The origins and continuum of early rock ‘n’ roll can get significantly blurrier than most casual listeners think, but once you get acclimated to the idea of these old songs skipping across genres it helps explain the evolution of pop crossover in a more accessible way.
Buddy Holly & The Crickets – “Valley Of Tears” (1958) Here are eight highlights from the icon’s repertoire crossing the lines of musical evolution through the decades. There is perhaps no more fitting place to start than Fats Domino. Starting this week, we’re going to change things up a bit, and focus on covers of different songs by an individual artist. Seemingly everyone who had their ears open from the early ’50s onwards had his sounds in their veins, and it’s worth noting just how natural it sounded in the guises of so many different genres and voices.īefore we get to the songs, one programming note: Up till now, this column has collected and discussed different covers of an individual song. (Does anybody under the age of 80 remember “Blueberry Hill” as a Glenn Miller Orchestra number?) And his crossover success came not out of compromise, but adaptability - he could occupy the rhythms of country & western as surely as he could bring the New Orleans second line to the rest of the nation and beyond, a pioneer of rock ‘n’ roll as a polyglot blanket genre that drastically outsold other claimants to that effect like Elvis, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard - combined, at least for a while.
His sides for Imperial, many cowritten and produced by New Orleans titan composer Dave Bartholomew and 40 of which hit the R&B top 10, first became hits, then standards, then permanent entries in the great 20th century American songbook others he claimed so thoroughly that covers of them became covers of him. Still, Domino’s amiability was far from a weakness.
#Fats domino free
That didn’t keep his concerts free of actual danger and rowdiness - riots sprung up at four of his shows, side effects of the difficulties in early integration efforts at some Southern entertainment venues - but there was a distinct good-natured feeling to his music, whether he was joyous or heartbroken, that set him apart as an affably shy person in a world of larger-than-life figures intent on building the new pantheon of postwar pop music. As a Black man whose renown coincided with the civil rights struggles of the ’50s and ’60s, he was a rebel when he needed to be, but as a multi-million-selling presence on both the pop and R&B charts, he was an amiable figure who found angles in his music that weren’t just predicated on teenage danger and piano-burning rowdiness. The version by Fats Domino was also ranked number 82 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.Antoine “Fats” Domino, who passed away a bit over a week ago at the age of 89, was a rock ‘n’ roll pioneer and a major star who nonetheless never really scanned as a rock ‘n’ roll star. It reached number two for three weeks on the Billboard Top 40 charts, becoming his biggest pop hit, and spent eight non-consecutive weeks at number one on the R&B Best Sellers chart. It was an international hit in 1956 for Fats Domino and has become a rock and roll standard. Louis Armstrong's 1949 recording charted in the Billboard Top 40, reaching number 29. The largest 1940 hit was by the Glenn Miller Orchestra, which reached #2 on the US charts. Other 1940 recordings were by: the Glenn Miller Orchestra on Bluebird Records (10768), Kay Kyser, Russ Morgan, Gene Autry (also in the 1941 film The Singing Hill), Connee Boswell, and Jimmy Dorsey. Gene Krupa's version was issued on OKeh Records on June 3 and singer Mary Small recorded a vocal version on the same label with Nat Brandwynne's orchestra, released June 20, 1940. Victor Records released the recording by the Sammy Kaye Orchestra with vocals by Tommy Ryan on May 31, 1940. The music was written by Vincent Rose, the lyrics by Larry Stock and Al Lewis. "Blueberry Hill" is a popular song published in 1940 best remembered for its 1950s rock and roll version by Fats Domino.
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