolls and a clever little hook where Fats would replace
the word "kisses" with actual kissing sounds; this did not exactly
break down the Hays Code, but it did call for additional attention, and it
somehow made the artist feel younger and sexier, even if in real life Fats
Domino was probably far from an ideal of the sexiest man alive. In any case,
it became his biggest hit since ‘Valley Of Tears’, about a year and a half
ago, and deservedly so. And, miraculously, it was just the beginning. Admittedly, the
decision to follow ‘Whole Lotta Loving’ with ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’
(included on the album) was not a very wise choice — I mean, every
respectable New Orleanian artist is probably expected to record the beaten
old chestnut sooner or later, but the song does break up a nearly immaculate
series of singles, and although they take it at a nice break-neck tempo,
there’s practically no piano at all (just a few exultated sax breaks), and
the vocal performance is fairly perfunctory. The B-side (not included on the album) was ‘Telling Lies’, a slower piece of
R&B in the vein of ‘Ain’t That A Shame’, also with fairly little piano
and a pretty unconvincing vocal hook in the chorus (repeating the word
"lies" five times in a row does not immediately turn it into an
earworm — at least, not into a particularly charming one). Just as it
might have seemed ‘Whole Lotta Loving’ was simply one last gasp of
brilliance, Fats brought it all back with ‘I’m Ready’ (again, not included on
the album) — which is like ‘I’m Walkin’ on an extra steroid, namely, an
expressive piano riff which, in the instrumental section, turns into one of
Fats’ most perfectly constructed boogie-woogie solos (Amos Milburn would be
so, so proud). The best thing about the song, though, is its vocal melody —
there is a peculiarly cool magic to Fats’ phrasing here. The trick is
probably to keep as formally calm
and collected as possible — all
those "I’m ready... and I’m willin’... and I’m able..." sound like
a military person’s stern and decisive replys to being offered a dangerous
mission, except that Fats’ mission is to put you on the road to rock’n’roll
excitement, and by applying military discipline to this faster-than-lightning
performance he really turns ‘I’m Ready’, with relatively little effort, into
one of the finest pop-rock anthems of his generation. You don’t even hear the
song covered too often by other artists because it is unclear how it could
ever be improved upon (the Searchers did a fine, passable version in 1965,
but still added nothing to the excitement level of the original; meanwhile,
The Band really overdid the production for their take on Moondog Matinee). The commercial and creative successes continued with ‘I’m Gonna Be A
Wheel Someday’, another instantly recognizable Domino-Bartholomew classic,
set to the same frantic rhythmic pace as ‘I’m Ready’ and much more guitar-
and sax-driven than its predecessor, but every bit as inspired when it comes
to the vocal performance. Again, it is the combination of collected,
concentrated decisiveness in Fats’ vocal tone and the speed factor — speed is of the utmost essence here! —
that can drive a listener crazy. "I’M GONNA be a wheel someday, I’M
GONNA be somebody, I’M GONNA be a real gone cat...", a fast triple punch
that knocks you down before you can set up any critical defenses. It’s not that faster than ‘When The Saints’,
but it feels twice as lively and insistent, even without the piano — I do
believe, though, that part of the secret is also concealed in that scratchy
rhythm guitar part that never lets go throughout the song, keeping the energy
level steady high at all times. All of this makes Fats in this era about as
proverbially rock-and-roll as he would ever be, temporarily transcending the
«New Orleans» stamp of quality and, for a brief shining moment, making him the rock’n’roll star of 1959, in that
era when Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and even Elvis would fall behind in the
race, for various reasons. That said, the slow and sensitive B-side, ‘I Want To Walk You Home’,
sounded as New Orleanian as they come, written and recorded around the
traditional slow R&B shuffle, but remade with a variety of extra touches
— there is that electric guitar again, for one thing, echoing each of Fats’
lines in the chorus, replacing the same old predictable brass backing to make
for a far more intimate performance: it really feels like the guitar is
playing the role of Fats’ little girlfriend here, consenting to his
insistent, but gentlemanly courting. And that combination of a smooth,
delicate attitude with an atmosphere of stalking is what makes the song so
memorable — in live versions of the song, I have sometimes heard him
extending the final "that’s why I want to walk you home, that’s why I
want to walk you home..." to at least twice as many bars as we have here
on the fadeout, playing the perfect smooth criminal to his audience. It’s not
at all creepy, though — just the conduct of a man who knows he has to work
