DOMINO Born Antoine Domino May 10Th, 1929 New Orleans, Louisiana

Cochran DOM INO Born Antoine Domino May 10th, 1929 New Orleans, Louisiana The New Orleans style of rhythm and blues that Harrison Verrett, taught Fats to play the piano. By Antoine “Fats” Domino grew up playing instantly be age 10, Fats was following in the illustrious footsteps came part of that brand-new thing called rock and of such New Orleans piano greats as Professor Long roll. So, to reach the burgeoning young music audi hair and Amos Milburn, performing for small change ence, Fats never had to break away from what was for in local honky-tonks. At 14, Fats got serious: he him a family tradition. dropped out of school, took a day job at a bedspring Although he was a Fifties star who could sell more factory and spent his nights in the dubs, often playing records than almost anyone but Ellvis Presley, Fats alongside his musical mentors. It was at the Hideaway was more inspirational than insurrectionary. Never Club that bandleader Bill Diamond dubbed him theless, even he couldn’t help generating som e contro “Fats,” for obvious reasons. It was also at the Hide versy. A 1955 dance at the Ritz Ballroom in Bridge away that Fats met trumpeter, bandleader and Impe port, Connecticut, at which Fats was scheduled to rial Records A&R rep Dave Bartholomew. Their first perform, was canceled by police because “rock and session together in 1949 produced “The Fat Man,” roll dances might be featured” — raising the specter of Fats’ first R&B hit: “They call me the Fat Man/Be- riots to the officers of the law. cause I weigh 200 pounds.” This marked the start of Many pop artists covered Fats’ hits. In 1955, Pat a cowriting relationship that would span 2 0 years of Boone released a rather more polite version of his hits. “Ain’t That a Shame” the very same week that Fats’ Fats could be wistful — even smug, in a good- rendition hit Number One on the R&B chart. Rick natured way. The remembrance of thrills past in Nelson covered “Pm Walking” as the B-side of his “Blueberry Hill” was matched by the come-and-get-it fast-selling debut in 1957; a month earlier, it had charm of “Whole Lotta Loving.” Fats’ string of hits been a Number One R&B and Number Four pop hit resulted in 23 gold singles and dimaxed in 1960 with for Fats. his last million-seller, “Walkin’ to New Orleans.” As a Fats Domino was raised in a musical family. His fa performer, he has continued to purvey the sound of ther played violin, and his brother-in-law, guitarist the town he has always called home. THE S U R P H ^ OF AN AMERICAN MUSIC BY LENNY KAYE Mickey and Sylvia Scream in’ Jay Hawkins But I can’t remember wfteihlôr when . merely secondhand musicians — though sacrificial life-is-art swan song at the Alamo did rock and roll begin? that’s how they were generally regarded by offered some grander purpose than mere Was a new era dawning oil July Stb, 1954, their professional peers. Primitive or not, prosperity? James Dean’s meteoric rise to when Sam Phillips spokelthe immortal these were aware and dehhpilStWereators — fame in the six months between his March words - “That’s fine, man. Hell, that’s A f often driven visionaries — whbse goal was 1955 screen appearance in East o f Eden and ferent. T h at’s a pop song n<iw” — to Elvi?* simplicity inste^ôf intrhyfcy. Reacting his own flaming demise (the self-fulfilling Presley over a studio interconiat 760 Union ^gainst the passivity of audience-performer prophecy of Rebel without a Cause) p ro Avenue in Memphis? ihteruction, rock celebrated and indulged moted similar existential questions. It was Was it March 31st, 1955lwhen T h e its subliminal urges. Itjcracked one beat in only when the newly ubiquitous medium of Blackboard Jungle formally eljuated Bill place of six and projected lyrics naked in television met rock’s first icon, Elvis Pres Haley’s “Rock around the Clock” with ju their unadorned desire, along with melodic ley, that rock became something more than venile delinquency, providing a theme song phrases so pointe^T they became mnemonic music. It went pop. for adolescent rebellion? hooks, as America s (and later the world’s) Projected into millions of unsuspecting Or was it the early Fifties^?rossover suc Top Forty chart?would soon devastatingly living rooms, as important for what hea cess of the Chords’ “Stf-Boom,” the Pen learn. couldn’t show (the famous waist bisection) guins’ “Earth Anêi,” the Crows’ “Gee,” The subculture offered was part Atomic as for what he did (gold records galore), El Big Joe Tqptflr’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll” Age