It always came along when Richie Cunningham spotted a girl he liked. He would get that mischievous look in his eyes and then he’d start to sing, “I found my thrill, on Blueberry Hill.”
It was only later that I discovered it was Fats Domino who sang that song. It was on a commercial that started to play on Channel 7 on peasant vision, advertising a record of Domino’s greatest hits.
These were the memories I jotted down when I heard Fats Domino died awhile back.
“Happy Days”
Richie Cunningham was one of the main characters on the comedy “Happy Days”, and he was always chasing girls. He would do almost anything to impress a perspective girlfriend too.
The tell-tale sign that he found a girl he liked was he would start to sing, “I found my thrill, on Blueberry Hill”. It came to the point he only had to sing the first four words to elicit laughter from the studio audience.
Greatest hits
It was not too much after that I started to see a commercial advertising the greatest hits of Fats Domino.
I was surprised at how many of his songs I actually was familiar with – “Ain’t that a Shame”; “Blueberry Hill”; “I’m Walkin’”; “Walking to New Orleans”; and “Whole Lotta Lovin’”.
When I found that commercial on YouTube, it was exactly as I remembered it.
Parting thoughts
It is obvious that Fats Domino was a talented artist. What is more obvious to me in this case is the power of advertising. I never did hear that greatest hits album beginning to end, or any Fats Domino record for that matter, but the pieces played on TV are still etched in my memory. That's because I heard them every day in commercials.
The funny thing is the one song that really resonates is another one I heard repeatedly. Except, instead of symbolizing the sale of records, it meant one of my favourite TV characters saw a girl he liked, and she liked him back.
For an old romantic like me, hearing the name Fats Domino means, “I Found my Thrill…” and in Richie Cunningham's case, in more ways than one.
