little richard - C or D?

http://www.rockabilly.net/littlerichard/main.jpg

this question should not be asked. ever. ever. ever. look at him. oh man.

did you read richard's self analysis in the rolling stone shittiest ever list of greatest rock icons or whatever? noones entry came close to richards. even in chart rundown entries, the man towers over all others.

http://club.discoldies.free.fr/esquerita.jpg

why didnt i know????

what is that famous talk show appearance where he started interrupting people and declaring himself to be the greatest of all time etc.?

have you guys ever heard his (relatively tame) early singles?

well, i think LR has done that every time he's appeared on TV ever. but the one you're thinking of is probably the dick cavett show, as recounted so hilariously in greil marcus's "mystery train."

yep. incidentally, chuck berry's LPs from the 50s sound better and more alive than the cd-remasters.

cossimo's studio, on the other hand...

i adore this man.

i only have comps of the speciality years but theyre so great. everyone talks about his screaming (deservedly) but richard had some really lovely, more delicate vocal performances too that were just as brill.

i keep wanting to check out more of what he did later (even the remakes of the early hits), more of the gospel stuff too, but am worried ill buy something and itll be average.

there was an okayish docu on r2 a few weeks ago but it was pretty much the same ol same ol stuff about race, the 50s, etc etc. all of which is valid but it just seemed reheated old socio-hagios. he deserves much better.

footage of him chillin with bo on the hail chuck berry film is pretty good. he mainly crafts stories in which it will at some point be necessary to go WAAAAAAAA~A~A~AIIIH!, but good watching nonetheless. i've just read this thread and it's way satisfying to see people bringing out i don't know what you've got. so classic! i heard a slightly different take a while ago on some comp which made me wonder whether the version i'd heard before was the famous one.

Just realized that the Little Richard songs I grew up with weren't the original Specialty records, but re-recordings done with Vee-Jay in the mid-60s. Though they're generally dismissed by critics, but I actually prefer these later versions -- faster, odder, slightly hoarser vocals, some sort of James Brown-style horn section. Anyone else heard them?

always been curious about those but everyone seems to say theyre not as good as the original versions. but then they prob would say that wouldnt they?

They're just a little punkier and cheaper-sounding -- clearly they're "worse" than the originals, but I like the aesthetic in this context.

Lucille's a good example -- the faster tempo, horns, and slightly unhinged clumsiness of it all just seems to work better:

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/song/Lucille/10845432 (Re-recording)

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/song/Lucille/4572140 (Original)

I suppose I'd agree with you if I'd grown up with the more echoey, hoarse versions, but I didn't so I don't.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH MY SOUL!!

whoah never realized Bonham's opening drumfill in Rock n Roll is a quote of the opening drumfill of Keep a Knockin

anyway OMG Little Richard

Yes, done by the drummer for Richard's live band, The Upsetters, a guy named Charles Connor.

amazing dude - totally loving the drumming on this early stuff

youkeepaknockingbutchoocantcomein

yes OMG Little Richard! It amazes me continually how we mourn the passing of greats but giants like this still walk among us: I mean, this guy did wild shit with Buddy Holly, and he's still here to tell us about it. And Jerry Lee Lewis too! Elvis has been dead for 30+ years but Little Richard persists, and he was rocking when Elvis was just getting started. Shouldn't there be some way to make good on this while he's still around

The Architect!

Shouldn't there be some way to make good on this while he's still around

― begs the question, when is enough enough (Euler), Wednesday, February 24, 2010 4:40 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

so otm
unfortunately this felt true of bo diddley and i don't know that there's some dramatic change after death

amazing dude - totally loving the drumming on this early stuff

sometimes that's his road drummer, but more often than not it's the great earl palmer.

little richard's specialty recordings are totally deathless.

what's the deal with the man hisself? his autobio not only has him coming out, but discusses certain things in, um, graphic detail. but in other contexts he just plays dumb or even offended when asked about his sexuality.

obviously a complicated man lolz

Hard to summarize his crazy career, but I tried.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6uzaNElJRo

classic and classic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4M1W0OPGjM&feature=related

I've got the "Georgia Peach" comp and it's frickin' perfect from start to finish.

"Georgia Peach" is brilliant, but volume 2 of the (two-part) series, "Shag On Down By The Union Hall" is even a little better. If you can believe that!

the vhs wobble on the clip above sounds like some awesome pedal effect

damn the stories about this guy (including those he told)

Lucille?!?!?!

