A fellow journeyman on this long and winding 1001 Albums... highway offered his two cents on this record the other day - basically that Blueberry Hill is a fantastic, genius track, but that the rest of the album fails to match it. I think I'm the victim of some re-release tracklist-jumbling jabberwocky because the version of This Is Fats that I've been listening to doesn't even include Blueberry Hill. I've been wronged!

I'm not going to go into specifics of songs because I think I should track down the legit version, but I can say that I wasn't thrilled by this (shadow of an) album. That might be down to my expectations going in, though. I was anticipating a raucous and wild honky-tonk rock-out. I'm not sure where I got that idea - it's totally not Fats. Fats peddles a jazz/R'n'B sound, more subtle and sophisticated than straight ahead rock. There's a few special tracks here, but the majority of the album felt mediocre and didn't impress. Most tracks sounded like standards done in a standard way.

The great tracks had a propulsive beat, lively piano, bursting brass and - how to put this? - a rich, thick, syrupy mise en scène. Know what I mean? A warm, whole sound. Nice. I love Fats's voice on the stronger tracks. He has a great accent and bends and twists his pronunciation quite strangely at times in service to the flow of the lyrics.

I really want to hear Blueberry Hill now. It's been too long.