In Collection
#3575
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| 01
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Tutti Frutti |
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02:27 |
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| 02
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True, Fine Mama |
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02:44 |
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| 03
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Can't Believe You Wanna' Leave |
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02:29 |
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| 04
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Ready Teddy |
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02:10 |
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| 05
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Baby |
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02:07 |
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| 06
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Slippin' And Slidin' |
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02:45 |
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| 07
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Long Tall Sally |
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02:11 |
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| 08
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Miss Ann |
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02:18 |
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| 09
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Oh Why? |
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02:10 |
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| 10
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Rip It Up |
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02:25 |
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| 11
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Jenny Jenny |
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02:05 |
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| 12
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She's Got It |
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02:29 |
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| 13
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Keep A Knockin' |
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02:21 |
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| 14
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By The Light Of The Silvery Moon |
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02:08 |
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| 15
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Send Me Some Lovin' |
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02:20 |
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| 16
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I'll Never Let You Go |
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02:21 |
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| 17
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Heeby Jeebies |
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02:16 |
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| 18
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All Around The World |
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02:23 |
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| 19
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Good Golly, Miss Molly |
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02:12 |
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| 20
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Baby Face |
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02:12 |
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| 21
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Hey Hey Hey Hey |
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02:08 |
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| 22
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Ooh! My Soul |
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02:09 |
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| 23
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The Girl Can't Help It |
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02:33 |
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| 24
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Lucille |
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02:23 |
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| UPC (Barcode) |
821797202817 |
| Packaging |
Jewel Case |
| Spars |
DDD |
| Sound |
Stereo |
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Original Label- Specialty (Here's Little Richard- March 1957 & Little Richard 1958) AMG REVIEW (HERE'S LITTLE RICHARD): Little Richard had been making records for four years before he rolled into Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studio in New Orleans and cut the epochal "Tutti Frutti" in the fall of 1955, but everything else he'd done --- and much of what others had recorded --- faded into insignificance when Richard wailed "A wop bop a loo mop a lomp bomp bomp" and kicked off one of the first great wailers in rock history. In retrospect, Little Richard's style doesn't seem so strikingly innovative as captured in 1956's Here's Little Richard --- his boogie-woogie piano stylings weren't all that different from what Fats Domino has been laying down since 1949, and his band pumped out the New Orleans backbeat that would define the Crescent City's R&B for the next two decades, albeit with precision and plenty of groove. But what set Richard apart was his willingness to ramp up the tempos and turn the outrage meter up to ten; "Tutti Frutti," "Rip It Up" and "Jenny Jenny" still sound outrageous a half-century after they were waxed, and it's difficult but intriguing to imagine how people must have reacted to Little Richard at a time when African-American performers were expected to be polite and the notion of a gay man venturing out of the closet simply didn't exist (Richard's songs were thoroughly heterosexual on the surface, but the nudge and wink of "Tutti Frutti" and "Baby" is faint but visible, and his bop threads, mile-high process and eye makeup clearly categorized him as someone "different"). These 12 tunes may not represent the alpha and omega of Little Richard's best music, but every song is a classic and unlike many of his peers, time has refused to render this first album quaint --- Richard's grainy scream remains one of the great sounds in rock & roll history, and the thunder of his piano and the frantic wail of the band is still the glorious call of a Friday night with pay in the pocket and trouble in mind. Brilliant stuff.---by Mark Deming BILLBOARD ALBUMS: 1957 Here's Little Richard- Pop Albums peaked at 13 BILLBOARD SINGLES: 1956 Long Tall Sally- Black Singles peaked at 1 1956 Long Tall Sally- Pop Singles peaked at 6 1956 Ready Teddy- Black Singles peaked at 8 1956 Ready Teddy- Pop Singles peaked at 44 1956 Rip It Up- Black Singles peaked at 1 1956 Rip It Up- Pop Singles peaked at 17 1957 Jenny, Jenny- Black Singles peaked at 2 1957 Jenny, Jenny- Pop Singles peaked at 10 1957 Miss Ann- Black Singles peaked at 6 1957 Miss Ann- Pop Singles peaked at 56 1958 True, Fine Mama- Black Singles peaked at 15 1958 True, Fine Mama- Pop Singlespeaked at 68 AMG REVIEW (LITTLE RICHARD): Little Richard was not only one of the first great stars of rock ‘n' roll, he was one of the young music's first great cultural affronts, and while he was selling records hand over first in 1955 and ‘56, he seemed strange to squares in a way Chuck Berry or Fats Domino couldn't quite match, with his beyond-crazed performing style and ambiguous fashion sense. For Richard's second LP, 1957's simply titled Little Richard, Specialty Records' A&R men got the clever idea that by covering a few old standards, the Georgia Peach might win over some parents who had been put off by his earlier work. The flaw in this thinking was that by the time Richard got through with "Baby Face" and "By The Light Of The Silvery Moon", they sounded like Little Richard tunes --- which is to say the vocals howled, the piano rang out like church bells on speed, and his band swung hard behind it all. Little Richard was every bit as rockin' as his first album, if not more so; "Keep A'Knockin'", "Lucille", "Good Golly Miss Molly" and "The Girl Can't Help It" were hits for the right reason, "All Around The World" is still a clarion call for the power of the music (and most adults were probably not comforted by the song's proclamation that young fans of the big beat "never have time for romance/ they only wanna dance"), "Send Me Some Lovin'" slows down the tempo while still laying out the good groove, "Ooh! My Soul" is deliciously lascivious, and there isn't a single throwaway among the twelve tunes on deck. Richard's band (sadly unidentified by name) are in glorious form as well, and Cosimo Matassa (who recorded the bulk of these songs at his tiny J&M Studios in New Orleans) makes these sessions sound as raucous as they deserved. Little Richard was too crazed to win over many suspicious parents in 1957, but thankfully it wails loud enough that no one was likely to hear them complain, and it still get the party started fifty years on.---by Mark Deming BILLBOARD SINGLES: 1957 Keep A Knockin'- Black Singles peaked at 2 1957 Keep A Knockin'- Pop Singles peaked at 8 1957 Send Me Some Lovin'- Black Singles peaked at 3 1957 Send Me Some Lovin'- Pop Singles peaked at 54 1957 The Girl Can't Help It- Black Singles peaked at 7 1957 The Girl Can't Help It- Pop Singles peaked at 49 1958 Ooh! My Soul- Black Singles peaked at 15 1958 Ooh! My Soul- Pop Singles peaked at 31 AMG REVIEW (COMPILATION): The audiophile label Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs is known for their meticulously mastered and manufactured reissues of back catalog albums, but they generally seem more interested in classic jazz and rock from the '70s onward than first generation rock & roll, which makes their two-fer reissue of Little Richard's first two albums for Specialty such a pleasant surprise. While fans have been accustomed to hearing the 24 classic tunes on this disc on reissues sourced from tapes many generations down from the originals (and often in fake stereo), MFSL have remastered these tracks in glorious mono, with decades of aural grime buffed away, and the results are impressive. On many of these songs, despite the single channel sound sources, it's easier than ever before to hear the details separating Richard from his band, and the audio (mostly recorded by the great Cosimo Matassa at his J&M Studios in New Orleans) is straightforward but full of depth, with the bass and drums swinging gloriously, the piano rolling like the Mississippi River, and the horns pealing with joy. And as music, this disc is a near-peerless introduction to Little Richard's early work; he rarely topped the fire and strength of these sessions, and most of his biggest and best hits are on board, including "Tutti Frutti," "Lucille," "The Girl Can't Help It," "Rip It Up," "God Golly, Miss Molly" and lots more. Given that MFSL have pressed this on a multi-layer gold CD with both standard and SACD functionality, this is a much pricier item than most single-disc Little Richard collections, but the material here has never sounded quite this good on compact disc, and the music is superb --- fans of first era rock with an taste for high fidelity will find this release to be a major kick on both levels.---by Mark Deming
