Fats Domino

Antoine “Fats” Domino was a big man. In the world of music, he was a giant. When he sat behind his piano on Gilley’s stage to play and sing some of the greatest songs of R&B and early rock ‘n’ roll, songs he made famous 20 to 30 years earlier, there was no doubt that everyone in the audience was in the presence of a legend. His performance on this Friday, March 6, 1981, was a rare one too: In the ’70s and ’80s, Fats agreed to only a handful of concerts each year outside his regular gigs in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe. Unusually shy for a performer, he preferred staying at home with his large family rather than continuing to tour like he had in the ’50s and ’60s.

In 1980, he performed at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival. Now he was at Gilley’s, the world’s most famous country music nightclub. But no one knew better than Fats how close country was to Cajun and blues, and how closely linked his boogie-woogie style was to the shake, rattle and roll of rock ‘n’ roll (Fats outsold every ’50s rock act except Elvis, who had his own connection to country and R&B). After all, Fats was born and raised in the great melting pot of music, New Orleans.

He knew how to play a club like Gilley’s, too. Back home, he’d been playing piano in honky-tonks since he was 10 years old. So Fats laid his relaxed, rich, Creole drawl over the rolling piano rhythms of his very first R&B hit, 1949’s “The Fat Man,” and his mid-fifties pop and rock classics, such as “Ain’t That A Shame,” “I’m Walkin’” and the blue twosome of “Blueberry Hill” and “Blue Monday.” But he also paid tribute to the sources of his music by pounding the ivories on two of his last hits, from the early ’60s, “Walking To New Orleans” and a cover of Hank Williams’ 1952 #1 hit “Jambalaya.”

By the time he walked off Gilley’s stage, smiling as always, he’d given an unforgettable reminder that music knew no boundaries, not of generation or race or style. A few years later, in 1986, he was honored as an original inductee into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. But, as the fans at Gilley’s this night already knew, Fats Domino was even bigger than that.