Tracks: Blueberry Hill//Honey Chile//What's the Reason//Blue Monday//So Long//La-La//Troubles of My Own//You Done Me Wrong//Reeling & Rocking//The Fat Man's Hop//Poor Me//Trust In Me
It’s a rock and roll album, but you wouldn’t really describe it as rockin'. This is a very laid-back and soulful affair. It’s more... cheery, than anything. The Barry White to Little Richard's Funkadelic. Fats Domino was one of the earlier pioneers of rock music, and it seems like by this album he still hadn’t got around to updating his style from the late 40s. This album is tacked together from singles recorded across the fifties, but remains stylistically extremely coherent nonetheless. All but one of the tracks is piano-led, most of them have a saxophone take the chorus. Honestly, it’s difficult to pick which tracks would have been recorded when just by listening.
So. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Fats is doing something interesting here, and he does it well. He has a simple, relaxed style built-up around blues and pop with very strong gospel influences, and he marries that to a steady, gently swinging rock beat and lets the song carry itself on his pleasant crooning and distinctive, pulsing piano playing. “Blueberry Hill” is a fine example of this, very nice crooning R&B - an utterly lovelyl song, almost lighter than air. A few peppier numbers emerge to shake things up a bit, and he gets the horns out regularly to crank up the soul (although I suppose soul music as such didn’t really exist at this point – Fats and his ilk were busy creating it). Having said this, he does manage to work quite a bit of variety into what is a relatively restrictive format. “Reelin’ & Rockin’” stands-out the most from the crowd. The layers of horns and piano are stripped off and it rides a steady swinging beat, a proto-surf guitar and a tambourine that just won’t stop. It’s completely non-threatening, but it’s danceable and a lot of fun – I get the impression that a live show with Fats would have been pretty wild, but the records are for better part a family affair.
“The Fat Man’s Hop” is another stand-out – a straight-up blues instrumental, with the melody carried on the saxophone. “Trust In Me”, conversely, is a full-blown, honest to god rock & roll song. It’s got a repeating horn groove over which Fats croons, and an amazing display of folk-influenced electric guitar bubbling away like something from a Django Rheinhardt song over the top. It’s probably the only song that comes close to dropping the “restrained” qualifier from it, although to be fair standards were different back then and audio recording was not always at a great level. “What’s The Reason (I’m Not Pleasing You)” has an infectious little groove carried by slowly rising horn bends, and some funny little lyrics. In fact the lyrics on this album are all quite nice – there’s nothing earth shattering about them, but they’re often fairly funny. The choruses on “Blue Monday” build up to a modest crescendo on the strength of some nice stuttering drum breaks. It’s a pretty simple song about Mondayitis, but it’s not half bad. “So Long” is in a similar vein, but has a more delicate bridge carried by some beautiful saxophone playing.
There’s not much point going into depth with this album. You’d probably got a fair idea of what it sounds like. This is, blessedly, far more the antecedent of something like Stevie Wonder than Steven Tyler, you might say. Fats Domino was massively successful in his time, and there’s something so darn fun about the pleasant, positive music on this album that makes you see exactly why. Most of the songs aren’t immediately mind-blowing, but it has understated charm and a suitable danceability. The mix of R&B and rock is also a wonderful sign of things to come in the next decade - everything from the Shangri-Las to Sam Cooke to Curtis Mayfield and Nancy Sinatra. It's a goddamn blueprint for soul and R&B. And it’s great! Kids can make-out to it and grandparents can drink tea and talk about the war. Fun for the whole family.
I really like this. It’s... graceful.
8/10
Download: Fats Domino - Blueberry Hill.mp3
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