NEW YORK -- The short, stout man in the captain's cap hesitates at the corner of West 45th Street and Broadway, then plunges into Times Square.
He is anonymous in the vast neon canyon. Navigating the sidewalk bustle, he sings to himself, "On Broadway . . ." His sunny Creole cadence may have struck a familiar chord, had anyone stopped to listen.
Fifty years ago, that voice triggered pandemonium across Manhattan. In late 1957, Antoine "Fats" Domino headlined promoter Alan Freed's multinight "Holiday Show of Stars" at the old New York Paramount Theater, two blocks from where Domino stands on this cold Saturday afternoon.
As described by biographer Rick Coleman, Fats and his band required a police escort from their hotel to the Paramount. The theater held 3,400; as many as 20,000 fans tried to get in each day.
Domino causes no such commotion in Times Square today. He quietly absorbs the sensory overload, poses for pictures with his companions, then retreats to the limousine parked around the corner near Broadway stage hands walking a picket line.
The limo would whisk Domino through the Lincoln Tunnel and out of New York to New Jersey and on to Newark's Liberty International Airport, where he would board a nonstop flight home.
Improbably enough, Domino had spent the previous three days where no one expected him to be in 2007: Somewhere other than New Orleans.
. . . . . . .
The plan was wildly optimistic.
Over Heinekens in the bedroom of Domino's post-Katrina home in Harvey, Tipitina's Foundation executive director Bill Taylor proposed a trip to New York to promote "Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino." The double CD features Paul McCartney, Elton John, Norah Jones, Robert Plant, Neil Young, B.B. King and two dozen other stars remaking Domino songs. Proceeds benefit the nonprofit foundation's efforts to bolster local music.
PART 2Unlike Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis, Domino gave up globetrotting long ago. He last graced a New York stage in 1992. According to north shore writer Coleman's award-winning 2006 biography, "Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock 'n' Roll," Domino's most recent tour was a rocky three-week European jaunt in 1996.
For the past decade, he has rarely strayed outside Orleans Parish, an immovable object until confronted with Katrina's irresistible force. Once the waters receded, and with his beloved Lower 9th Ward in ruins, he settled in Harvey.
Domino turns 80 in February. Since Katrina, friends say, he's been more forgetful. He famously backed out of the 2006 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival hours before show time and nearly bailed on a benefit concert at Tipitina's in May.
The ambitious three-day New York itinerary includes singing "My Blue Heaven" with Norah Jones on "The Late Show With David Letterman"; appearing at a tribute concert; performing on "The Today Show"; attending a luncheon; and signing autographs for two hours at a Borders bookstore.
The first unknown: Will Fats even show up at the airport?
Days before departure, he buys new luggage, a positive sign. He also selects Walter Miles to accompany him and absorb his good-natured ribbing. Since Katrina, Domino has been a regular in Miles' red New Breed cab.
His entourage also includes Bill Taylor; Roland Von Kurnatowski, a successful businessman, owner of Tipitina's and, in Domino's estimation, "a good man"; Tipitina's Foundation executive assistant Lauren Cangelosi, whom Domino refers to as "Blondie"; and a reporter.
The day before departure, the Letterman appearance falls through, a victim of the Writers Guild of America strike that has put the show into reruns. Is Taylor confident the rest of the trip will proceed according to plan?
"Confident? No," Taylor says. "I'm hopeful."
. . . . . . .
PART 3To everyone's relief, Domino and Miles roll up to Louis Armstrong International Airport an hour before flight time on Nov. 7. Fats is in good spirits. Safely stowed inside a private lounge in Concourse D, he cracks open his first Heineken of the day. It is 9:30 a.m.
Twenty minutes later, most passengers are aboard Continental Flight 617. Taylor signals for Fats to be brought up from the lounge. Fats boards a golf cart, then gets off and disappears into a Hudson News. Now, he's decided, is the proper time to buy sunglasses.
Minutes tick by, and Taylor gets nervous. Fats and Miles finally amble down the jetway three minutes before departure, literally the last passengers to board. Fats settles into seat 2F of first class.
At the back of the plane, Glenn Denning spies a copy of Coleman's "Blue Monday." Denning was in New Orleans with Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs and contemporary R&B star John Legend for a Tulane University conference about poverty.
Denning accompanied Legend on a tour of the 9th Ward that stopped at Domino's still-vacant house.
"So is Fats on the plane?" Denning asks.
Against all odds, he is.
. . . . . . .
Touching down at Liberty International Airport in Newark, Domino's mood is as sunny as the air is cold. Scooting through the terminal aboard a cart, he skirts a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the distant Manhattan skyline.
