Fats Domino - Greatest Hits: Walking To New Orleans
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Free Music Notes for Greatest Hits: Walking To New Orleans
Free Music Review: a must buy
Hit: 5 Stars
This is the best CD I've purchased in a long time....songs that I remembered & songs that I'd forgotten about. A must have for Fats' fans.Free Music Review: strong sound
Hit: 5 Stars
This is a great collection with all the songs you expect. A key component of the New Orleans sound.Free Music Review: MOST ARE REMASTERED "SINGLE-TRACKS"
Hit: 4 Stars
I'm a little disappointed in this CD even though it contains almost all of Fat's great tunes ("I Hear You Knocking" and "Kansas City" are missing).
The cause of my disappointment, I must own up, was my ignorance about the term "remaster." I bought this CD because other reviewers had given it an average score of a perfect five, and because one reviewer reported that all 30 hits had been digitally remastered. That is accurate. My problem was that I didn't realize that the first 24 songs were remasters of the original SINGLE channel recordings -and that does NOT translate to STEREO sound.
Since buying this CD, I researched and discovered that the first stereophonic phonograph records didn't become available to the general public until 1958. This Fats Domino CD arranges the songs in the order that they were recorded, starting with "The Fat Man" (1951) and ending with "Let The Four Winds Blow" (1961). I'm happy to say that this CD does contain five post-1958 (stereo) songs: "I Want To Walk You Home," "Be My Guest," "Walking To New Orleans," "My Girl Josephine," and "Let The Four Winds Blow." These five have a rich a sound with the instruments and voices sounding clear -and out of separate speakers.
Because of this CD's good remastering, even some of the pre-1958 tunes seem to have at least "a suggestion" of stereo separation. That's some consolation to a stereophile like me. I love Fats Domino tunes, they have a beat that make you itch to jump up to the floor to move those feet! They're works of a musical master and a true gentleman with a sweet spirit. It's just too bad that EVERY song wasn't able to be recorded in multi-track stereo. As the Fat Man sang, "Ain't that a shame."
*My ignorance about the limits of modern re-mastering technology led me to expect a fabulous stereo sound on all 30 tunes...silly boy! Now I understand the reality of remastering and hope this is helpful to you too. To further your savviness of "remastering," I'm adding the following information:
Digital Remastering is a term that is often believed to mean "made better." Not necessarily true! Remastering simply refers to some process of modifying one of the recorded versions. The success of that product actually sounding better to us depends on: 1. The skill and experience of the mastering engineer staff; 2. The equipment used for the process; 3. The quality of the original source recordings; 4. Our personal taste -ie: does addition of "reverberation" improve the song for you or annoy you? It usually annoys me.
Note that several different levels of masters often exist for any one audio release, so many different CD qualities can result. In the 1960s, instruments and vocals were recorded on multi-track tapes. Then these tapes were mixed to create a stereo or mono master. Further, a secondary master tape would likely be created from this original master recording consisting of equalization and other adjustments and improvements to the audio to make it sound better on vinyl, 8-track tape, etc.
Adding to the problem of different levels of master copies being used, is the fact that different levels of skills and/or equipment can be employed to create different songs in the SAME CD! This results in varying qualities among the song selections. An example of this is on the "The Beach Boys -Sounds of Summer" CD. All 30 songs were recorded during the stereo recording era, yet a couple of the songs like "Surfin' Safari" barely sound stereophonic. Moreover, the 1965 "California Girls" has much better stereophonic voice/instrument isolation than the 1988 "Kokomo" which is 13 years younger.
Another problem is that many of the remastered CDs from the late 1990s onwards have had the average volume of the recording raised -at the expense of dynamic range! This makes the new remastered version sound very different than the original song. Many of the individual instruments and/or voices can nearly disappear among an irritating garble of racket. This is unnecessary, and any reduction in dynamic range totally turns me off. I need to be able to savor the lowest and the highest notes that the musicians played!
The modern era gives publishers almost unlimited ways to touch up, doctor, and "improve" their media. As each release promises improved sound, producers hope these upgrades will entice people into making another purchase. If I get a superbly done copy then I'm glad I spent the extra money. Otherwise, I feel that both I and the artists themselves are being ripped off.
