NEW YORK: Fats Domino, whose rollicking boogie-woogie piano helped give birth to rock 'n' roll, has died in his lifelong home of New Orleans, the coroner said Wednesday. He was 89.
One of the top-selling artists of the 1950s, Domino had been hailed as an indispensable influence by legends including Elvis Presley, Bob Marley and especially The Beatles, who called his music their first encounter with rock.
The famously reclusive musician, who had made few public appearances over the past decade, died Tuesday morning of natural causes, said Gerry Cvitanovich, the coroner of Jefferson Parish.
"He was a world-class musician, known for his shaping of rock 'n' roll as we know it," New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a statement.
Domino's daughter earlier told a local television station that the rock legend died peacefully around family.
Despite finding global fame, Domino never moved out of the working-class Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans where he and his late wife Rosemary raised eight children and he would sometimes be spotted sleeping outside in a hammock.
In his heyday Domino, rivalled Presley in record sales and for the crown of King of Rock 'n' Roll. But with a natural shyness, and segregation still reigning in much of the United States, the self-effacing Domino faded in prominence by the mid-1960s as a crop of swaggering rock stars came to dominate pop culture.
Born as Antoine Domino, the plump pianist picked up his nickname early – which was cemented by the success of 1949's The Fat Man, the first rock 'n' roll single to sell one million copies as post-World War II consumer culture took root.
With his rhythm-and-blues piano backed up by an energetic back-beat, Domino on The Fat Man offered self-deprecating humour - "They call me the fat man / 'Cause I weigh 200 pounds” – and turned his voice into a trumpet-like instrument, singing, "Wah-wah-wah, wah-wah."
He later recorded hits that became omnipresent on American jukeboxes such as Ain't That a Shame, Blueberry Hill, I'm Walking and It's You I Love.
Domino was part of the first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
Beach Boys songwriter Brian Wilson said Domino dominated the radio as he was young, tweeting: "He was a great singer and piano player and his music will last forever."
The Beatles requested to see Domino when they first played New Orleans in 1964, with the Fab Four grinning in a huddle around him.
John Lennon said Ain't That a Shame was the first song he learned to play, while Paul McCartney later channelled Domino on the 1968 track Lady Madonna – which Domino in turn covered in his last hit. -- AFP