real hard to win his lady’s heart. Quite charismatic, in fact. With all this newly found inspiration behind his belt, it is little wonder
that Let’s Play With Fats Domino ends up being Fats’ most consistent
LP since at least Here Stands Fats Domino, or maybe even earlier than
that, because there is one major advantage here — for the first time ever,
the LP does not feel like a mix of creaky, leaky old recordings with a couple
of contemporary singles, but rather feels like a brand new collection of
songs that go together very well. Which is all the more impressive
considering that most of these LP-only tracks are older recordings (dating as far back as 1953!), yet somehow
they fished an impressive number of outstanding outtakes from the bottom of
the barrel, some of which deserve special mention and discussion. First, the lead-in number ‘You Left Me’, originally recorded in
September 1953, is one of Fats’ best ever ballads — very minimalistic in
terms of vocals and lyrics, precisely so that more emphasis could be made on
Fats’ piano playing. The instrumental part, in which he mixes nervous trills,
barrelhouse rolls, and classical glissandos all over the place, is about as
«virtuoso» a performance as he ever got on tape, and perfectly conveys the
feeling of emotional confusion and chaos, verbally introduced by "you
left me all by myself, and I feel so bad". It’s baffling how this little
masterpiece managed to stay under the table for six long years, and it’s
great to have it here as a reminder of how technically and creatively gifted the man could be at the piano, once a bit
of improvisational spirituality managed to take precedence over pure
catchiness and rock’n’roll excitement. Another highlight is ‘Stack & Billy’, Fats’ typically New Orleanian
comical take on the classic motif of ‘Stagger Lee’; the angle itself might be
just a novelty bit, but the element that truly distinguishes the song is an
expressive electric guitar flourish, one that you would normally expect to be
included in a solo or confined to a lead-in phrase — but here, it is actually
turned into a looping riff that carries the entire song, adding a degree of
«hyper-activity» to the atmosphere. One might even find it annoying — there
is, after all, a good reason why such things are rarely favored by pop
artists — but I’d prefer the word «amusing», and it certainly makes the song
stand out among a myriad of similarly sounding and indistinguishable tracks
(a similar looping riff also drives ‘Ida Jane’ on the same album, but the
guitar is much more quiet in the mix, making the song command your attention
with much less insistence). The rest of the filler tracks aren’t all that memorable, but they’re
still fun, like ‘Howdy Podner’ with its exaggerated accent; ‘Hands Across The
Table’ with its cute lyricism ("hands across the table meet so gently /
and they say in their little way / that you belong to me" is just such a
Fats Domino thing to say); or ‘Margie’, the original B-side to ‘I’m Ready’
with a rather extraordinary, convoluted verse structure where Fats even has
to break up his singing rhythm in order to fit in the lyrics. The best news
about these songs is that they do not immediately convey the feeling of
merely being uninspired re-writes of something better — more like timid
tweaks of known formulae that don’t work too well. Meanwhile, Fats’ winning streak for 1959 continues with ‘Be My Guest’,
released even later in the year; this one takes the old formula of ‘I’m In
Love Again’ and tweaks the beat just enough to get a more poppy than bluesy
feel out of the melody, making it more danceable without losing the Domino
flair. The B-side, ‘I’ve Been Around’, is slowed down, putting the beat back
on the second measure, and made into a rhythmic ballad with the usual
simplistic love message; you may perhaps better know the Animals’ cover of
the song, which they conversely sped up (and ultimately spoiled by replacing
the isolated lead vocal with a silly, quasi-chipmunk choral approach), but
the Animals only do Fats better than Fats when he is not being romantic, and ‘I’ve Been Around’ is about as romantic
as Fats ever gets. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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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Album released: January 1961 |
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Tracks: 1) I Miss You So; 2) It Keeps Rainin’; 3) Ain’t
That Just Like A Woman; 4) Once In A While; 5) I Hear You Knocking; 6) Isle
Of Capri; 7) What A Price; 8) When I Was Young; 9) Fell In Love On Monday;
10) My Bleeding Heart; 11) Easter Parade; 12) I’ll Always Be In Love With You. |
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I wish I could say «well, at least
there’s no annoying orchestration on this record any more», but the sad truth
is that the dragonfly-winged violins on A
Lot Of Dominos at least made
that LP somehow stand out, not to mention those rare specific cases when they
helped bring in extra magic to the Fats Domino sound (‘Natural Born Lover’).
