Dave Bartholomew

Year:
1991
Inducted by:
Charles Neville & Art Neville
Category:
Ahmet Ertegun Award

Introduction

He introduced the world to the New Orleans sound.

Dave Bartholomew had many talents and roles, but his outstanding accomplishment is his star-making ability. He discovered Fats Domino, Lloyd Price and a seemingly endless revolving door of New Orleans virtuosos.

Hall of Fame Essay

1991

Jeff Tamarkin

He never made the pop charts under his own name. Most rock encyclopedias afford him, at most, a paragraph or two. But as an artist, producer, songwriter, arranger, and bandleader, Dave Bartholomew of New Orleans was a key figure in the transition from the jivin’ jump and big-band sounds of the ’40s to the rhythm & blues and rock & roll of the ’50s.

“If Dave Bartholomew were never to play another note,” wrote New Orleans music historian Jeff Hannusch in I Hear You Knockin’, “he could sit back and bask in the knowledge that he was very much responsible for shaping today’s music.”