Fats Domino Still Cooks: Talking With the Big Easy Legend : Rolling Stone

At the door of his mansion in the gated community of Barkley Estates, across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, Fats Domino is dressed in black slacks, black patent-leather shoes, a purple dress shirt, a captain's hat and a gold chain that dangles a small gold airplane. At seventy-nine, with little hunch in his five-foot-five frame, he could more accurately be nicknamed Slightly Plumps Domino.

Inside, he points out his dining-room wall, on which he has hung two gold records — "Blue Monday" and "Rosemary" — that he managed to rescue from his old house in the Ninth Ward. His other twenty gold records got looted or washed away during Hurricane Katrina two years ago. He lives with Rosemary, his wife of sixty years, and two of his eight adult children, who help take care of Mom and Dad. The kitchen is spotless, like a catalog for high-end plumbing fixtures. His bedroom, across from the dining room on the ground floor, smells overwhelmingly and intoxicatingly of beans. He is cooking red beans in a big pot on a two-burner grill in his bathroom, which is next to his bedroom. In the middle of the bathroom floor stands a treadmill with bath towels and dish towels hanging from the rails. The counter around the sink is covered with toiletries, kitchen utensils and onions.

On the ride to lunch at the Napoleon House in the French Quarter, Fats sits in the back seat and makes up a song. "I've got a good relation with the Tipitina's Foundation," he sings. "That's what I'm telling you, and you should too." This is a reference to the two other guys in the car, Roland von Kurnatowski, who started the foundation and owns the Tipitina's nightclub, and Bill Taylor, who is the executive director. The foundation is on a mission to preserve New Orleans culture and has recently released a rousing two-CD album called Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino, which features everyone from Robert Plant to Norah Jones doing Fats Domino songs, with the profits going to buy instruments for schoolchildren and aid local musicians. "I've got a good relation with the Heineken Foundation," Fats sings, sucking on his beer. "That's what I'm telling you, and you should too."

At the restaurant, Fats gets another beer and, according to his habit, doesn't eat anything. Also according to his habit, he doesn't say anything. Eating food he hasn't cooked and talking to people he doesn't know rank near the top of his list of least-favorite activities. Most stressful of all is probably talking to strange people with notebooks. So I keep mine in my pocket until just before the end of the meal, when I figure I've got nothing to lose, and ask him the secret of writing great songs.

"Bein' lucky," he says.

Where had he picked up the triplets that are such a hallmark of his piano style? "I don't know," he says. "I think it might have been Amos Milburn."

Someone asks what a triplet is.

"Duh-duh-duh, duh-duh-duh," he says.

I ask if he has any theories why his concerts sometimes sparked riots in the 1950s.

"I don't know," he says. "It wasn't anything in the music, so it must have been something in the audience."

After lunch, we take a ride to his previous home in the Lower Ninth Ward, where Fats lived for his entire life and had to leave in a boat after Katrina. The interior of the house is completely gutted and smells of baked mildew in the 100-degree heat. Next door stands "Fats Domino Publishing," which served as his clubhouse. Beyond the compound fence stretches a vast tangle of weeds. The only evidence that it used to be the Lower Ninth Ward, a community of poor and working-class blacks, is a handful of homesteaders and dozens of fire hydrants that poke out of the undergrowth. And he plans to move back here? "At my age," he says, "you can't count on nothin'."

— Excerpt from Issue 1041

Click below to listen to tracks from Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino.

LISTEN: I'm Walkin' — Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

LISTEN: Goin' Home — BB King with Ivan Neville's DumpstaPhunk

LISTEN: Blueberry Hill — Elton John

LISTEN: Don't Leave Me This Way — Dr. John

LISTEN: When I See You — Olu Dara featuring Donald Harrison

LISTEN: Blue Monday — Randy Newman

LISTEN: I Hear You Knockin' — Willie Nelson

LISTEN: Rising Sun — Marc Broussard featuring Sam Bush

LISTEN: It Keeps Raining — Robert Plant with Lil' Band O' Gold

LISTEN: I'm Gonna Be A Wheel Someday — Herbie Hancock with George Porter Jr., Zigaboo Modeliste & Renard Poche'