Fats Domino

Fats Domino first attracted national attention with "The Fat Man" in 1949 on Imperial Records. This song is an early rock and roll record, featuring a rolling piano and Domino doing "wah-wah" vocalizing over a strong back beat. "The Fat Man" sold one million copies by 1953. Fats Domino released a series of hit songs with producer and co-writer Dave Bartholomew, saxophonists Herbert Hardesty and Alvin "Red" Tyler and drummers Earl Palmer and Smokey Johnson. Other notable and long-standing musicians in Domino's band were saxophonists Reggie Houston, Lee Allen, and Fred Kemp, 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 No. 1 with a milder cover of the song that received wider radio airplay in a racially-segregated era. Domino eventually had 37 Top 40 singles.
Domino's first album, Carry on Rockin', was released under the Imperial imprint, No. 9009, in November 1955 and subsequently reissued as Rock and Rollin' with Fats Domino in 1956. Combining a number of his hits along with some tracks that had not yet been released as singles, the album went on under its alternate title to reach No. 17 on the "Pop Albums" chart.
His 1956 up-tempo version of the 1940 Vincent Rose, Al Lewis & Larry Stock song, "Blueberry Hill" reached No. 2 in the Top 40, was No. 1 on the R&B charts for 11 weeks, and was his biggest hit. "Blueberry Hill" sold more than 5 million copies worldwide in 1956–57. The song had earlier been recorded by Gene Autry, and Louis Armstrong among many others. He had further hit singles between 1956 and 1959, including "When My Dreamboat Comes Home" (Pop No. 14), "I'm Walkin'" (Pop No. 4), "Valley of Tears" (Pop No. 8), "It's You I Love" (Pop No. 6), "Whole Lotta Loving" (Pop No. 6), "I Want to Walk You Home" (Pop No. 8), and "Be My Guest" (Pop No. 8).
Domino appeared in two films released in 1956: Shake, Rattle & Rock! and The Girl Can't Help It. On December 18, 1957, Domino's hit "The Big Beat" was featured on Dick Clark's American Bandstand.
On November 2, 1956, a riot broke out at Fats Domino's show in Fayetteville, NC, with police resorting to tear gas to break up the unruly crowd. Domino jumped out of a window to avoid the melee; he and two other band members were slightly injured.
Domino continued to have a steady series of hits for Imperial through early 1962, including "Walkin' to New Orleans" (1960, Pop No. 6), co-written by Bobby Charles, and "My Girl Josephine" (Pop No. 14) from the same year. After Imperial Records was sold to outside interests in early 1963, Domino left the label: "I stuck with them until they sold out," he claimed in 1979. In all, Domino recorded over 60 singles for the label, placing 40 songs in the top 10 on the R&B charts, and scoring 11 top 10 singles on the pop charts. Twenty-two of Domino's Imperial singles were double-sided hits.

Domino moved to ABC-Paramount Records in 1963. The label dictated that he record in Nashville rather than New Orleans. He was assigned a new producer (Felton Jarvis) and a new arranger (Bill Justis); Domino's long-term collaboration with producer/arranger/frequent co-writer Dave Bartholomew, who oversaw virtually all of his Imperial hits, was seemingly at an end.
Jarvis and Justis changed the Domino sound somewhat, notably by adding the backing of a countrypolitan-style vocal chorus to most of his new recordings. Perhaps as a result of this tinkering with an established formula, Domino's chart career was drastically curtailed. He released 11 singles for ABC-Paramount, but only had one top 40 entry with "Red Sails In The Sunset" (1963). 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, leaving ABC-Paramount in mid-1965 and recording for a variety of other labels: Mercury, Dave Bartholomew's small Broadmoor label (reuniting with Bartholomew along the way), and Reprise. His final Top 100 chart single was on Reprise, a cover of The Beatles' "Lady Madonna" which peaked at No. 100 in 1968. He also continued as a popular live act for several decades.
He made a cameo appearance in the movie Any Which Way You Can, filmed in 1979 and released in 1980, which resulted in a Country Chart hit, "Whiskey Heaven".