Former Chicago Reader critic Bill Wyman wrote an extensive obituary for NY Magazine, and it's the best one published because it doesn't hold ANYTHING back. The direct quotes from the authorized biography alone are pretty stunning:

https://www.vulture.com/2020/05/little-richard-put-wild-sex-into-the-top-40-for-good.html#_ga=2.224055324.603100358.1589089370-1881858677.1492321179

From that piece:

Richard abandoned his band — and headed south. (The band, left stranded, improvised by hiring another wild Georgia singer with a high pompadour, a man who had just been released from prison, to step in and bill himself as Little Richard. His name was James Brown. Amazingly, the group would later use Otis Redding, another Georgia singer, for the same role.)

Killed me when they finally got to the one physical activity that repulsed him and how John Lennon was its worst perpetrator.

his bowels ferried yields for richard

Any views on his early 70s Reprise recordings? Him trying to update his sound further etc.
I see that they've recently been reissued in expanded editions and had an earlier 3lps on 2cds version through BGO. I hadn't payed attention to that later era material by him before.
I know taht the Bo Diddley stuff from the same era has some interesting takes.

Do love the 50s material by him.

The good bits on those records are fantastic, but there are quite a few big misses as well. One of my projects is to cherry pick them and make one excellent album.

Good day for a revive of a Georgia native son.

Looking back on this thread, I'm surprised to realize it was only earlier in 2020 when he died. Feels like years ago.

yeah the reprise albums are all worth a listen. you can tell he was trying to go for something and didnt quite figure it out, but lots of hidden gems spread across those. i posted it somewhere else recently but one of my faves from that bunch is his soulful version of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" from the King of Rock and Roll LP.

I think it was a coincidence, bringing this thread up like
., or at least in as much as I'd just read a review of various of teh lps in Ugly tHings last night in their reissue of a couple of months ago.
Hadn't realised there was a BGO release of these recordings until this morning, was hoping somebody would be able to run comparisons.
NOt sure if getting the lps together for a price roughly equivalent to each of the recent reissues makes sense, if I'm missing a stack of linernotes and photos or anything as well as the outtakes and single edits.

Anyway grabbed teh BGO this morning which will make a nice memorial for sanity prevailing.

Little Richard what an amazing force of energy though. Does punk all consciously refer back to him, probably not but do see him asa manifestation of that spirit for a certain time. Seems like there is a possible line running through him, the Sonics, pretty THings, Stooges and a few others , possibly Birthday Party too which is worth looking into. Bands taht fall upon it are worth checking out and all.
All about harnessing and releasing levels of energy and stuff.

Does punk all consciously refer back to him

A Marcus line I quoted above, referring to Grooviest 17 Original Hits!: "Anarchy in the U.S.A., about the time the Sex Pistols were born."

Forgot that one!

Got into The Rill Thing during last year's RIP. The choogle suits him!

When an interviewer asked him what he thought about punk, Sonny Sharrock said, "I saw Little Richard at the Apollo in 1956. You can't get more punk rock than that."
Haven't heard all the recent Omnivore reissues yet, but here's what I said about one of 'em last fall on What Are You Listening To?, later in comments on my Nashville Scene ballot:
notes just now, trying to wrap brane around what it just experienced:
Little Richard, Southern Child: omg, cert worth mention try to describe finely calibrated sense of pitch, sweetly piercing and sensitive, like Joplin’s "Summertime" all the time while rolling round on the farm vehicles and such, musos no prob as he makes something----something, not nec of nothing but working a few phrases not nec going anywhere but around and around earth and space certainly some robust to muscular phrases, whatever he does with them and voice very clear despite all the screaming he had done press sheet says label was like oh we don’t know about him doing country or was it just that it was so out there how compare to his other new records around then? seemed pretty out there in 70s Hendrix doc Sweet girlish laughter but unsettling as in high school wtf but no complaints after all Out Dec. 4 and always, I def relate him to Joplin at her most intense, also both of them as preceding, for instance, Robert Plant, Axl Rose, the Nazareth dude, and that whole school of pre-Cookie Monster screamy hard rock-to-metal vocals (as Ellen Willis pointed out about Joplin).

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81oe0e9cqIL._SL1500_.jp

yeah if you want to draw threads back from punk, no arguing that little richard is ground zero for the idea of playing rock songs as hard fast & loud as you can imo. on that complete specialty sessions set there are insane takes where theyre blasting through tunes in like 65 seconds.

