Remembering Cosimo Matassa, master of the 'New Orleans Sound'
Sad news from the Crescent City -- Cosimo Matassa, a producer and studio owner who put an indelible stamp on early rock 'n' roll, died Thursday. He was 88.
Matassa, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, steered the early recordings of rock pioneers such as Little Richard, Fats Domino and Ray Charles from his J&M studio in New Orleans' French Quarter. Here's how the Times-Picayunedescribes the place where some of the most important recording sessions of rock's earliest days went down:
It hardly seemed like the setting for a musical revolution. Upstairs, bookies ran a horse-betting operation. In the alley outside, a shoeshine man plied his trade.
It was also a tiny space. As detailed in Matassa's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame bio,
The room was only 15-by-16 feet in size, “as big as my four fingers,” joked Matassa.
Yet magic was made in that little room, which today has found an improbable second life as Hula Mae's Tropic Wash laundry.
Let's look back at two of the classics recorded by Matassa at J&M.
'Tutti Frutti,' Little Richard
"A-wop bop a-loo bop a-lop bam boom" might be the most famous words in the English language.
'The Fat Man,' Fats Domino
This was the big guy's first big hit, and one of the first rock 'n' roll records ever.
Paste BN's Jerry Shriver, a part-time resident of New Orleans, shares his thoughts on Matassa's legacy and influence:
"One of the odder aspects of rock history is that Matassa's J&M studio, one of the key landmarks of the music's incubation, is now a laundromat on Rampart Street on the edge of the French Quarter. But a few blocks away is the small grocery store, Matassa's Market, still run by his sons, and every once in a while Cosimo would make an appearance.
"Though he was every bit as important to rock's evolution as, say, Sam Phillips of Sun studio in Memphis, he seemed shy and blended into the background. The same was true when I saw him inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, at a ceremony held in Cleveland that year.
"Seek out the two box sets that contain most of the key singles that came out of his studios in the 1950s and 1960s, The Cosimo Matassa Story, Vol. I and II, and you will be astounded at the ear he had for what would come across well on the radio. Fats, Little Richard, Lloyd Price, Dr. John, Allen Toussaint and Lee Dorsey on various sessions -- their music is distinctive yet all of a piece that is the New Orleans sound."
And finally, watch Matassa and New Orleans drummer Earl Palmer (who played on many of those sessions with Little Richard and Fats Domino and many others) talk about J&M in a video from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
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