#Fats domino songs series#

His brother-in-law, Harrison Verret, was so thorough a mentor and the young Antoine so rapid a learner that he became a highly skilled piano player in an amazingly short period of time. Indefatigable piano playing frequently raised the crowd to excitable levels and the two knew right away they wanted him for Imperial.Īntoine Domino was a New Orleans native fiercely loyal to the city, particularly the Lower Ninth Ward where he'd lived since his birth in 1928.

Dave had heard the buzz on Fats Domino, who'd been playing with Billy Diamond's band at the Hideaway Club on Desire Street, so he took Chudd down to check out the show in this place that lived up to its name, hidden from plain view across the tracks at the end of a path (the sound of the blasting music filling the air well before the juke joint itself could be seen). Her 1950 hit as Jewel King, '3 x 7 = 21' ('I'm going out there and have myself some fun!'), came out of that first session. He wasted no time in bringing promising acts to the roster of the two-year-old label, starting with Mary Jewel King in late November she had made some recordings for DeLuxe but none were released. As he was already a recording act for DeLuxe, he signed with Chudd as a producer and A&R man. Imperial Records owner Lew Chudd, in New Orleans during the fall of 1949 scouting for acts to sign, caught Bartholomew's set in a local nightclub and made him an offer. Daddy O' Winslow ('The First Colored Disc Jockey in New Orleans') led to a contract with DeLuxe Records, where he worked with Roy Brown and recorded his own sides.

#Fats domino songs series#

A series of guest shots on the WJMR radio show hosted by Vernon 'Dr. He formed his own band shortly after the end of World War II, working clubs in and around the Big Easy. Before long people were calling him 'Little Davey' Bartholomew. He began practicing trumpet around age ten with instruction from Peter Davis, who'd taught Louis Armstrong some two decades earlier within a couple of years Dave would occasionally join his father, a tuba player, in local bands, sometimes performing on riverboats. He never considered recording Domino, his promising discovery, anywhere else.īartholomew was born in 1920 in Edgard, Louisiana, about 50 miles to the east of New Orleans on the Mississippi River. Bartholomew was convinced early of Matassa's passion and the sonically ideal conditions the studio presented. If that seems a bit self-centered, it was entirely justified for many years, Cosimo did all the recording and engineering as the studio became the unassuming yet grand central hub of music production in the south. The studio had been built a few years earlier as a result of Matassa's love of blues and rhythmic music and desire to do more than simply work at his Italian family's grocery store located adjacent to the space that became the J&M studio, which Cosimo later named after himself. They couldn't have known it at the time, but it was one of music history's cornerstone moments, a recording session the results of which heavily influenced the direction music would take over the decade that followed. December 10, 1949: Bandleader-producer Dave Bartholomew and a group of New Orleans' finest, most street-smart musicians assembled at Cosimo Matassa's studio on Rampart Street for the first recording session featuring a young piano-pounder named Antoine Domino.