Rock Hall of Fame cont'd Fats and Doors

Fats and Friend




Fats Domino's legacy pre-dates the rock era with his 1949 million seller, The Fat Man. The song was originally about drugs, but it was cleaned up to being a song that gave him his nickname. Fat came to the attention of white America when Pat Boone topped the charts with Ain’t It A Shame a grammatically improved but less rocking cover of Fat’s eventually number 10 hit Ain’t That A Shame. Although Fats was not a racial activist, he advanced the cause of racial equality by his acceptance of white audiences. Every town in America had a Blueberry Hill (Perhaps fond memories helped Fats' induction). Fats remained an international sensation and his remake of Hank Williams’ Jambalaya has become a Mardis Gras staple.

The Doors started out just wanting to be as good as their L.A. rivals Love, but they would develop a unique sound that combined the poetic lyrics of Jim Morrison with the frantic organ solos of Ray Manzarek, Robbie Krieger’s guitar, and John Densmore’s drums. An interesting thing about the band is that they did not use a bass player until their L.A. Woman album. The Doors were more popular in the 80’s than in their 60’s heyday due to manager Danny Sugerman’s No One Here Gets Out Alive biography of the band. Light My Fire, Riders on the Storm, L.A. Woman, Touch Me, and When the Musics Over are great tunes that belong in everyone’s collection. The band changed styles from album to album as any great band is able to do that is not confined by the corporate part of the music business into making cookie cutter versions of their previous hits. An album of Jim’s poetry, An American Prayer, contains Jim’s oral renditions of his poems set to the music of the band (Check out The Movie). Following Jim’s departure, the band continued with Other Voices and Full Circle. The surviving members engaged in other projects afterwards. Robbie had a great instrumental version of the Pretenders’ Tatooed Love Boys. Recently Robbie and Ray have toured with Ian Astbury of the Cult providing vocals as the Doors of the 21st Century.
More