In standing-room-only clubs and in throngs at jazz fests, they sing and sway to the music of this inscrutable Buddha of New Orleans with his ring-encrusted hands and dapper colored suits. "Oh," Fats demurred, "I've been asked about that a thousand times."Ī rare Fats Domino performance invariably brings out a cross-section of people. "What about 'Ain't That a Shame'?" I asked. In 1999, when awarded the presidential medal of the arts, Fats dispatched his daughter, Antoinette, to the White House.Īt first, Fats reluctantly agreed to be interviewed for the radio. But the king on this throne rarely gives interviews, sticking instead to home cooking and unannounced outings to neighborhood bars in one of his Rolls-Royces. The centerpiece of the living room is a pink Cadillac tailfin couch. Large dominoes are inlaid in the entryway tower. A neon sign under one eave proclaims, "Fats Domino Publishing." There are two grand pianos in this down-home graceland, one white, one black. Around the compound is an elaborate iron fence, trimmed in pink and green, ornamented by bas-relief grapevines. Then there's the cream, green and pink building that's home to his childhood sweetheart and wife, Rosemary. The main house is a classic New Orleans style shotgun double, yellow with black trim. While Fats' father, Antoine Sr., played the fiddle, it was brother-in-law Harrison Verette, a jazz banjo player, who taught young Fats piano.ĭomino, who's 72, lives in seclusion, as he has since the early '60s, in a sort of chieftain's compound that is oddly extravagant and modest at the same time. Today it's a mixed residential and industrial neighborhood, but in Fats' youth, it was pretty much country with unpaved roads, no electricity and small farms. He grew up only a few blocks from where he lives now, downriver from the French Quarter in the Ninth Ward. He and his family now live in Harvey, La.Īntoine Domino is the Louisiana French name for the man whose honey voice, Creole inflection, rock-steady piano triplets and basic boogie blues and love songs endeared him to the world in the 1950s, as New Orleans rhythm and blues flowed into and helped define the mainstream of American rock 'n' roll.īorn in 1928, Fats Domino was the youngest of eight children in a French Creole family. Hear the story - which aired on All Things Considered on behind his breakthrough hit, "Ain't That A Shame." Since this story aired, Fats' home in New Orleans was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Sunday marked Fats Domino 's 84th birthday. Legendary American jazz pianist and singer Fats Domino.
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