[1] Imperial's Lew Chudd had previously asked Dave Bartholomew to show him some locally popular talent, and was most impressed with the 21-year-old Fats Domino, then playing at a working class dive in the 9th Ward of New Orleans.
Domino sang and played piano, along with Earl Palmer on drums, Frank Fields on string bass, Ernest McLean on guitar, and sax players Herbert Hardesty, Clarence Hall, Joe Harris, and Red Tyler.
"[6] Domino also scats a pair of choruses in a distinctive wah-wah falsetto, creating a variation on the lead similar to a muted Dixieland trumpet or a harmonica.
"The Fat Man" was released in December 1949 by Imperial Records right before Christmas and began to gain national attention in January 1950, and on February 18, it reached number two on the R&B Singles chart.
[7] Musicologist Ned Sublette said that the song was rock and roll before the term had been coined and that Domino crossed a line by playing a stripped-down, more aggressive boogie-woogie piano with a series of "piano-triplet-and-snare-backbeat hits.