and part Media M odern^tepping back vis not only combined the tangled musical and a Cleveland .disc jockey’s prescience in from the siege mentality of postwar para strains of rock’s prehistory into a sultry taking the “race records** known as rhythm noia. Times were good in the micNFifties. whole, he took a mutated step forward. His and blues and changing their name lb at Smokestack Amerm&Was booming: the pay was an inspirational leadership that came to tract (or acknowledge) a multiracial audi of a lactory worker with three dependents embody the new music itself. Long live the ence? averaged seventy dollars a week. Time mag King! The truth is that despite an all-too-human azine said that along with the highest Gross His — and, by extension, rock’s — was an urge to define music in neat bloodlines! the Rational Product in history, “bomb shelters electric sound, tilting the balance from am roots of rock and roll remain frustratiligly were on sale in Los Angeles, and hardly any plification to AC current. You could hear it elusive. As much a self-conscious lifestyjte as one was buying them.” President Eisenhow in the slapback echo with which Phillips a collection of rhythms and melodiel, iy er heralded a return to confidence, while surrounded Presley’s voice in “That’s All seemed to pick at will from the discard! #F Davy Crockett was the national hero. Right” and in the bite of Scotty Moore’s other music forms, recycling scorned chords But did the public like Davy because he electric guitar. It seemed tailor-made for and pariah riffs. said things like “Be sure you’re right, then “Hi-Fi,” a car radio, a live stage show. This is not to say rock and rollers were go ahead,” or because his coonskin cap and And yet, as much as rock and roll was “specialty” music, but certainly influential styles in their own right. Vocal techniques and improvisations from the hlues; a hard, hig-band swing; the call-and-response of gospel; the dance blues of New Orleans; the frantic bop of West Coast jazz; the twang of hillbilly boogie and western swing; the close-harmony serenade of groups like the Ink Spots and the Four Freshmen - all of these found their way into rock and roll. “Rock and roll was probably the first music with regional origins to be commerâlly Moonglows Chantéis expanded its rock and roll record chart from 3(^to 100 songs on November 12th, 1955 — nht so coincidentally, the same month that^Colonel Tom Parker signed El vis to recorîhg giant RCA-Victor. Pop musics older guard had initially tried to subvert rock’s emotional intensity with sanitized cover versions; they hoped that all this loud bravado would soon go away. But they never stood a chance. The swapfest between rhythm, hlues, country, western and plain old Tin Pan Alley contin successful on a nationwide scale,” writes ued wildly apace. In the hands of maverick Charlie Gillett in The Sound of the City, independent labels and their equally unruly and small wonder, since it managed to touch artists, a marketplace free-for-all was initi so many reference points along the way. ated that harked hack to the days of the Add to rock and roll the manic exhibi frontier West. tionism of youthful exuberance, the sense of “This is what makes rock and roll so in contrariety that kept the music moving fur triguing,” Nick Tosches notes in his chroni ther out on its own limb of the family tree, cle of the “dark and wild” years before El and the outrage (and subsequent attraction) v is, Unsung Heroes of Rock ’n’ Roll. it could provoke, and the result was music “Whether one regards it as art or as busi that had an explosive impact on America in ness, its history — one of greed and inno the Fifties. It would be a nigh-exclusive na cence, tastelessness and brilliance, the ri presented as a strikingly original concept tional phenomenon until the decade turned. diculous and the sublime (not to mention when it came along, it was a product of the At that point, it would be reflected back sex, violence and pink silk suits) — is a fun- same frantic bartering of style that has across the Atlantic with a vengeance by the house-mirror reflection of the American characterized American music since there British Invasion, and it would take over the dream gone gaga.” was an American music to speak of. Elvis pop charts to the extent that rock and roll If we can’t pinpoint our opening “where was hardly a surprise, given all that had became the dominant American music. Bill or when” question, the who, what and how come before.

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