Although not a household name, without Cosimo Matassa there may not have been a Fats Domino, Little Richard, Lee Dorsey, Dr. John or many other artists that came out of New Orleans.

Matassa died on Thursday at the Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans. He was 88.

Cosimo was there at the beginning. His J&M Recording studio was where Roy Brown recorded Good Rockin' Tonight in 1947 and Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew made Fats' first hit The Fat Man in 1949. Both are hailed as recordings that formed the sound of early rock music.

Matassa opened J&M Recording in the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1945. Even though its equipment and offices were rather primitive, it still became a major location for recording some of the biggest and best artists of the day. On December 10, 1949, Domino and jazz bandleader Dave Bartholomew recorded eight songs in the facility, including The Fat Man which went to number 2 on the R&B charts, establishing Domino as a major recording artist. Fats and Bartholomew would return to J&R and, later, Matassa's Cosimo Recording Studio, to record most of their major hits.

The list of classic songs recorded at Matassa's studios, many of which were engineered by him, is long including Professor Longhair's Tipitina, Little Richard's Tutti Frutti and Long Tall Sally, Clarence "Frogman" Henry's Ain't Got No Home, Frankie Ford's Sea Cruise, Shirley and Lee's Let the Good Times Roll, Ernie K-Doe's Mother in Law and Aaron Neville's Tell It Like It Is along with tracks for Ray Charles, Lee Dorsey, Dr. John, Smiley Lewis and many more. Jerry Lee Lewis also used the studio to record his first demos.

A young Allan Toussaint used to hang around J&M, playing the grand piano in the studio when it wasn't in use. He and Matassa became close and Allan recorded some of his best known recording and worked with K-Doe, Irma Thomas and many others in the facility.

Matassa continued to recording at his Cosimo Recording Studio through to the mid-80's when he closed it down and dedicated his time to the family's Matassa's Market in the French Quarter.

Today, the building that housed J&R Recordings is a laundromat; however, New Orleans added a plaque to the building in 1999 declaring it a historic landmark. In 2010, it was also named a Historic Rock and Roll Landmark by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, one of only eleven in the country.

Matassa was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2007, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010 and the Blues Hall of Fame in 2013.

His wife of 65 years, Jennie, died in 2009. He is survived by three sons, seven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.