This 3 disc set is a retrospective of the music that a young gent by the name of Richard Penniman made from 1955-1965 that transformed music into what we now call “rock and roll.” When he changed his music style form basic New Orleans R&B to a harder and more raucous hitting groove, and changed his name to Little Richard, Penniman became one of the war heads of a heat seeking missile that explode and left the world in a different wake. What you get here is the music leading up to that transformation, the seismic shift, and then the slow shift into normalcy and civilization.
Penniman was able to mix the New Orleans back beat, gospel, blues and swing into an original sounding gumbo that was catchy and identifiable. This collection of his material from the Specialty and Vee Jay labels starts with the core band of Lee Allen-Red Tyler/sax, Huey Smith/p, Justin Adams/g, Frank Fields/b and Earl Palmer/dr and a first sound like an alternative to Fats Domino as Richard hiply croons on “Baby” and “Lonesome and Blue.” Suddenly the transformation takes hold and gels; Richard starts getting more vocally animated, the band bears down and the saxes get more earthy and Richard blares out “Wop bop-a-loom-bop alop bam boom” before creating a locomotive of sound on “Tutti Frutti.” The formula catches on, and Richard starts adding vocal effects like shrieks, sighs, oohs and chuckles that stand leagues apart from contemporaries like Pat Boone, even making Presley sound lame in comparison. Classics like “Reddy Teddy” and the incessantly energetic “Lucille” are rivulets of rhythmic energy. Yet Richard could also go tenderly as “Send Me Some Loving,” with Richard’s hiccups of passion, simply oozing with pathos, while on the other hand you feel like you’re in the face of a lion as Penniman screams out “Hey Hey Hey Hey.”
As far as the sax players go, Allen and Tyler defined and re-defined the growling tenor on solos and backing riffs during pieces that range from the easy stroll of “Miss Ann” and “Oh Why” to the aforementioned hits and even throwaway simplicities like “Heebie-Jeebies” And let’s not forget that these 2 minute ditties were made for the juke box in which kids would throw a nickel into in order to actually dance with a partner. All of these songs, like “The Girl Can’t Help It” just make you want to do the Lindy or the Stroll with your steady (still a great term). The raw nerve energy of modern music has never been more exposed than here.
The third disc covers his change of labels from Specialty to Vee Jay in 1964, and the difference in sound is palpable. There is more guitar riffing on tunes like “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” and “Money Honey” and his touring band The Upsetters gave the music a bit more of a soul/R&B feel that wasn’t as “dangerous” for lack of a better word. Richard’s voice is still raucous, but it’s mixed with a bit of nuance now that feels more akin to James Brown, Don Covay and even Jerry Butler; civilization was slowly changing the man from another world. It was soon after this that Richard chucked it all away, literally and went to serve God through Christianity for awhile, reconciling his soul to his Savior before feeling forgiven enough to delve back into the world in the 80s. These songs still give a great time capsule of what music can sound like when the marrow of a movement is captured.