IMPERIAL 5197; JULY 1952

 

Timing is everything, they say.

In this case the timing was imperative to the impending reunion of producer Dave Bartholomew and Imperial Records – and by extension Fats Domino who’d recently sat in with Dave’s band on Lloyd Price’s debut for Specialty Records which would hit #1 soon after being released.

This was the last session before they got back together and it was an impromptu one which Lew Chudd, Imperial’s owner, oversaw himself and found the results lacking.

When he heard the Price record that had been produced by his company’s former bandleader, he swallowed his pride and made amends with Bartholomew leading to a long and fruitful partnership between the three men and countless hits for Domino over the next decade.

Maybe though if he’d waited and saw how this cracked the national Top Ten in spite of its obvious drawbacks, he might not have been as willing to concede… which means for us, not to mention all of them, the timing turned out to be ideal.
 
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