sonora2sonoma

So Long Fats and Thanks for all the Music

Learning about Fats Domino’s passing yesterday morning led me to reminisce about his music and the joy I experienced playing and replaying my 45 rpm recording of him singing “Blueberry Hill” so many years before. On the heels of this I found myself feeling happy that he had managed, despite his girth, to hang around for 89 years, after which I found myself hoping his last years were ones free of debilitating health problems.

Then my thoughts went to recalling how, among the many other singers who had sprung onto the pop music scene during that era, a couple of names stood out, partly because they emerged immediately after Fats’ music started topping the charts, but mostly because of the similarity between his name and theirs. These two–Chubby Checker and Tubby Chess–both seemed to me at the time to have been imitators, inspired by the success Fats was experiencing.

Even though I was only 13 at the time, I sensed that there was something inherently wrong with others virtually copying Fat’s name, ostensibly in hopes of trying to share in his success by so doing. With that thought, I recalled another popular song of the time–“Young Love”–which had been released by Sonny James–a crossover from Country music– and had become an instant hit, only to be replicated with minor cosmetic differences by a guy named Tab Hunter and released mere days after James’ version hit the airwaves. Hunter’s ersatz version not only eclipsed the original in sales, it practically obliterated it, likely due to more sophisticated and better financed promotion. The result: Hunter, or, more likely, his promoters  got most of the attention and sales revenue even though his version lacked the sparkle and shine of the original. How many of you remember Sonny James? Exactly!

It is precisely these kinds of transgressions that illustrate the central flaw in the pursuit of unrestrained capitalism. To rely on the goodness of peoples’ nature to “do the right thing” in the face of opportunity is like entrusting the family poodle to a ravenous mountain lion. It’s pure folly to believe the lion will act in the poodle’s interest, yet it’s the principal idea beyond the theory of Trickle-Down Economics–an old assertion whose verity was never proven despite decades of experience proving that isn’t how things work–that is still being proffered in the halls of congress in support of revamping the nation’s tax policies to further advantage the already privileged while claiming to benefit the working class.

At this point, it suddenly dawned on me that, without my full awareness, my tribute to Fats had morphed into a critique on the excesses of capitalism. Not one to leave things half-finished, and with apologies to Fats, I added: While many of the benefits of “free trade” are easy to see and appreciate, the fly in the ointment is the “unrestrained” part. Without restraints, people have shown since time immemorial that the temptation to succumb to greed has in many instances overridden their sense of social responsibility such that the less fortunate have suffered immense harm.

Now we find ourselves in a situation where the restraints that have been enacted to protect the public against this form of opportunism, meager as they are, are under assault like never before: Hindrances to progress, their detractors call them!

As the wheel of progress turns upon itself powered by the twisted logic of trumpist idealism, I’m reminded of another great Fats Domino song–“Ain’t That a Shame.”

Tim Konrad

Petaluma, CA

October 26, 2017