Alas, while canceling that approach might have given Fats’ first album for
1961 a respectable purist aura of «let’s get back to the roots», it also
makes I Miss You into his first
album since 1958 where nothing really stands out: twenty five minutes of
pleasant, good-timey Fatsisms with hardly anything left to save up for a
rainy day. |
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Although I lack
the precise session details for this stuff, the recent LP re-release on the
Jazz Messengers label states that the album "was assembled from a variety of sessions taped between 1958 and 1960";
however, none of those songs were released as singles in the 1958–60 period,
meaning that, essentially, we are dealing here with a collection of outtakes and original rejects, and you should adjust your
expectations accordingly.
When taken off the album to be gradually released through the first half of
1961, the singles did chart —
probably still riding the momentum of ‘Walkin’ To New Orleans’ and ‘My Girl
Josephine’ — but not too highly, playing up to the tastes of Fats’
well-established fan base and nobody else. ‘What A Price’ was the first of
those, a monotonous slow blues with lazy piano and languid horns, «cheered
up» a bit by Fats’ melancholic tale of how his lady wrecked his life by
making him stop gambling and "staying out all night" (it is
probably implied that she still dumped him after making all those sacrifices,
though). The song has all the formal trappings of Fats’ classic vibe — but
absolutely nothing that would make it stand out even an inch, which, really,
is all that is required of a truly classic Fats Domino number: stand out a
tiny inch. It doesn’t, so it don’t get to be a true classic. The B-side was Louis Jordan’s ‘Aint’t That Just
Like A Woman’, a classic of the misogynistic genre tried on for size by many,
but never really improved over Jordan’s original from 1946. At least this one
goes really fast and Fats gets to boogie. ‘Fell In Love On Monday’ (which had ‘Shu Rah’
from the previous album as its B-side) is the prototypical «slow and happy»
Fats song, with a gospel choir backing the man to add a slightly churchy feel
— and, of course, it does not work because the song itself hardly has any
genuine spiritual depth to add anything to. Much better, and, perhaps, the
closest thing to a classic on here, is ‘It Keeps Rainin’, an upbeat pop song
whose vibe is generated by the interplay of a merry mariachi-style horn part
with an incessant arpeggiated electric guitar lick, emulating the "it keeps rainin’ and rainin’"
mood of the lyrics (funny enough, it merges with Fats’ minimalistic piano
playing so perfectly that my ears almost mistook the guitar for the piano
first time around!). Apparently, the song had plenty of potential, as it
would be turned into a big hit thirty years later by Bitty McLean — with a
version that would be fairly true to the original. Given that Bitty’s primary
genre was reggae (he used to work together with UB40 for a while), this does
bring to mind a slightly more Caribbean than New Orleanian vibe for the song
— although in terms of sheer mood, that whole
"cheer-me-up-with-a-sad-song" attitude is certainly one thing that
New Orleans and Kingston have in common. As for the LP-only numbers, the first and last
thing to notice is how heavy the album is on covers of oldies. The title
track itself is a modernized reinvention of the classic hit by The Cats And
The Fiddle from about 1940, which would go on to become a favorite for all
sorts of vocal jazz artists. The original is still
worth revisiting, but Fats’ version is hardly so, and, in fact, its very
selection as the title track for the new album brings out an unnecessary
nostalgic vibe — with all these covers of Jimmy Henderson, Louis Jordan,
Irving Berlin (‘Easter Parade’), and Jimmy Kennedy (‘Isle Of Capri’), it only
makes Fats the latest in a series of African-American performers who, in the
late Fifties and early Sixties, all started jumping on the
grandma-what-great-songs-you-sang bandwagon. It’s a little sad, though hardly
tragic; but while back in 1961 the effort to «modernize» all those classics
may have had some novelty value, its lasting value was doomed from the
beginning. There is nothing intrinsically good about converting all of them
to the Fats Domino formula. In short, the entire point of the album is
perfectly summarized in its single most honestly written Domino-Bartholomew
original, ‘When I Was Young’: "When
I was young and in my prime / The girls used to hold me up all the time / But
I’m gettin’ old every day / It’s a pity that now I ain’t gettin’ any!"
