The Imperial LP's 1956-1963 Back to the Indexpage Imperial Singles 1949-1964 ABC Paramount 1963-1965 Studio Recordings after 1966 The Live Recordings Fats and other New Orleans links

Meeting with Elvis in Las Vegas in 1964 (courtesy of Mr.Herbert Hardesty)

Antoine "Fats" Domino was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, on the 26th of February 1928.
When he was a 7 year old kid, he learned piano from his ,much older, brother-in-law Harrison Verrett. His piano playing was influenced by
boogie woogie pianists like Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis and his triplet piano style came from Little Willie Littlefield, who,by the way,lives in the Netherlands.
His first record was "The Fat man", recorded in 1949 and became a R & B hit in 1950 and a gold record in 1953.
His cooperation with the bandleader Dave Bartholomew resulted in an almost endless chain of R & B and Top 100 hit records.
He also played the piano on Lloyd Price's millionseller "Lawdy miss clawdy".
Fats performed in 4 Rock & Roll movies, "The girl can't help it, "Shake rattle and rock", "Jamboree" and "The Big beat".
This ended in 1963 with "Red sails in the sunset", by than Fats recorded for ABC-Paramount and the cooperation with Dave had ended.

In the period 1949-1960 he had 23 million sellers, not less than 17 were co-written with Dave Bartholomew.

90 percent of all the solos on Fats's records were played by this man on his Tenor Saxophone, Herbert Hardesty, he joined Fats for more than 40 years.

courtesy of Herbert Hardesty

Mr.Hardesty in 2000 (copyright Jef Jaisun)

In 1955, with the arrival of Rock & Roll, Fats became also popular with the white audience starting with "Ain't that a shame".
Lew Chudd, the owner of Imperial Records sold his record company to LIBERTY in 1963.
At that time success faded a little and Fats signed a contract with ABC-Paramount, were he had a couple of hits. Later, in 1965, he had a very good live album on MERCURY and
a couple of albums on REPRISE and SONET.
If you want more information I recommand this book written by John Broven, "Rhythm & Blues in New Orleans" (also published as "Walking to New Orleans"),
Pelican Publishing Company, ISBN 0-88289-433-1.

Also recommanded: " I hear you knockin' (The Sound of New Orleans Rhythm and Blues) " by Jeff Hannusch , Swallow Publications, and his latest book,
"The Soul of New Orleans (A Legacy of Rhythm and Blues)", published in 2001, and it has a chapter on Fats, the publisher is Swallow Publications, the ISBN  is 0-9614245-8-3.

The long awaited first-ever biography of Fats Domino is published in May 2006. It is called "Blue Monday - Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn Of Rock 'n' Roll",
written by Rick Coleman. The publisher is Da Capo Press , ISBN no. 13 978-0-306-81491-4. $ 26.95. 364 pages and lots of photos.
If you are a fan of New Orleans music, then you have to buy it.

Fats with Nat "King" Cole, somewhere in 1963 (courtesy of Herbert Hardesty)

When I first heard his music I was 13 years old. In that time there were no commercial radio stations in Holland.
The only pop program I remember had a frequency of one hour every week, it was called "Tijd voor Teenagers" (Time for teenagers)
and the guy who presented this did a short review on the Billboard Hot 100; so the first Fats Domino records I heard were in fact
almost his last releases for the Imperial label.
So I became a fan and I was treasure huntin' in every recordshop in Amsterdam. I bought a lot of singles and a couple of longplays.
I had two good friends, one of 'm collected every Cliff Richard record, the other collected Buddy Holly records and of course
we tried very hard to convince each other why Fats, Buddy or Cliff were the best. (Fats of course , and now in the right,
still subjective, perspective my second choice is Elvis Presley.
Later, when the Beatles and Stones became popular I lost temporarely interest in the pre-Beatles R&B and
I even sold my Fats records.
In the 70's I returned to the roots, so everything I lost is back now (and more).