Blue Monday

"And I think that you can make that argument. If there were ever a Mount Rushmore of rock’n’roll, Fats Domino would certainly be one of the faces up there, along with Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elvis Presley. He was one of the guys that transitioned rhythm and blues into rock’n’roll . He started out as a rhythm and blues barrelhouse piano player in New Orleans and then he did a record in 1949, produced by Dave Bartholomew, called “The Fat Man”. Depending on who you ask, that could be considered one of the first records that really strayed into rock’n’roll territory. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . The amount of hits that he had in the 1950s was just incredible. They were co-written and produced by Dave Bartholomew so they were arguably one of the most successful writing teams in rock’n’roll history. I have read the statistic that only Elvis sold more records than Fats in the 1950s. So commercially Fats was right up there. His influence on everybody, including Elvis, was pretty pronounced. The focus of the chapter on Fats in my book is to get an update on what has happened to him since Rick Coleman wrote his wonderful biography. Fats famously didn’t like to leave New Orleans for any reason and he didn’t evacuate before Katrina. He stayed in his house in the Lower Ninth Ward with some friends and members of his family. Of course that neighbourhood flooded badly once the levees breached on the nearby industrial canal. So he had eight feet of water in his neighbourhood. His family was forced to the second floor of the house and then were rescued by boat a couple of days after the storm. Afterwards he lived in Texas for a little while. But as soon as he could he came back to the New Orleans area, not to the Lower Ninth Ward, which was still devastated, but he bought a house in downtown New Orleans in a gated community and he still lives there. One interesting thing about Fats is that he was going to be the closing act at the first New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival after Hurricane Katrina in 2006. He was on the commemorative poster and it was a big homecoming for Fats, and the morning of the performance he had such terrible performance anxiety that he didn’t feel well enough to perform. He went to the hospital, they checked him out and everything seemed fine, but he just couldn’t do it. And that has been one of the things that has plagued Fats in his recent history. He just gets so anxious about performances and feels that he can’t live up to his reputation. He is in his early eighties, so that would explain why. I actually travelled with him to New York in 2007 when he was convinced to go up there to promote a post-Katrina CD that came out. People like Elton John, Nora Jones and Robert Plant all did Fats Domino songs and the proceeds went to the Katrina Foundation, which helped New Orleans musicians. So Fats went to New York for three days to appear on national TV shows and I tagged along with him. And my chapter about him in the book is all about him travelling around New York when he really didn’t want to be anywhere apart from New Orleans. The musicians’ community is part of the larger community as a whole. It is difficult to separate them. Music is such a part of everyday life here and musicians are integrated with civilians around town. Whatever effect the storm had on the city as a whole it also had on the music community. So the same percentage of homes that were lost in the general population was lost in the music community. It certainly didn’t discriminate. Fats, one of the most successful musicians in the history of New Orleans, and the incredibly successful Allen Toussaint – they both lost their houses. The majority have come back. You can be in most parts of the city now and not realise that the storm happened. Most of the neighbourhoods have been rehabilitated fairly successfully, although there are still parts of town where there are boarded-up houses. You would be hard pressed to find any sort of permanent mark on the music scene. We have just had the 2012 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and the attendance over seven days was 450,000, which is the largest attendance since 2003. Yes, it definitely gave locals more of a sense of pride in their own culture and community and it advertised to the world what was in danger of being lost. After the storm everyone wanted to have a New Orleans musician on their television show. Allen Toussaint said that Hurricane Katrina was the best booking agent that he ever had! He had more work after the storm than ever before. You get a lot more people coming down here. Lots of people came as volunteers to help rebuild."