Fats Domino Biography

Antoine Dominique "Fats" Domino (born February 26, 1928 in New Orleans, Louisiana), is a classic R&B and rock and roll singer, songwriter and pianist. He was the best-selling African-American singer of the 1950s and early 1960s. Domino is also a pianist with an individualistic bluesy style showing stride and boogie-woogie influences. His congenial personality and rich accent have added to his appeal.

Domino first attracted national attention with "The Fat Man" (1949, Imperial Records), credited by some as being the first rock and roll record, featuring a rolling piano and Domino doing wah-wah vocalizing over a fat back beat. The record, a reworking of "Junker's Blues" by Champion Jack Dupree, was a massive hit, selling over a million copies and peaking at #2 on the Billboard R&B Charts. It has been estimated that Domino has sold in excess of 110 million records.

Domino then released a series of hit songs with producer and co-writer Dave Bartholomew, saxophonist Alvin "Red" Tyler and drummer Earl Palmer. Other notable and long-standing musicians in Domino's band were saxophonists Reggie Houston, Lee Allen, and Fred Kemp who was also Domino's trusted bandleader. Domino finally crossed into the pop mainstream with "Ain't That a Shame" (1955) which hit the Top Ten, though Pat Boone characteristically hit #1 with a milder cover of the song that received wider radio airplay in a segregated era. Domino would eventually release 37 Top 40 singles, including "Whole Lotta Loving", "Blue Monday".

His 1956 uptempo version of the old song "Blueberry Hill", reached #2 in the Top 40, was #1 on the R&B charts for 11 weeks, and was his biggest hit. The song had earlier been recorded by Louis Armstrong.

Fats appeared in two films released in 1956: Shake, Rattle & Rock! and The Girl Can't Help It. On 18 December 1957, Domino's hit "The Big Beat" was featured on Dick Clark's American Bandstand.

Domino continued to have a steady series of hits for Imperial through early 1962. Twenty-two of his Imperial singles were double-sided hits -- that is, both the A-side and the B-side of the single charted (i.e., 44 songs). After he moved to ABC-Paramount in 1963, however, Domino's chart career was drastically curtailed. He managed one top 40 hit for ABC (1963's "Red Sails In The Sunset"), but by the end of 1964 the British Invasion had changed the tastes of the record-buying public, and Domino's chart run was over.

Despite the lack of chart success, Domino continued to record steadily until about 1970, and sporadically after that. He also continued as a popular live act for several decades. He was furthermore acknowledged as an important influence on the music of the sixties and seventies by some of the top artists of that era; Beatles song "Lady Madonna" was reportedly written by Paul McCartney in an emulation of Domino's style. Domino did manage to return to the "Hot 100" charts one last time in 1968. Ironically, it was with a cover of The Beatles' "Lady Madonna", which appeared at exactly #100 for two consecutive weeks.

In the 1980s, Domino decided he would no longer leave New Orleans, having a comfortable income from royalties and a dislike for touring, and claiming he could not get any food that he liked anyplace else. His induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and an invitation to perform at the White House failed to get Domino to make an exception to this policy. He lived in a mansion in a predominantly working-class Lower 9th Ward neighborhood, where he was a familiar sight in his bright pink Cadillac. He makes yearly appearances at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and other local events.

His career has been produced and managed since the 1980s by multimedia entertainment purveyor and music producer Robert G. Vernon. During Vernon's tenure, Domino's earnings have increased 500%.

Since 1995, Vernon and Domino have been partners (with many other companies, such as Dick Clark Productions) in the Bobkat Music Trust. Bobkat Music is an entertainment group that manages the careers (some posthumous) of Fats Domino, Randy Pringle (writer), and others.

Nationally charted hits shown in bold. (Virtually all of Domino's singles of the 1950s and 60s charted regionally in the US south, especially in New Orleans.)