"New York City, here I come," he sings in the same voice that, in the 1950s, sold more records than anyone but Elvis Presley.
The guy offers a stack of vintage Domino albums and a Sharpie pen. Cangelosi examines the album covers featuring a grinning young Domino. "Fats, you still look the same," she says sweetly.
"You don't wear glasses, do you?" Domino quips.
A second guy joins the first -- these are not fans, but professional autograph stalkers. The albums still bear price tags from used record shops; signed, their value increases exponentially.
Domino patiently inscribes every item. Moments later, as he heads outside to a waiting limousine, a photographer circles like a piranha, popping off flashes in rapid-fire succession. "Can you stop please?" Taylor says. The paparazzo ignores him.
An agitated Taylor apologizes to Domino, but Fats is unperturbed. "It's good that they still know," he says.
During the 30-minute ride into Manhattan, Von Kurnatowski pitches the idea of a meeting with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "So, Fats, the mayor of New York . . ."
Domino cuts him off: "Tell him I said hello."
. . . . . . .
Domino checks in to Le Parker Meridien, a chic, modern hotel a half block from Carnegie Hall in midtown Manhattan. He plans to order room service spaghetti and rehearse on a rented electric keyboard.
Later, as the Tipitina's delegation eats dinner at the famed Carnegie Deli on Seventh Avenue, Von Kurnatowski receives a call from Fats, who didn't much care for the spaghetti -- and unlike the old days, he isn't traveling with a hot plate. Von Kurnatowski offers to bring him a pastrami sandwich.
Domino's 18th-floor room is a stylish junior suite. He is flabbergasted by the $200 daily cost of renting a keyboard. "I could have brought my own piano," he says.
"That's New York City," Taylor says.
"I don't care whose city it is," Domino cracks.
Talk turns to what Domino will perform on "The Today Show." Miles suggests "As Time Goes By," from "Casablanca." "He sounded real good playing that for me the other day," Miles says.
The Tipitina's delegates exchange nervous glances: The idea is for Fats to perform one of the "Goin' Home" tracks.
Fats toys with the piano. He and Miles are soon left alone with an expensive keyboard in an expensive hotel room in New York.
Tomorrow, ready or not, Domino plunges into the Big Apple.
On a stretch of West 27th Street that is home to both a scrap metal processor and a Lamborghini dealership, guitarist Leo Nocentelli, keyboardist Ivan Neville, bassist Nick Daniels and saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr. shift Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground" into low gear.
The New Orleanians' afternoon soundcheck in the former Crobar, a Chelsea dance club adjacent to the swank Pink Elephant, is a rehearsal for that night's Domino tribute concert.
The former Crobar is closing, and events director Lee Blumer couldn't be more pleased with the New Orleans-style send-off. As an 11-year-old in 1957, Blumer's mind was blown by Domino at the Brooklyn Paramount. Twelve years later, she helped produce the original Woodstock.
"What a way to go," she says of the Domino shindig. "This is an amazing event. My heart is expanding."
Everyone hopes Domino sings a song or two. "You've got to expect the unexpected, and be prepared," Neville says. "And this is a good band to do it."
As they rehearse the Meters classic "Look-a Py-Py," Domino arrives and immediately disappears into the Pink Elephant. Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple, on hand to chronicle the event, follows with her crew.
Thirty minutes later, Domino emerges, and the musicians take a break to pay their respects. Most have never met Fats, let alone backed him.
Suddenly this Big Apple soundcheck is moving at Big Easy speed. Gradually, the musicians reassemble onstage to feel out "Blueberry Hill" as Domino observes.
"We need Fats!" Nocentelli announces.
Back in Manhattan's Theater District, Domino, Von Kurnatowski and Miles stop at the Carnegie Deli. Domino is in a playful mood; to underscore his need for sustenance, he shows off his loose-fitting gold wristwatch.
He eyes a bowl of the Carnegie's signature bright-green pickles suspiciously, then spots a massive mound of tuna salad on a nearby diner's plate. That's what he wants -- to go.
But first, a Carnegie deli manager -- not the Egyptian-born manager who previously did not recognize Domino's name -- asks to take a picture of him next to the big fake pickle near the door.
"Rock 'n' roll means Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Bo Diddley," Dennis Howard says. "That's it. They invented it."
Howard waxes nostalgic about Domino in his prime at the Brooklyn and New York Paramount. "He was the best," Howard says. "He played the piano like a typewriter. Nobody else came close."
After eating, Domino's car and driver are nowhere to be found. So he heads up Seventh Avenue toward his hotel a block and a half away. "I'm walkin' now," Domino says, dodging a yellow taxi at the corner of 56th Street.
