Farewell Busia, Farewell Fats
Former and I had flown to New Orleans on a whim to celebrate New Year's Eve. After the gumbo pot at Jax Brewery dropped, marking the start of the New Year, we headed to a bar in the French Quarter with Henry, an old buddy from Tulane.
Henry took a sip of his beer. “Did I tell you all that Fats Domino is playing the House of Blues on January 30th? Tickets are $125 bucks, but they include an open bar. If you want to come back down for the show you can stay with me.”
It was a lot of money at the time, but we were like, who cares? Fats rarely played live, so we put those babies and the airfare on a credit card and decided to worry about it later.
The week before the big show, Mark’s grandmother, Busia, ended up in the hospital. Everyone loved her. As his grandfather Pete, who came over on the boat to America from Poland by himself when he was 10, said about her, “Marie, wouldn’t say shit if she had a mouthful.”
She hadn’t been sick in her 90-something years, but despite Mark’s mantra, “Hang on, Busia, hang on,” she died in just a few days, and soon we were flying to Toledo for her funeral instead of New Orleans to hear Fats. I begged the agent at US Air to let us use our New Orleans tickets to fly from Toledo to New Orleans, but rules you know, and a last-minute, one-way ticket was too expensive.
Never one to be deterred, I wore my funeral clothes to the airport: a black dress, pearls and a mink coat that Mark, whose mother had a closet of furs, brought me back from a business trip to Poland. It would definitely keep me from freezing my ass off in dead-of-winter Ohio and also be a tribute to Busia, the always-elegant Polish matriarch. We each carried only a small bag of essentials, holding out hope that we might figure out a way to make the show.
When we went to check in at US Air, the agent told us that our plane had a maintenance issue, and that we had been rebooked on a Continental flight back to Washington, D.C. that changed planes in Cleveland, the airline’s hub. This was back in the day when the airlines offered super cheap, last-minute tickets for weekend travel.
I beelined for the pay phone (another relic from the past) as soon as we got off the jet in Cleveland and called Continental. I found a $100 flight departing in 30 minutes for New Orleans.
We landed at Louis Armstrong Airport and caught the shuttle to Hertz. 20 minutes later I was stuffing my fur into the trunk of the rental car in front of the House of Blues as comedian Dan Aykroyd, surrounded by a bevy of babes, made his way into the club. There I was standing all alone on Decatur Street, waiting for Mark to park the car, when up pulled a Rolls Royce and out stepped Fats Domino. I wouldn't have been more star struck if John, George, Paul and Ringo had come out. Cool as he was, he just smiled and winked at me as he walked past.
Fats was on fire that night, rocking out “Blueberry Hill” on the piano, his big old diamond piano ring sparkling in the stage lights. He played gold record after gold record for two hours, practically unheard of for the entertainer who had come to dislike performing live.
Fats might not have known it, but he gave Busia one hell of a New Orleans sendoff that night.
Photo: Coming full circle, I found myself living in New Orleans when Fats Domino passed on October 24, 2017. Pic is of the second line crowd at his house in the 9th Ward.