(Fats kinda slurs that last line, but this is how it’s been enshrined in all
digital lyrics collections). Even that song, though, was just a lyrical
rewrite of the earlier ‘La La (I’m Gonna Tell You A Story)’, though,
admittedly, a superior one. From this point on, even if Fats would still
have occasional hits that would stay with us (‘Red Sails In The Sunset’,
etc.), any attempts at (convincingly) broadening his horizons would be
abandoned. However, as I said, I Miss You is thoroughly forgettable,
but not unpleasant — by staying firmly within his comfort zone, Fats is able
to avoid corny embarrassments and failed experiments; and we do at least have
to recognize the album’s worthiness in that it never bogs down in schmaltz
territory, like so many did at the time. Even all those romantic oldies are
done as merry boogie anthems, rather than sweet serenades for the ears of
restrictive old ladies. So perhaps you could no longer count on Fats Domino
to lead you any place you had not been before, but at least you could still
count on him holding on to his bulky integrity. |
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Tracks: 1) Along The Navajo Trail; 2) You Win Again; 3)
One Night; 4) I’m Alone Because I Love You; 5) Won’t You Come On Back; 6) Trouble
Blues; 7) I Can’t Give You Anything But Love; 8) Good Hearted Man; 9) Your
Cheating Heart; 10) Let The Four Winds Blow; 11) In A Shanty In Old Shanty
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REVIEW
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Even so, it is
quite obviously a highlight on the LP, which, once again, offers one big zilch in terms of concealed delicious
goodies. This time around,
Fats suddenly declares himself a fan of the country-western routine, kicking
things off with a cover of ‘Along The Navajo Trail’ and then throwing on not
one, but two Hank Williams songs,
even if ‘You Win Again’ and ‘Your Cheating Heart’ both largely share the same
melody. A bit later on, Fats would do ‘Jambalaya’, which is pretty much Hank
Williams’ natural gift to Fats Domino — but these two psychological pieces
are...well, maybe a bit too bitter for Fats’ good-natured style, with vibes
that do not easily translate to his style. Particularly since 100% of the
emphasis is on the vocals: musical arrangements are lazy, with Fats merely hammering
out his classic rhythm pattern, while the rhythm and horn sections add
monotonous metronomic backing. Then again, at least the subject of cheating
is something Fats had had plenty of previous experience with — ‘Along The
Navajo Trail’ is much weirder in that respect, as you really have to strain
yourself to picture the proverbial « fat man» "riding through the slumbering shadows" and "dreaming by his smouldering fire".
