One of the most covered songs of the 1950s, Ain’t That A Shame was a breakout hit for Pat Boone – but Fats Domino’s original remains the definitive version…
It could be a question in a devilishly challenging music quiz: What was the first song John Lennon learned to play? Stab-in-the-dark guesses might be That’ll Be The Day, Summertime Blues, Heartbreak Hotel or Johnny B. Goode, but all would be wrong. “Ain’t That A Shame was the first rock’n’roll song I ever learned,” the late Beatle once revealed according to beatlesbible.com. “My mother taught it to me on the banjo before I learned the guitar. Nobody else knows these reasons except me.”
Lennon would go on to perform Fats Domino’s mid-50s favourite on his 1975 Rock’n’Roll album, an indicator, then, of how important the number was to him. Of course, it wasn’t the first cover of the song – it had been taken to the top of the US Billboard chart by Pat Boone mere months after Fats’ version, the first No.1 for this doyen of easy listening.
A Boone And A Blessing
Though it seems an injustice that Boone’s milder imagining of the track performed better than Domino’s, it did help rouse interest in Fats and the raunchier original. “When I recorded their songs,” Boone told Songfacts about covering Domino and Little Richard, “my records of their songs sold 10 times that – and introduced them to the white audiences, or the pop audiences. So, they were grateful for my having recorded their songs.”
Ignoring the ‘white saviour’ iffiness of Boone’s comments, it’s true that Fats remained thankful for the commercial boost the singer’s cover gave to his record. Boone would often recall a concert at which Domino invited him on stage, flashing a piano-shaped diamond ring and telling the audience, “Pat Boone bought me this.”
“I always credit him for writing it every time I sing it,” Boone told Forbes in 2018. “He told me he loved my record. And I loved him.”
You Made Me Cry
As songwriters, Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew received royalties not just from Boone’s version, but from the multitude of covers waxed over the years. Bartholomew was Fats’ regular writing partner, having penned such evergreens as I’m Walkin’, The Fat Man and Going To The River for the singer.
He’d also composed I Hear You Knocking, Blue Monday and One Night for Smiley Lewis and wrote and recorded a song that, 20 years later, would become one of Chuck Berry’s more controversial releases, the innuendo-laden My Ding-A-Ling. He was, then, someone who knew how to craft a hit. His philosophy was, as he told John Broven in the book Walking To New Orleans, “to keep things as simple as possible, and we always wanted something the kids could sing.”
Domino and Bartholomew were masters of the intro, and Ain’t That A Shame is up there with Rock Around The Clock, C’mon Everybody and Chantilly Lace as having one of the punchiest openings of the era: “You made – BLAM BLAM! – me cry – BLAM BLAM! – When you said – BLAM BLAM! – goodbye…”
Once you hear those first few bars, the song’s got you in its grip for the next two minutes and 27 seconds, and doesn’t let go.
Timeless Lament
Ain’t That A Shame (labelled on its US release as Ain’t It A Shame) was the first of Fats’ records to make it to the Billboard pop singles chart, eventually rising to No.10, later joining many of his other 45s, including The Fat Man, Goin’ Home and Going To The River on his debut long-player, Rock And Rollin’ With Fats Domino. Laid down on 15 March 1955, it was the first of Fats’ 45s not to be cut in his native New Orleans, instead being committed to tape in a studio in Hollywood, whilst the singer was on tour.
Ain’t That A Shame would later be covered by such artists as The Four Seasons (1963), Hank Williams Jr. With The Mike Curb Congregation (1971) and the band Cheap Trick (1978) who had a US Top 40 hit with their rockified version of the tune (Fats, it’s said, was a fan). Even Domino returned to the song, recording an updated take for his 2006 album Alive And Kickin’, this one titled Ain’t That A Shame 2000.
Today, on Spotify, the song is second only to Blueberry Hill as Fats’ most streamed number, both way ahead of tracks such as I’m Walkin’ and Jambalaya (On The Bayou), while billboard.com’s 2017 Top 10 greatest Fats tracks has Ain’t That A Shame at No.1: “Not just the best Fats Domino song,” the website states, “but one of the greatest achievements in all rock’n’roll. It’s somehow sad, swaggering and resilient all at the same time.” We can’t help but agree.
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