Ready, Set, Go Man, Go: The Legacy of Little Richard

We are approaching, sadly, a point where very few of the architects of rock ‘n’ roll are still with us.

Of the first class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the ten artists who set the bar that has been so dramatically lowered in recent yeas, only Jerry Lee Lewis and Don Everly survive, The connective threads to rock’s early years are fraying badly, and one bright spot in the attention paid to Little Richard’s passing, one more terrible loss in this devastating year, is that, if the Gods have a sense of what’s right, it will send people to their music collections and their computers to discover, or rediscover, what Little Richard was about, how vital he was and is still.

I recently wrote a piece on the Ramones and talked about the dual responses of shock and laughter that some artists provoke, like: This is something so radical and absurd, but so conceptually perfect. Jimi Hendrix, who played guitar for Little Richard for a while, was like that, and Prince, and Elvis and The Beatles, of course: there were a couple of beats between the novelty of how they looked, how they sounded, what they projected, the audacity of it all, and the realization that this was something that couldn’t have been predicted but now was utterly essential.

I didn’t see Little Richard live until April 1965 at the Paramount Theater in New York, a multi-artist (The Hollies, King Curtis, The Exciters…) bill hosted by Soupy Sales. By then, he’d stopped having hit records, but his music was still in the air: The Beatles had cut “Long Tall Sally” (so did The Kinks) and “Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey Hey,” The Swinging Blue Jeans did “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” and “Lucille” was on The Hollies’ debut album. Later that year, Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels  incorporated “Jenny Jenny” into the hit medley “Jenny Take A Ride”. The Everly Brothers revived “Slippin’ and Slidin’” on their Rock’n Soul LP, and followed that with a version of “The Girl Can’t Help It” on the next album, Beat & Soul (The Animals and Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders did that one also). Of course we knew who Little Richard was. He’d be one of the heads on any Mt. Rushmore of Rock ‘n’ Roll that meant anything. And when he came out on stage he was, as anyone who’d ever seen him could tell you, explosive (The Explosive Little Richard would become, in ’67, the title of an Okeh LP). A lot of artists could play rock ‘n’ roll. Little Richard was rock ‘n’ roll. 

AUDIO: Little Richard Wild and Frantic (full LP)

He called himself the Originator, because braggadocio was his brand, and when he resurfaced in the early ‘70s with a new Reprise record contract, and a personality made for the talk-show circuit, he was quick to point out how much of what was on the radio – bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival (he might also have mentioned the Band, who were doing “Slippin’ and Slidin’” in their set, and Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, who included a Little Richard medley on their 1970 live album, and invited Richard to appear on “Miss Ann” on To Bonnie from Delaney) – owed him a huge stylistic debt. Even Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, on ‘70s’ Weasels Ripped My Flesh, bowed in Richard’s direction with a cover of “Directly From My Heart to You.”

He was his own biggest fan, but the thing is, he was right. A list of artists he inspired (start with soul singers like Otis Redding and Joe Tex, and move on to piano-men like Elton John and Leon Russell) would be very extensive. He was simply, albeit animatedly, stating a fact.

Those early Specialty singles, the one he built his legacy on – although there were some fine records on VeeJay, Okeh, Reprise, Modern – came rushing at you. I mentioned the Ramones earlier, and Here’s Little Richard, his debut album, still sounds like it must have had the can’t-catch-your-breath impact of the Ramones’ first: bam! bam! bam! “Tutti Frutti,””Ready Teddy,” “Slippin’ and Slidin’” (how did that even get on the radio??), “Long Tall Sally,””Miss Ann,””Rip It Up,” “Jenny Jenny,” “She’s Got It”…it’s completely crazed. A lot of those songs were hit singles way before the album came out, and a batch of them had shown up on the first two albums by Elvis (“Rip It Up” kicked off the Elvis LP, and “Ready Teddy” popped up on the B side). About Pat Boone’s musical violations, we will not speak, but it’s obvious why Presley and other ’50s rockers like Buddy Holly and the Everlys gravitated towards those songs: they were Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Bill of Rights.

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

What could kids in 1956 have made of that? The wildness, the abandon, the recklessness? Imagine buying the Specialty single of “Rip It Up,” flipping it over, and hearing this:

All the flat top cats and the dungaree dolls,
Are headed for the gym to the sock hop ball,
The joint is really jumpin’, the cats are going wild,
The music really sends me, I dig that crazy style.

He was ready ready Teddy, to rock and roll, and on those two sides of the same 45, he summed up the whole game, and naturally Elvis gripped on to both songs, because that was what he was selling: he was ready to rip it up. And Elvis got it: you see him singing “Ready Teddy” on TV in ’56 and it’s like he’s jumping out of his skin. But Little Richard was leaps beyond. We’re fortunate to have some astounding footage of him on film, in a couple of Alan Freed vehicles (Don’t Knock the Rock and Mister Rock and Roll), and especially in Frank Tashlin’s color and CinemaScope R’n’R extravaganza The Girl Can’t Help It, where his title song celebrates the figure made to squeeze of Jayne Mansfield, and he gets to pound out “She’s Got It” and “Ready Teddy.” Even though there’s an element of mockery in The Girl Can’t Help It, when the camera is pointed at Little Richard (even in his screen test, viewable on YouTube), it’s still a subversive jolt, nearly a more than six decades later. Nothing could contain him. 

AUDIO: Little Richard Sings His Greatest Hits (full album)