Play It Again, Fats

When I was eight years old, The Very Best of Fats Domino, aka Play It Again, Fats, was my favourite album. Of all my parents' records it was the one I liked best. Nostalgia prompted me to buy CD compilations of Domino's hits in the '90s and '00s, but none of them sounded quite right, and what I came to realize was that I wanted to hear those specific songs, in that order, and on vinyl.

Luckily it must have been a popular compilation, as I've found a few copies in charity shops over the past decade, buying one for myself, and another, with a different cover (the latter the same as my Dad's old copy) for my sister, who remembered the album no less fondly than I did. This is glorious music that I dearly love.

My Dad maintains that Fats invented rock'n'roll, and he certainly had a claim worth staking, with the supercharged boogie of the opening track 'The Fat Man', dating back to December '49 (if it's not rock'n'roll then it's barely a stone's throw short of it). Favourite songs of mine on the record include 'Be My Guest', 'Blue Monday', 'It Keeps Rainin'' (irksomely absent from the CD compilations I'd bought), 'My Girl Josephine', 'I'm Ready' and 'I've Been Around'.

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