At the Carnegie Deli, Howard asks, "Does Fats still perform?"
A lot of people were about to find out.
At 8:15 p.m., with the Empire State Building lit up in Mardi Gras purple, green and gold -- nobody is sure whether it's in Fats' honor or just an amazing coincidence -- Domino arrives in Chelsea for his tribute concert.
He looks like a million bucks: Black double-breasted pinstripe suit, silver shirt, the same pink tie he wore to the White House last year, matching spangled pocket square, assorted bling.
A hundred or so early arrivals mill around beneath the club's giant disco ball. As Domino makes his way to the balcony VIP section and settles in a red velvet banquette, fans look up, spot him and applaud. More heads turn, and the ovation builds and ripples across the room.
Fats comes to the railing, smiles broadly and waves. He lingers, and waves some more.
The all-star band onstage fires up with Soulive guitarist Eric Krasno and hip-hop, funk and pop drummer Adam Deitch joining Nocentelli, Neville, Harrison and Daniels.
Nocentelli embarks on an extended guitar solo in the Meters' "People Say" and doesn't see Taylor signaling him to stop: Bloomberg has arrived to present Fats with the key to the city, an honor previously bestowed on Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali and Mother Teresa.
Finally, Nocentelli powers down and Bloomberg bounds onstage. He works "ain't that a shame" into a joke that flops, then introduces Domino as "a favorite son of New Orleans, an American legend and, as of five minutes ago, my good friend."
Domino seems genuinely excited. "You've supported me all my life," he says to the audience. "I can't thank you enough."
With that, he tries to escape. But Nocentelli and a sound guy intercept him and steer him toward the piano.
Domino attempts "Blueberry Hill," but his playing and singing are tentative. After 90 seconds, he tapers off and stands up. The band puzzles on without him; Fats appears to be done for the night.
But at the side of the stage, he encounters Kenner native Lloyd Price, a fellow rhythm & blues survivor who now lives in New York. Price invites Domino to play piano on "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," just as Domino did on Price's original recording in 1952.
So Domino returns to the piano. No longer the center of attention, he comes alive. He pumps the keys, mouths the words, hunches his shoulders, turns and grins at the audience as Price beams and Harrison blows a hot alto sax solo. It is the moment everyone hoped for.
As the evening wears on, Allen Toussaint, in New York before traveling overseas, sounds remarkably like Domino on "I'm Walkin' " and "I'm in Love Again." Fats hangs out, gamely greeting bigwigs and potential donors to the Tipitina's Foundation. By 9:30, he's ready to go. Outside, a half-dozen autograph seekers await.
"You were bigger than Elvis in Florida," says one.
"Elvis was my man," Fats says.
Back inside, Neville and Harrison respectively lead "Hey Pocky Way" and "Big Chief." People shake their rumps and drink and cheer, Uptown New Orleans transported to downtown Manhattan.
But Fats Domino has left the building.
Twelve hours later, Hoda Kotb, former WWL-TV anchor and current "Today Show" contributor, reconnects with her New Orleans constituency in the basement green room of NBC studios as an 80-foot Christmas tree rises across the street at Rockefeller Center.
The musicians head upstairs to run through "Blueberry Hill" in the "Today Show" studio. Domino consults Nocentelli -- whom he addresses as "Guitar Man" -- on the closing chord.
With the live broadcast still 30 minutes away, the musicians drift off. Domino wants to rehearse more. He can be his own worst critic; much of his infamous performance anxiety stems from doubts about his 79-year-old body's ability to live up to standards he set for himself decades ago.
In the dressing room, he watches a playback of himself. "I haven't been playing for six months," he says, apologizing for what he perceives as rusty chops.
"You sound good," Cangelosi says.
"I wish I saw it like that," Fats says.
In the empty "Today Show" studio, Cangelosi -- young, blonde and pretty -- rests her elbows on Domino's piano, switching modes from mother hen to muse. Fats reels off snippets of his greatest hits, including "Whole Lotta Lovin'," "I Want to Walk You Home" and "I'm Walkin'."
"I got lucky with those songs," he says.
He asks Cangelosi to go find another musician. Domino is left alone at the piano. He caresses the keys and hums "Blueberry Hill," trying to recall the bridge.
Cangelosi returns with bassist Daniels; the other musicians soon follow, and they make another practice run up "Blueberry Hill." Domino improvises lyrics: "Give me my beer/cause the time is near." He laughs and jerks his head back in joy, then reaches for the green Heineken bottle stashed discreetly behind a piano leg.
Finally, it is time to go live on "Today." "The moment of truth," Taylor says, holding his breath.
