Ninth to the Universe: Fats Domino 90

We come to the final Black History Month post, laying as it does at the feet of one of -- if not the -- acknowledged inventors of the music of our age.

There's an age-old canard about who invented Rock-n-Roll, with various luminaries from Louis Jourdan to Chuck Berry getting the credit.

The name you most hear associated with that breakthrough? Why it's today's big birthday boy, who passed just shy of his 90th today at the end of last year.

Before he departed, he managed to assemble the building blocks of a great deal of the music of our epoch.

He came out of  -- where else? -- The Lower Ninth Ward of the Crescent City of New Orleans, the epicenter of American music.

His first big single, 1949's Fat Man, is thought by many to be the first issued example of what became known as Rock-n-Roll.

Many more singles followed. Blueberry Hill. Walkin' to New Orleans. Blue Monday. A great deal of them are still as beloved and standard today as they were when the airwaves first crackled with the message of our hero nearly 70 (!!!) years ago. 

One or more of them is being played somewhere in the world right as I'm typing this. This will continue to infinity or human extinction, whichever comes first.

No, the many roads of Rock and where it came from run to the far horizon, but they began with the sound, vision and music of Fats Domino.

He was born a long time ago in 1928 on this day, and although he left us recently there is no disputing what he will always mean to the trajectory of our lifetimes in sound.

Let's mark the occasion with a vintage video voyage to 1962, for 43+ minutes of a somehow unreleased DVD that features the man and his full coterie of bandmates bringing the goods to a French TV broadcast, probably sourced from the station master tapes from what I can tell.

Fats Domino

Festival de Jazz d'Antibes

Palais des Sports

Paris, France

10.19.1962

01 You Can Pack Your Suitcase

02 I’m Ready

03 Blue Monday

04 Mardi Gras In New Orleans

05 Blueberry Hill

06 Ain’t That Just Like a Woman?

07 Let the Four Winds Blow

08 Coquette

09 I Want to Walk You Home

10 My Girl Josephine

11 I’m In Love Again

12 Ain’t That a Shame?

12 When the Saints Go Marchin’ In

Total time: 43:51

Fats Domino - piano & vocals

Dave Bartholomew - trumpet

Herbert Hardesty - tenor saxophone

Lee Allen - tenor saxophone

Buddy Hagans - tenor saxophone

Clarence Ford - baritone saxophone

Clarence "Tenoo" Coleman - drums

Roy Montrell - guitar

Jimmy Davis - bass

NTSC DVD of what looks like the station master tapes

2.92 GB NTSC/February 2018 archive link

If you saw the recent PBS-TV documentary on Fats, you'll recognize that this was the footage they went back to again and again for the clips. This, however, is the whole thing.

So there you have it, quite the prolific month from me in celebration of the magnificent melinated musicians here in BHM. I will be back in March with all sorts of silliness, but for now you better dig upon Antoine "Fats" Domino... he'd have been 90 today, but what he started will live to be 1,000,000,090.--J.

2.26.1928 - 10.24.2017