© ECHOES/REDFERNS
Before entering Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studio in the second week of December 1949, Fats Domino had been plying his trade performing at various dive bars across New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. But after answering a call for local talent from Imperial Records label boss Lew Chudd, he would go on to change the face of rock’n’roll forever. Among the first batch of material he recorded for the label was The Fat Man, a song based on the old New Orleans tune Junker Blues that would feature a typically rollicking turn on piano by Domino, then aged just 21. Rush-released to make it into stores before Christmas, the single eventually gained traction in the new year, making it to No.2 in the US R&B charts in February 1950. Regularly cited as the first rock’n’roll record to sell one million copies, The Fat Man remains a seminal 7" in the history of the genre.