The Fat Man / Detroit City Blues
Fats Domino’s first single, produced in New Orleans, is considered one of the first rock ’n’ roll songs in history.
In the late 1940s, as New Orleans rhythm and blues was beginning to coalesce, Antoine “Fats” Domino Jr. was himself starting out as a performer, playing a regular gig at the Hideaway Club in the Ninth Ward. During these years, Domino’s cousin, banjo player Harrison Verret, was instrumental in nurturing the young musician’s natural talent. Verret was a successful musician in his own right, playing with Oscar “Papa” Celestin’s band as well as performing periodically with barrelhouse pianist Kid Stormy Weather. Among the songs in Kid Stormy’s repertoire was “Junker Blues,” which fellow New Orleanian piano player Champion Jack Dupree had recorded for the OKeh label in 1941. Domino took to the song as well and incorporated it into his act at the Hideaway.
In 1949 Dave Bartholomew, the venerable bandleader and A&R man for Imperial Records, visited the Hideaway with label owner Lew Chudd to scout the young Domino. Not surprising, they liked what they heard, quickly signed him to a contract, and got him into Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studios on Rampart Street at the edge of the French Quarter. That session produced Domino’s first hit, “The Fat Man,” which reached number two on the Billboard R&B chart and number one on the local charts. The record continued to sell over the next few years, topping the one million mark in 1953, and is considered to be one of the first rock and roll songs.
A cleaned-up version of “Junker Blues,” Domino’s hit stripped that song of its drug references and added a rollicking beat and a full-band sound designed to appeal to a wider audience. Bartholomew rounded out the session with musicians from his own band, one of the best in the city at the time, including Earl Palmer on drums and Red Tyler on saxophone. Over the next decade, Domino, Bartholomew and his band, and Matassa recorded a string of national hits that would come to define the local rhythm and blues sound and influence the development of rock and roll around the world.
By Eric Seiferth, curator and historian
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