Thursday, March 03, 2016

TBT: Fats Domino, "My Girl Josephine".

Antoine "Fats" Domino turned 88 on February 28. He was an early (1986) inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and had more hit records than any other of the first generation of rockers except Elvis. He was feared dead after he and his wife refused to evacuate their New Orleans house before Hurricane Katrina struck, but they were rescued by helicopter and taken to shelter. He no longer leaves his native city, but has performed there on occasion in recent years.

When I looked for a clip of the song below, a 1960 hit that I remember fondly, my search term was "Hello Josephine", the song's opening words. I immediately found the clip of a live performance, which has the same words in its caption. Some research showed that the song's actual title was "My Girl Josephine". This seems odd, as the words "my girl" don't appear anywhere in the lyrics. Indeed, the song implies that Josephine is anything but the singer's "girl" at the time of their encounter, evidently many years after what seems to have been a lopsided childhood friendship in which the singer's devotion was not reciprocated.

No comments:

Post a Comment