Fats Domino as Roy Rogers is truly one step down the ladder of believability
from Fats as Hank Williams. Possibly an even bigger surprise is Fats’ cover
of ‘Trouble Blues’ by Charles Brown, essentially the same song as ‘Worried
Life Blues’ and ‘Trouble No More’ (by everybody from Sleepy John Estes to
Muddy Waters and The Animals). Surprise, because this is a very rare case of
Fats directly tackling slow and moody 12-bar blues instead of turning it into
feel-good New Orleanian boogie, as he usually does. For a bit of change, he
even tries to sound as if he were really
broken-hearted, instead of broken-hearted the New Orleanian way (where
there’s nothing that can’t be cured with a bit of gumbo and a muffuletta
sandwich). The result is good, but I’d still rather prefer the more authentic
sound of an Otis Spann tinkling the ivories with Muddy Waters or Willie Dixon
brewing dense Chicago gloom behind his back. We cannot take the idea of Fats
Domino migrating to the colder climes of Illinois too seriously, anyway. The rest of the tracks are mostly oldies’
covers, with the occasional orchestration (‘Am I Blue’) and the occasional
sappiness (‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love’); of the three remaining
originals, it’s fun to hear ‘One Night’ with its original lyrics ("one night of sin is what I’m now payin’
for..."), if only to remind ourselves that the song, which we
usually associate with Elvis, was another of those brilliant Dave Bartholomew
creations. The other two, ‘Won’t You Come On Back’ and ‘Good Hearted Man’,
are respectively clones of ‘My Girl Josephine’ and... uh, about half a dozen
lesser Fats tunes with the same chord progression, so there’s nothing to be
said, really. Overall, a pretty sad state of affairs, although Fats’
experimentation with 12-bar blues and country at least deserves some formal
encouragement. |
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Album released: October 1961 |
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Tracks: 1) Did You Ever See A Dream Walking; 2) Rockin’
Bicycle; 3) Before I Grow Too Old; 4) Ain’t Gonna Do It; 5) Bad Luck And
Trouble; 6) Hold Hands; 7) Trouble In Mind; 8) Coquette; 9) What A Party; 10)
I Just Cry; 11) I’ve Been Calling; 12) Tell Me That You Love Me. |
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REVIEW Actually, the party was not that great. More precisely, this was
merely the title of a short and mediocre pop-rock tune tossed out by Domino
and Bartholomew for the single market in September ’61 — and they probably
felt it was mediocre deep down inside, so they sweetened it up with extra «party
noises» all around (much like the Beach Boys would do for their own Party! four years later), to
artificially raise the excitement level. Maybe it helped a bit — the single
rose as high as #22 on the charts, not at all bad for Fats at the time — but
the songwriting was quite openly lazy here, and letting some anonymous backing
vocalists carry the chorus to its conclusion was a fairly corny move, too (even
despite the ironic self-reference of "big fat piano man, he sho’ could play!"). You can still
dance to it, and enjoy the usual New Orleanian spirit of care-free joviality
and everything, but there’s not an ounce of originality or even a single
chord change or vocal inflection you haven’t heard a hundred times before. And
absolutely the same can be said about the B-side, ‘Rockin’ Bicycle’, a
transparent attempt to repeat the inspiration of ‘I’m Ready’ that fails
because you cannot really «repeat inspiration» — the whole thing feels tired,
rather than exciting. |
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And it is
absolutely not clear to me what in the world made Imperial Records think that
the single deserved to become expanded into yet another 12-song LP — other
than some weird desire to make Fats beat all his previous records by
registering three LPs of previously
unreleased material under his name over the course of just one year. Maybe Mr.
Domino really wanted to assert his status as that of The Last Survivor of the
First Generation of Rock’n’Roll — seeing as how most of his contemporaries
were, indeed, either dead, indisposed, or under-productive. Unfortunately,
being over-productive under such circumstances would produce an equally
negative effect. Actually, What A Party!