I asked my friends about her
But all their lips was tight

“Shut up!”

my mom won me and my brother an expenses-paid trip to disneyworld to see superbowl 25. as we were checking out of the hotel we noticed little richard, who had played a pre-event party, checking out in the line next to us. we said hi and he was a sweetheart. he had one of his people give us some little religious texts.

tangentially related: here's a christgau fave from buffalo who named their band after superbowl 25:
http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=wide+right

So the beauty really was still on duty?

for 6:30 in the morning he was looking ok.

Turn on your fan, it’s just began.

I had my day and I had my say and I had my way! So, nay nay nay!

:)

Who's that girl on the cover with him? I thought Janis Martin, but (he don't look so little next to her) https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/oct/21/alis-lesley-the-female-elvis-who-takes-centre-stage-on-bob-dylans-new-book-cover Good comments about cover overall at end.

Would you like to know where those quotes from me and TSF came from, dow?

https://waynerobins49.substack.com/p/lunch-with-little-richard-whoo?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

Deke Dickerson liked the new doc, I haven't seen it yet. Debuted in some theatres April 11, will hit streaming April 21 I think.

Hmm. It's playing at the Quad in NYC right now.

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YC8WUrWtZY

A sad but great line: "He was very, very good at liberating other people. He was not good at liberating himself."

Also, if you ever get the chance, definitely go see a screening of William Klein's The Little Richard Story. Klein was a great filmmaker and it's arguably his best (along with his movie on Muhammad Ali). Anthology Film Archives in NYC screened a 16mm print last year, which looked far better than the VHS rip that's floating around out there.

^word

https://spectrumculture.com/2023/04/12/little-richard-i-am-everything-review/

A review that says the doc didn’t quite explain how all of Little Richard’s different aspects fit together; but the review then notes that even those close to Richard couldn’t quite explain him

Terrifying to white parents, hero to millions!

...and fucking Pat Boone is still around. smh.

https://www.facebook.com/1591314471/posts/pfbid0Zw7Hk7NGa9zu8PadCCxxgAXwj6jQhSK8kdqjUX6hz23kuDNw2N5HBLjXY8JHqVb7l/?mibextid=cr9u03

Elijah Wald public Facebook post— he loves the doc and how it also shows Richard’s influence on Otis Redding , his gospel periods, his queerness, and he likes the guest speakers chosen to talk

Bono free?!

SHUT UP!

B-b-but has anyone weighed in on the question of whether the beauty is still on duty?

Tutti fruiti , beauty on duty

Saw the documentary at a rep theatre today. Thought it was good, not great. I knew of his one famous retreat back to the church during the late '50s, but didn't know he'd do it again a couple more times. His reaction to getting some lifetime achievement thing from Dick Clark is a good example, I think, of why the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has value to older artists. (Little Richard missed his HOF induction because of a car accident, so the Clark thing took on added significance for him.) They missed the Geico commercial in the Little-Richard-in-the-culture collage near the end.

Hope to see this doc soon. Just realized the director is someone I used to know.

I saw the 2nd half of a doc on him on i think Sky Arts a couple of weeks back. Is that going to be the same one being talked about here a few months ago.
Thought it a pain id missed the beginning anyway.

It is streaming on channel 4 atm

Would have been 91 today. I was in a middle school, so was able to talk about him and play a clip for three different grade 7 classes. This is my fifth year of supplying since retiring. I think money is about 60% of why I keep going (even though I'm fortunate enough to not depend on it), 30% is that I'd go stir crazy if I didn't, and--not to flatter myself, but I really do feel this way--10% is that if I stop, no one will ever tell them about Little Richard.

Shut up!

(Sorry, couldn’t resist)

Preach on, brother!

Saw the "I Am Everything" docu recently, quite liked it - especially because a good portion of it is directly from Richard over the years.

FWIW, I don’t remember anyone ever mentioning Little Richard once when I was in school. I only learned about his music through the Beatles and as much as I love Little Richard now, I can’t imagine what else would have led me to his work - maybe the obituaries surrounding his death or maybe William Klein’s film, but that would mean many years later. (I didn’t see Klein’s film until sometime during the 2010s.)

John Waters maybe

aw, Little Richard was the first artist i really loved, along with James Brown maybe.

He had a big feature in the Life mag Dec 92 "40 years of rock n roll" special edition that i swiped from my grandfather. I got into music using that pub as a guide to the library's AV collection, which also featured lots of Richard.

i actually made my own Little Richard figurine out of polymer clay, since i couldn't find one in any stores.

Also wanted to say something about the beauty still being on duty

The doc is good