You’ve undoubtedly heard of Little Richard, but one of the singers who influenced Mr. Penniman was Billy Wright (1932?-91), a blues singer who’s career consisted of flamboyant jump blues, in which this two cd, 43 song collection brings out the highlights.
He had a bunch of popular R&B hits, first with “Blues For My Baby” with him teamed up with Howard Collander’s Orchestra, and then had a slew of singles that were in the juke boxes, including “You Satisfy”, “Stacked Deck” and “Hey, Little Girl” . Wright knew how to shuffle the blues like they were a deck of cards, as on the relentless “Billy’s Boogie Blues” and wild ride of “After Dark Blues”. The saxes of William Scott and James Hudson are swaying on “Keep Your Hands On Your Heart” , and with jazzer Buddy Tate on the tenor sax, Wright oozes out “Goin’ Down Slow” and “If I Didn’t Love You”. As his career progressed, Wright changed with the times, as on the Coasters-ish “I Love You Sweetheart” and the Little Richard-ish “The Question”, making this anthology an important sidebar to the burgeoning R&B scene that eventually turned into something called “rock and roll” before the white kids took it over.