is the first Fats Domino LP for which I have been unable to locate even a
single review ever written by a professional or amateur critic — and although
this does not automatically mean that the album totally sucks, I’m afraid
that in this case, the vow of silence is more or less justified, because this
is certainly the most non-descript Fats LP up to that particular date. Only one more song was produced during the
recording session for that single, and it was ‘Did You Ever See A Dream Walking’,
a slow, sentimental, and thoroughly generic shuffle that is impossible to
actively dislike — imbued as it is with the gentle and adorable aspects of Fats’
personality — but barely possible to remember. Then, to pad out the album, Imperial
had to dig into Fats’ outtakes from previous sessions, with six songs coming
from March 1961, two from February 1960, and one (‘Coquette’) even going as
far back as 1958, when it was a humble B-side to ‘Whole Lotta Loving’. Considering
that none of these tunes had been seen fit for Let The Four Winds Blow,
it would be fruitless to expect any forgotten masterpieces, and although the
collection might sound fine and friendly if taken completely out of context,
pretty much everything here is just inferior variations on superior earlier
hits. Short, passable, instrumentally and vocally un-challenging songs that
rehash former glories, with barely anything to cling on to in sight. There are patches of lyrical cleverness every
now and then, particularly in the poignant ‘Before I Grow Too Old’ (which had
already been issued as a B-side in 1960): "I got to hurry up / Before I grow too old... Because I’m gonna do a
lot of things I know is wrong / And I hope that I’m forgiven before I’m gone"
cuts pretty deep for a Domino-Bartholomew tune, even if there is little hope
that anybody might pay too much attention to the actual words of a Domino-Bartholomew
tune. It is too bad that this confessional message is hidden within the
depths of an otherwise completely forgettable arrangement, lacking the epic
depth, length, and instrumental sweep of something like ‘Natural Born Lover’,
for instance. From slow and lumbering pop Fats moves on to
equally slow and lumbering blues: his renditions of ‘Bad Luck And Trouble’
and ‘Trouble In Mind’ feel like they might have been recorded in 1949 rather
than 1961, not to mention that they’re almost the same song in terms of
lyrics, melodies, arrangements, tempos, and (lack of) energy. As we have
already established with ‘Trouble Blues’ off the previous album, Fats
developed a bit of a craving for slow 12-bar stuff in 1961 (as long as it’s
got the word "trouble" in the title, everything goes), and while I’m
sure he might have had his own reasons for feeling a bit more down than usual
— either the trickle of royalties thinned out, or somebody shut down his favorite
brand of donuts, I really have no idea — neither of these two blues songs do
anything to correct the impression that Fats is simply incapable of conveying
the classic blues feel. He does play some nice piano on ‘Trouble In Mind’,
but it’s relaxing lounge piano that puts you into a soft, purring mood. It’s
much easier to believe that "the
sun will shine in his back door someday" in the future than that he
is truly "blue" today. The only song to slightly relieve the
monotonousness of endless generic blues covers and rehashes of ‘Blueberry Hill’
and ‘I’m Ready’ is the aforementioned ‘Coquette’ from 1958, and that one only because high prominence is given
by the song to vocals from The Velvetones, a long-forgotten girl vocal group
from New Orleans whose role is to enhance the song’s level of sexiness by
taking over a part of the bridge section. It’s a little confusing, though, because
they sing the words "someday you’ll
fall in love / as I fell in love with you" that are clearly meant to
be sung by Fats himself, so it’s unclear why exactly for those few bars the
spirit of Fats splits itself into the spirits of three lively New Orleanian
girls before reassembling itself back to Fats. But whatever — anything to add a little freshness and
surprise to the proceedings. That said, if you love the Fats formula and
want more of the Fats formula, What A Party! will be enough — in fact,
it might even seem too short — to satisfy the stereotypical lover of the
stereotypical Fats formula. It’s still much better than if Fats began
drifting away into the world of sentimental orchestrated ballads, for
instance, or, moving in the opposite direction, tried his luck in the trendy fields
of surf-rock or acoustic folk. The best thing that can be said about the record
is that, throughout (with the possible exception of those blues numbers), Fats
continues to stay rigorously true to himself, like AC/DC in the late Eighties
or some other of their less-popular periods. Certainly the same kind of thing
could not be said of, say, Elvis Presley at the time. |
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