Twenty seconds before air time, Fats starts "Blueberry Hill" early, then realizes his mistake. He squints into the studio lights: "I can't see you, bruh!" he says, searching for the producer who will signal him.
Then Kotb and "Today" co-host Natalie Morales address the nation. They plug the Tipitina's Foundation and the "Goin' Home" CD, introduce Domino, and it's all on his shoulders.
He nails "Blueberry Hill," navigating the bridge and locking in with Nocentelli for a spot-on ending. Kotb bounds over and plants a big kiss on his cheek.
"Who's better than you?" Kotb asks.
"You!" Domino replies.
On the air again, Fats freezes when Kotb requests another song. He grasps her hand and sings, "I want to hold your hand," then suggests they do "Blueberry Hill" again.
The band plunges in as the credits roll. The show is finished, but Fats is not.
With the cameras -- and pressure -- off, he picks up steam. Dozens of staffers crowd the studio, clapping, cheering and dancing; Kotb and Morales boogie alongside former New York Giants running back Tiki Barber and a cafeteria lady. Fats beams, working his magic.
The second "Blueberry Hill" concludes with a thunderous ovation and a misty eye or two. Everyone basks in the Domino effect.
He uncorks the lickety-split opening of "I'm Ready," finally having fun. Just as the other musicians jump in, he laughs and calls it a morning.
"I want to kiss Fats," Morales says.
"Here I am!" Fats says.
Afterward, Neville reflects on what transpired. "Fats got comfortable," Neville says. "The ladies were talking to him. He was like a youngster."
. . . . . . .
It is raining and cold outside "The Today Show" studio. Domino's handlers shepherd him to a luncheon at the tony Michael's, where he declines the lobster but consents to take a picture with director Mel Brooks.
Back at Le Parker Meridien, the pace finally catches up with him. His fingers swell so badly that he can't remove his bulky, star-shaped ring. Von Kurnatowski borrows bolt cutters from the hotel maintenance staff and snips off the ring.
Domino is exhausted and goes to bed. He is still asleep at 7 p.m., when he is due to sign autographs at the Borders bookstore at Columbus Circle.
The Tipitina's team decides to let him sleep. At Borders, they offer the 100-plus disappointed fans a consolation prize. To save time, Domino had pre-signed 200 "Goin' Home" CD booklets with his meticulous signature. Taylor, Von Kurnatowski and Cangelosi distribute these.
Most fans are understanding; a few are not. Some sign get well cards; others leave gifts.
Fats had conquered "The Today Show." By nightfall, he had nothing left to give.
. . . . . . .
At 3:30 the following afternoon, Domino appears in the lobby of Le Parker Meridien, rested and ready to go home.
"Rollin', rollin', rollin'," he sings, borrowing the theme from "Rawhide."
Outside the Newark airport, he runs another gauntlet of autograph entrepreneurs. In the private Continental Club lounge above the gates, the leather chairs are plush, the apples are crisp and delicious, and the drinks are free.
One problem: The draft beer doesn't taste like Heineken. This is the only beer available in the lounge, Miles informs Domino.
"I'd rather be down there," Domino says, gesturing toward the gates, "where I can get what I want."
He's antsy and ready to board. Did he enjoy himself in New York? "As long as Roland was satisfied, it don't make me no difference," he says. "But I hope it went alright, you know? I ain't played in quite a while."
His fans liked hearing him. "As long as they're satisfied, I'm alright."
So would he return to New York? "I guess so. If they want me to come up."
What was his favorite part of the trip?
"Right now," he grins.
Whatever the limits of his short-term memory, Domino's mischievous wit still is sharp. And as the "Today Show" encore demonstrated, he can still, at special times, rock like 50 years ago at the Paramount.
"Maybe I'll start working again," he says. "I feel better."
Continental Flight 810 touches down at Louis Armstrong International Airport precisely at 8 p.m. In baggage claim, Von Kurnatowski's 3-year-old daughter, Mary Grace, bounds over and grabs Domino's leg as if he were her long-lost grandfather.
"Ain't that something?" he says, laughing. "She remembers me!"
So do Lorene and Dwayne Billiot, a couple from Cut Off who were on the same flight.
"We were so worried about you around Katrina," Lorene Billiot says.
"Thank you," Domino says.
Miles' son has pulled up in a well-worn gray sedan considerably less luxurious than the long black limo in New York. Domino piles into the back seat, smiling, waving and breathing the humid air.
"It's always good to be home," he says. "Ain't no place like home." . . . . . . .
Music writer Keith Spera can be reached at kspera@timespicayune.com, or (504) 826-3470.