ALBUM: Little Richard, ‘Directly from My Heart: The Best of the Specialty & Vee-Jay Years’
For all the celebrated artists canonized in rock history, there are countless other influential, talented performers who have been lost to the ages because their appeal never adequately translated to vinyl. Their live performances may have been revolutionary and electric, but their recorded music (if it exists) suffers from trying to be cleaned up or forced into an ill-fitting style, or simply fails to capture that elusive spark that made them special. If they’re remembered at all, it’s only through the adulation of those who followed in their footsteps.
Such is the case with flamboyant, make-up wearing jump-bluesman Billy Wright, and eccentric, gender-bending piano player Esquerita, both too far out of the norm and ahead of their times to be acceptable hitmakers. Their names would likely be forgotten entirely if not for a third performer, who just escaped joining their ranks among the obscure. Richard Penniman adapted his trademark dandyish, quasi-effeminate look and rollicking musical persona from both men; in addition, Wright helped Penniman get his first recording contract, while Esquerita taught him his distinctive piano style. Despite a saucy, energetic live show in which he often dressed in drag, Penniman’s early recording career failed to make much of a splash — until, suddenly, he stumbled into the song that would change rock history.
Penniman, of course, is better known as Little Richard, and the record that changed his fortunes is one “Tutti Frutti.” The new triple-disc box set Directly from My Heart (Specialty/Concord) collects everything Richard cut for R&B labels Specialty Records, where he recorded his string of ’50s smashes, and Vee-Jay Records, which released 1964’s comeback LP Little Richard is Back (And There’s a Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On!). While Richard’s stint at Specialty was brief — only 1955 to 1957, with a couple of sessions in early 1964 — the hits he recorded for the label are some of the of the foundation stones of rock ‘n’ roll: “Long Tall Sally,” “Slippin’ and Slidin’,” “Rip It Up,” “Lucille,” “Jenny Jenny,” “Ooh! My Soul,” “Good Golly Miss Molly,” “Ready Teddy,” “She’s Got It,” and so many more.
Directly from My Heart is roughly sequenced in order of recording, not of release, which helps contextualize just how radically Little Richard’s hits stood out compared with the sound of the era. The first disc opens with a string of catchy but rather run-of-the-mill New Orleans R&B, sort of a lesser version of what Fats Domino was doing at the time. Still, there are flecks of greatness in these tracks, especially when Richard’s falsetto pierces into a decidedly feminine range, giving rather straightforward songs a sexually ambiguous edge.
None of those early records, however, hint at the revolutionary spirit and rambunctious lasciviousness of “Tutti Frutti.” Richard had launched into the song, a regular feature of his drag shows, merely to blow off some steam during a break in a recording session. The crew at Specialty — in particular, label owner Art Rupe and producer/songwriter Robert “Bumps” Blackwell — instantly knew they had something special on their hands. The earlier R&B recordings were shelved for B-sides and album filler, making way for “Tutti Frutti” to become Richard’s first Specialty single, released in October 1955. The label took a risk betting on a song so wild, loose, and raunchy — even the bowdlerized lyrics couldn’t hide the carnal flint in Richard’s voice — but it paid off: “Tutti Frutti” rooty-ed into the Top 20 of the pop charts, even if Pat Boone’s decidedly un-frutti cover ended up the bigger hit.
After “Tutti Frutti” came the deluge. The latter half of Disc 1 and the first half of Disc 2 cover an unimpeachable run of records, from can’t-miss hits like “Long Tall Sally” and “Good Golly Miss Molly,” to lesser-known goodies like “I Got It” and “Heeby-Jeebies.” These records are defined by Little Richard’s unbeatable exuberance and fluid phrasing, the peak of which is the aptly evasive “Slippin’ and Slidin’ (Peepin’ and Hidin’).” For all of Richard’s flamboyance, there’s a real subtlety to the way his voice handles this early material: melodic but with a touch of the unexpected that adds to the thrill. While it might be stretching to call Little Richard “dangerous,” there is an unapologetic seediness that pervades his records, the likes of which were previously unknown on the pop charts. It’s still shocking to think that the lyrics “Long tall Sally, she’s built for speed / She got everything that Uncle John need” and “Good golly Miss Molly/ You sure like to ball” made it into two Top 10 pop hits during the era of suburban conformity and Leave It to Beaver.
Richard’s seemingly unstoppable wellspring of hits suddenly dried up in late 1957, when a religious experience led him to renounce rock ‘n’ roll in favor of gospel music. At the time, Specialty had only released one LP by the singer, Here’s Little Richard, from earlier that year. The label would go on to cobble two more LPs from the singer’s previous sessions, padding out the red-hot singles they had in reserve with his early R&B material, now overdubbed with additional rock instrumentation and female backing vocals. The second album, 1958’s Little Richard (which makes up the bulk of Disc 2), shows the singer possibly moving in a more mainstream direction before his road-to-Damascus moment, with songs including the theme to the 1956 comedy The Girl Can’t Help It and covers of olde-tyme chestnuts “Baby Face” and “By the Light of the Silvery Moon.” (Most of the material from the third Specialty LP, 1959’s The Fabulous Little Richard, is so old that it comprises Disc 1’s first half.)
Little Richard spent the next several years singing gospel for other labels, but returned to Specialty in 1964 when the British Invasion reignited interest in his classic singles. The end of Disc 2 and the entirety of Disc 3 date from this latter-day segment of his career, including the minor comeback hit “Bama Lama Bama Loo.” Richard had shown talent before “Tutti Frutti,” and he still had talent now; nevertheless, he’d lost momentum, and the rock world had changed. His voice had grown deeper and rougher, and despite the occasional, still-thrilling falsetto “oooh!,” was no longer as nimble and dynamic. His songwriting inspiration had apparently dried up as well: almost the entire third disc consists of covers reflecting his roots, such as Lloyd Price’s “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” and Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill.” The few originals blatantly hark back to his glory days, from a bawdy update of “I Got It” titled “It Ain’t Whatcha Do (It’s the Way How You Do It),” to “Dancing All Around the World,” which explicitly references his earlier hits (“old Miss Ann, doing the best she can / old Lucille, dancing all over the field”).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1CV6UQFcSM
While the covers are all given energetic, enthusiastic performances, it’s the handful of singles at the end of Disc 3 that point to an intriguing new direction for Little Richard. Songs like “You Better Stop” and “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got But It’s Got Me” find him branching out into the new genre of soul without compromising his trademark sound. (Both those tracks are also notable for featuring a pre-fame Jimi Hendrix on guitar.) “I Don’t Know What You Got” scraped into the Hot 100, and climbed all the way to #12 on the R&B chart, his last major record of the decade.
The rest of the ’60s would set the pattern for Little Richard’s career for the next couple of decades: bouncing from label to label, mounting comeback after comeback, abruptly forsaking rock ‘n’ roll in a religious fervor, returning to rerecord and trade on his classic hits, and occasionally charting a new single. Richard never managed to recapture the magic of the Specialty recordings that made him a star, but that hardly matters. As wild and one-of-a-kind as his style is, it’s a wonder they managed to get made at all, especially as so many of his peers have vanished into obscurity. Without these Specialty singles, not only would the world have missed a great artist, but rock ‘n’ roll as we know it would never have existed.
Little Richard’s Directly From My Heart: The Best of the Specialty and Vee-Jay Years is out June 2. Pre-order your copy now on Amazon!