USER REVIEWS can help save the rest of us from falling prey to buying copies of music with inferior recording. Let's all put pressure on record producers to create recordings that do full justice to the amazing vocal and instrumental talents of the artists! We all can do this by writing reviews that always discuss such qualities as the degree of stereo isolation of voices and instruments, their clarity and robustness, and the fullness of dynamic range, etc.
Then, only buy CD's with high marks in those areas. Let's end the junk copies!
Free Music Review: Has All His Great 1950s Hits on Imperial
Hit: 4 Stars
"Fats Domino: Greatest Hits: Walking to New Orleans" (September 2007) is a good, thorough, one disk compilation of all the 1950s hits, on Imperial, that made the piano-playing Domino famous. And a few more seminal bits and pieces, too: the CD's got 30 cuts in all. It's also a solid illustration of what makes Domino one of his hometown's --New Orleans -- most engaging, entertaining exports.
The cuts included here, like all Domino's work for Imperial, were produced by his close, long-term friend Dave Bartholomew, and what a stroke of luck that proved for the musicians. Domino and Bartholomew also wrote many of the biggest hits together: I expect those royalties have added up to quite mountain of Carnival gewgaws over the years. Seems like Domino got in on the ground floor, when Bartholomew and Lew Chudd, owner of Imperial, joined forces, and went looking for exciting new acts around the Big Easy. They found the barely twenty year old Domino playing a local club, utilizing a half-forgotten old-style of pianism, what they called locally jailhouse blues. Nobody else was doing it - Bartholomew and Chudd were blown away. The trio cut their first single, "The Fat Man," in 1950, and, for several years thereafter, Domino's work languished in rhythm and blues. But times were changing, and Domino crossed over into rock and roll with "Ain't It A Shame," in 1955. If you were around at the time, you'll know that white singer Pat Boone quickly covered it, as "Ain't That a Shame," and had a pretty big hit with it, too. But Domino and Bartholomew were getting the royalties, even so, and were able to cry all the way to the bank.
Many more hits followed, several of them covered by white performers at the time. But the hits live to this day, alive on the radio and in our hearts, in Domino's smooth stylings. Every one of them is in this compilation: "My Blue Heaven", "I'm In Love Again," "When My Dreamboat Comes Home," "Blueberry Hill, "Blue Monday," "I'm Walking," "Whole Lotta Loving," "I Want to Walk You Home," and "Walking to New Orleans." You have to say that these guys had a big hand in creating rock and roll, ribald, good time category.
Some years ago, I was lucky enough to see Domino in person, in Las Vegas. He was good-humored, highly entertaining - and, perhaps he was inspired by the venue, but those diamond rings all over his piano-playing hands winked, flashed and sparkled in the limelight: I sure admired the one on his right pinky finger. The man is definitely one of the more engaging exports to come out of New Orleans.
Free Music Review: Great, but should have been all mono
Hit: 4 Stars
Actually 4 1/2 stars.
The music is brilliant and this is the best single disc Fats collection I've seen with the finest sound quality so far.
However I have the opposite quibble from the stereophiles who have reviewed this disc. The 5 stereo tracks included here (Walking to New Orleans, I Want to Walk You Home, Let the Four Winds Blow, Be My Guest, My Girl Josephine) suffer from the same horrible all-or-nothing mixing that most stereo tracks of that time (early-mid 60s) did, with the vocals in one channel and most or all of the instruments in the other channel. The stereo versions have lots of "air" in the middle of the sonic picture are missing the propulsive guts of the songs
The all-important single mixes were still done in mono and should be considered the 'original' versions. They are definitely punchier and more rocking, as they were originally intended to be.
Fortunately the mono versions are available on a relatively cheap Curb compilation Fats Domino - All-Time Greatest Hits which you can get used from Amazon for just a couple of bucks (the lowest priced copy is literally selling for less than $2.00) and would be a very inexpensive companion to this otherwise top-notch collection .