Last chapters: Fats Domino, Robert Guillaume and astronaut Paul Weitz
Fats Domino, the amiable rock ’n’ roll pioneer whose steady, pounding piano and easy baritone helped change popular music even as it honored the grand, good-humored tradition of the Crescent City, died Tuesday. He was 89. Domino sold more than 110 million records, with hits including “Blueberry Hill,” “Ain’t That a Shame” and other standards of rock ’n’ roll . His dynamic performance style and warm vocals drew crowds for five decades. One of his show-stopping stunts was playing the piano while standing, throwing his body against it with the beat of the music and bumping the grand piano across the stage. Domino’s 1956 version of “Blueberry Hill” was selected for the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry of historic sound recordings worthy of preservation. The preservation board noted that Domino insisted on performing the song despite his producer’s doubts, adding that Domino’s “New Orleans roots are evident in the Creole inflected cadences that add richness and depth to the performance.”
Robert Guillaume, who rose from squalid beginnings in St. Louis slums to become a star in stage musicals and win Emmy Awards for his portrayal of the sharp-tongued butler in the TV sitcoms “Soap” and “Benson,” died at age 89. Among Guillaume’s achievements was playing Nathan Detroit in the first all-black version of “Guys and Dolls,” earning a Tony nomination in 1977. He became the first African-American to sing the title role of “Phantom of the Opera,” appearing with an all-white cast in Los Angeles. While playing in “Guys and Dolls, he was asked to test for the role of an acerbic butler of a governor’s mansion in “Soap,” a primetime TV sitcom that satirized soap operas. “To me, Benson was the revenge for all those stereotyped guys who looked like Benson in the ‘40s and ‘50s (movies) and had to keep their mouths shut,” Guillaume once said.
Paul J. Weitz, an astronaut who was in the first crew to board the Skylab space station and 10 years later commanded the initial flight of the space shuttle Challenger, died Monday in Flagstaff, Ariz. He was 85. Weitz was one of three astronauts in the first manned Skylab mission, in 1973. Ten years later, in April 1983, he was back in space in command of the Challenger, the second shuttle craft to go into orbit; Columbia had carried the first shuttle astronauts into space in 1981.
This story was originally published October 28, 2017 at 10:39 AM with the headline "Last chapters: Fats Domino, Robert Guillaume and astronaut Paul Weitz."