This 4-CD box set contains 100 classic recordings, many available for the first time in originally recorded stereo. All tracks are digitally remastered.
An amazing piece of work - a massive eight-disc boxed set that contains every one of Fats Domino's 1949-1962 Imperial waxings. That's a tremendous load of one artist, but the legacy of Domino and his partner Dave Bartholomew is so consistently innovative and infectious that it never grows tiresome for a second. From the clarion call of "The Fat Man," Domino's 1949 debut, to the storming "Dance with Mr. Domino" in 1962, he typified everything charming about Crescent City R&B, his Creole patois and boogie-based piano a non-threatening vehicle for the rise of rock & roll.
Released in conjunction in 2002 with the four-disc box set Walking to New Orleans, as well as three other titles in EMI/Capitol's Crescent City Soul series, The Fats Domino Jukebox: 20 Greatest Hits the Way You Originally Heard Them becomes the definitive single-disc Fats collection on the market nearly by default – it's remastered, it's the one in print, and it has a flawless selection of songs. It's not markedly better than, say, the '90s' definitive Fats compilation, My Blue Heaven, since it has essentially the same track selection and even if the tapes were restored to their originally running speed, the difference is not enough for most ears to notice, but it's still a great collection of some of the greatest music of its time, and it summarizes Domino's peaks excellently. So, if you don't already have a Fats Domino collection, this surely is the one to get.
In what would become Fats Domino’s final public performance, he with his 9-piece band demonstrating why he is considered one of the pioneers of Rock and Roll. This previously unreleased album - Live at Tipitina’s - was multi tracked recorded and professionally mixed so you can feel like you were right there in the middle of it all.
The fifth and final volume in Ace's extensive series documenting Fats Domino's singles for Imperial covers the years in which the singer was settling into a slow and steady commercial decline after his mammothly successful first decade as a recording artist. When you were as big a star as Domino was, of course, that's relative. His final two Top 40 hits ("Jambalaya [On the Bayou]" and "You Win Again") are here, and several other tracks dented the charts, if in their lower regions. Still, not many of these show up on Domino best-ofs, not only because they weren't big hits, but because the early '60s found the Fat Man starting to tread water artistically.
The first three volumes of the Fats Domino Imperial Singles series (CDCHD 597, 649 and 689) saw New Orleans’ finest ascend from neophyte blues and boogie-woogie stylist to bona fide rock’n’roll star. With gold-plated hits of the calibre of ‘Ain’t That A Shame’, ‘Blueberry Hill’, ‘Blue Monday’ and ‘I’m Walkin’’ receding into history, it was assumed that Fats had peaked artistically. Wrong: One spin of this release will dispel that notion handsomely.