Of all the early rock & rollers, Fats Domino was the easiest to take for granted, since he made it all seem so easy. Even when it rocked hard, his music was so relaxed, so friendly that it sounded effortless and natural, which was part of the reason that his classic recordings for Imperial in the '50s were so consistently enjoyable. All the hits, many of their flips sides, and most of his album cuts were flat-out fun -- maybe not as revolutionary as work by Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, and the Everly Brothers, but his body of work for Imperial not only stands proudly next to theirs, but is just as influential. This much is clear after years of hindsight, but in the late '60s he was as passé as any of his peers, even if there were legions of new rockers, from the Beatles to Randy Newman, who were raised on his music. It may have been only seven years since Fats had seven Top 40 singles in 1961, but when 1968 rolled around in the wake of the British Invasion, psychedelia, Swinging London, and the Summer of Love, it felt like a lifetime. Domino may have been out of step with the times, having struggled through a rough stint at ABC during the mid-'60s, but the pendulum had started to swing back toward straight-ahead rock & roll -- that year, the Rolling Stones shrugged off psychedelia with Beggars Banquet, the Band kicked off Americana with their debut, Music From Big Pink, and the Beatles started rocking again with Paul McCartney's Chuck Berry tribute "Back in the U.S.S.R." and his Fats homage "Lady Madonna." Perhaps picking up on this shift in tastes, Reprise Records chairman Mo Ostin, under the urging of staff producer Richard Perry, signed Domino for a comeback record that year. Perry helmed Fats Is Back, a splashy update of Domino's classic sound that sounds halfway between a Vegas review and the silver screen. Domino chose not to play piano on the album, so Perry drafted in fellow New Orleans pianist James Booker along with Fats disciple Randy Newman to play, and the results are close to Fats himself -- they may not roll quite as easy and they certainly are slicker, but the songs are strong (particularly Booker's "So Swell When You're Well" and a take on Barbara George's "I Know") and the music is a successful retooling of his classic sound, and when married to the spirited vocal performance from Fats, it's a thoroughly enjoyable album.
Unfortunately, Fats Is Back was not a successful album. Despite a high-profile single cover of "Lady Madonna" and a positive review from Jan Wenner in Rolling Stone, the album barely made any impact, and neither did the two singles that followed it. His final album for Reprise, simply entitled Fats, was comprised entirely of Dave Bartholomew-produced sessions from the late '60s and released only in the U.K. and Europe in 1971, never seeing proper release in the U.S. With that, Fats Domino's late-'60s comeback was over nearly as quickly as it began, and he never attempted any large-scale return to recording again. While these recordings may not have garnered much attention at the time, Rhino Handmade's single-disc 2005 release Sweet Patootie: The Complete Reprise Recordings proves that they were as reliably entertaining as most of Fats' other recordings from the '50s and '60s. At the very least, the Perry productions were a considerable improvement over the stilted ABC sides, which felt syrupy and directionless. Perry's work may have been glossy, but it rang true to the spirit of the Imperial recordings, and by de-emphasizing Domino's piano, it illustrated what a fine, versatile vocalist Fats was, and in his non-LP version of Newman's "Have You Seen My Baby?," Fats turned in his greatest latter-day performance. In contrast to the snazzy Perry productions, the music that made the Fats album is a little lazy. Instead of providing creative sparks, reuniting with Bartholomew let Domino relax just a little bit too much. He may have written the majority of the material here, often with Bartholomew, but the music rolls just a little bit too easy, with the piano buried even further in the mix here than it was on Fats Is Back. That said, Fats still was an enjoyable record -- the songs may have not been remarkable, but they're well written and fun -- and it's certainly a pleasant, respectable latter-day record from a giant of rock & roll. As a stand-alone record, it may have not amounted to much in the early '70s, but as the concluding portion of Sweet Patootie, it simply confirms that while Domino may have not been with the psychedelicized times of the late '60s, he still turned out good music -- music that may be better appreciated now, when placed in context of both the '60s and Fats' career, than it was then.
© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo