227. Little Richard, "Here’s Little Richard"

 


You can actually hear rock 'n roll being formed on this album.  Like, here's Little Richard taking blues and R&B and gospel and smashing it all together into what we would eventually recognize as rock.  If this list were Most Formative Albums, this album would be in the Top 10.  And just because I love these historical comparisons: this album came out in 1957, meaning that it is as old now as Brahms' Opus 117 was when this album was released.

Little Richard only died a few years ago, in 2020, but man, what a life.  His first hit, and the first song on this album, "Tutti Frutti," came out in 1955, when he was 23 years old.  That song, which of course you know, if not the original then maybe the Elvis version, has quite a backstory.  It's been common lore for years that the original lyrics were quite a bit more, um, risque than the final version.  According to Little Richard's drummer, they were something like: "Tutti Frutti, good booty/If it's tight, it's all right/And if it's greasy, it makes it easy."  But legendary producer/bandleader "Bumps" Blackwell knew that wasn't gonna get played on the radio, so he called in lyricist Dorothy LaBostrie to write the lyrics we all know "Tutti Frutti, aw rooty," repeat 3x.  BUT LaBostrie later claimed she wrote the lyrics - I mean, "lyrics," such as they are - from scratch and there was never a dirty version.  I guess we'll never know, but the dirty version story is much better.

The rest of the album is sonically similar, with some variations here and there.  A lot of it is definitely just sped-up blues; I guess I shouldn't say "just," because somebody had to speed up blues and invent rock and roll and it was Little Richard that did it.  I quite like "Rip It Up," maybe the first "I just got paid and now I'm gonna party" songs, a theme that would recur in rock for the next 60 years:

Well, it's Saturday night, and I just got paid
Fool about my money, don't try to save
My heart says go, go, have a time
'Cause it's Saturday night, and I'm feelin' fine
I'm gonna rock it up, I'm gonna rip it up
I'm gonna shake it up, gonna ball it up
I'm gonna rock it up, and ball tonight

"Ball" didn't have the overtly sexual connotation it would get in the 60's; here it just means "party."  But I imagine LR was anticipating the later meaning.  

The other big hit on this record was "Long Tall Sally," a more or less prototypical rock song that, even if you've never heard it (which, frankly, would be hard to imagine at this point) you would nevertheless recognize and know immediately where it was going next.  It was covered by the Kinks and Beatles and Elvis and every other garage band for decades.  And in fact, it was the last song the Beatles ever played at their last show at Candlestick Park.  

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Of course.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

103. De La Soul, "Three Feet High And Rising"

Image
  Sorry for the service interruption!  Monday I had, like, work stuff to do and yesterday I was picking my wife up at the airport and they lost her bag and we had to file a claim about that and by the time I got home it was well into my Work Hours and you know, I'm just sorry.  (This was tail end of quite a journey for my wife that found her taking off in Ireland and landing in Newark, New Jersey, and then sitting in a plane for almost three hours and then the flight just getting cancelled and then staying in the Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Newark, NJ [not recommended, she says] and then getting on a flight to SFO at 6:30 am and finally getting back here a solid 14 hours later than expected.) Speaking of the greater New York City metropolitan area, a group of kids from Amityville, Long Island, got together in 1988 and started making songs and released this album, one of the best in hip hop or any other genre, in 1989.  De La have been called the "Beatles of hip hop"
Read more

3. Joni Mitchell, "Blue"

Image
  Do you want the good news or the meh news first?  The good news is that this album is better than the other Joni Mitchell albums we've seen , or at least better for me.  I hated one of them and barely tolerated the other, so I was not expecting to like this, and after three listens yesterday, it was not as bad as I'd feared it would be.  The meh news?  I still don't love Joni Mitchell and I don't particularly like this album. Obviously, since it's the number 3 out of the Top 500 albums ever made, a lot of people feel differently.  Pitchfork called it "possibly the most gutting break-up album ever made," which may be true, who knows, but if it is it's about breaking up with a whole series of dudes, from Graham Nash to James Taylor to some guy named Carey.  (In Pitchfork's estimation, this is the 86th best album of the 1970s, so not exactly in number 3 overall territory). One thing that bugs me is Joni Mitchell's voice, which I find kind of g
Read more

1. Marvin Gaye, "What’s Going On"

Image
  500 albums later and we're out of albums.  This album was number 6 on the last iteration of the Rolling Stone list and has now moved up to number 1 (displacing Sgt. Pepper , which was the last album to hold that spot).  I think it's a lovely album with maybe three absolutely incredible songs, a fair amount of average-to-good, and some not great songs.  I'm not a voter and will never be a voter but I just don't think this is the best album of all time. In fact, I would be perfectly fine with this list if they just sawed off the top 3 and left the rest as is: 1. Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life 2. Beatles, Abbey Road 3. Nirvana, Nevermind 4. Fleetwood Mac, Rumours And so forth.  But let's take this album on its own merits. The first of the three absolute bangers is the title track, "What's Going On," the scene-setter for the rest of the album, a loose concept album that's told from the point of view of a Vietnam vet returning to a country th
Read more