APRIL 1955 …Fats Domino turns shame to triumph
At first, Dave Bartholomew wasn’t keen on Ain’t That A Shame – or Ain’t It A Shame, as it appeared on its original Imperial records label – as it seemed too simplistic. Nicknamed ‘Leather Lungs’ back when he was a jazz trumpeter in New Orleans, Bartholomew had been producing and arranging Louisiana pianist and singer Antoine ‘Fats’ Domino since his 1950 breakthrough, The Fat Man. That pounding single was a distorted back-and-forth rocker with a big bottom and rolling, bluesy keys. For all its driving beat, this new love-lost song was different, more delicate; more pop, even.
Maybe it was where they recorded it. Before, Fats’ songs had invariably been cut at home in New Orleans, at Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Recording Studio. A snug, direct-to-disc set-up, J&M was installed in the back of the family appliance store on Rampart Street on the edge of the French Quarter (famously, it later became a launderette). But on March 15, Fats had been gigging in Los Angeles at the 5-4 Ballroom, and his and Bartholomew’s new co-write was recorded at Master Recorders in Hollywood. Those accompanying on the date included new sax player Herbert Hardesty, guitarist Walter ‘Papoose’ Nelson, drummer Cornelius Coleman and bassist Billy Diamond, who was credited for giving Fats his nickname.
According to archivists Bear Family, Ain’t It A Shame marked the first time that engineer Abraham ’Bunny’ Robyn persuaded Imperial’s boss Lew Chudd that Fats’ recordings sounded “logey” – or insufficiently lively – and sped up a song to make him sound younger. The soon-to-be-standard technique did the trick, and the track was positively bursting with teen appeal. “You got a big record, Fats,” was Chudd’s verdict.
Someone who agreed was Cleveland DJ Bill Randle, who played R&B and jazz on a show called The Interracial Goodwill Hour on Detroit radio. Having got an advance copy of Ain’t It A Shame, he played it to Randy Wood of Dot Records, a label which exploited the commercial potential, in a still-segregated America, of “acceptable” white acts covering material by black artists. So it came to pass that Florida pop singer Pat Boone released a gritted-teeth, blanded-out version of Fats’ song almost as soon as he did. A stickler for correct grammar, Boone allegedly argued that it should be retitled Isn’t It A Shame.
“You might not think I sound black but back then people just didn’t know R&B music,” Boone later protested to Goldmine. “That’s a good illustration of the function I and others served. We were making a whole other kind of music known to a blissfully ignorant majority of the public… we did serve a very useful function… for better or worse.”
Fats admitted this gazumping hurt. But as recipient of writing as well as recording royalties, it could have been worse. Once, he brought Boone up on stage at a show, showed off a big gold ring and announced, “Pat Boone bought me this ring.” He indicated something similar when reflecting on Ricky Nelson having a hit with I’m Walkin’ before he did, in 1957. “It helped me,” Fats told NME journalist Mick Farren in 1977. “When he sold all those records with one of my songs, I made a lot of money. Of course, it wasn’t just the money, I got my music in front of a whole new audience.”
While Boone’s version was a US Number 1 for two weeks in July, Fats’ original hit Number 10 on the pop charts the same month (it was
“You got a big record, Fats.” LEW CHUDD, IMPERIAL RECORDS
also an R&B chart chart-topper for 11 weeks). With Bill Haley & His Comets’ Rock Around The Clock also out of the gate, Fats’ first crossover hit would soon be followed by Chuck Berry’s Maybellene, then Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti, also recorded at J&M in New Orleans, and then Elvis. The rock’n’roll era was truly underway, and Ain’t That A Shame was one of its cornerstones.
Fats would score seven more R&B Number 1’s and 36 more pop hits, including Top 10 Bartholomew co-writes Blue Monday, Whole Lotta Lovin’ and Walking To New Orleans, and his definitive version of Blueberry Hill, before bowing out of the Top 40 in 1963. His last US chart entry was a 1968 cover of Lady Madonna by The Beatles, who’d written it with him in mind (both Paul McCartney and John Lennon would later cover Ain’t That A Shame, the latter naming the song as the first he ever learned). Fats remained a strong live draw into the mid-’90s: thereafter, he kept a low profile close to home in New Orleans and cooked. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, he had to be rescued by boat, and returned six weeks later to his looted home to find ‘R.I.P. Fats’ painted on his balcony. “I sure do appreciate that people think so much about me,” he said.
He left us in 2017. Dave Bartholomew reached 100 before checking out two years later, but not before having come round to his and Fats Domino’s first big hit. “Ain’t That A Shame will never die,” he said. “It will be here when the world comes to an end.”