Little Richard - The Formative Years

Those of you who recall my earlier take on Little Richard may well be surprised to see this here, so am I. The links for this set were sent to me by Morris who is an author over at Bolden's Backroom. He sent them back in August and at the time I wasn't all that interested, I had decided that the 18 months of brilliance in New Orleans were all that was worth the time.

Even once I had finally managed to download the file it sat in my inbox unopened until this morning. I finally gave it a listen today and I must say I was pleasantly surprised, these tunes are better than I remembered. Perhaps it is the lovely Bear Family remastering or perhaps my ears are better educated to the influences that he is reflecting here but I must say that even though nearly all the material is directly derivative of Billy Wright or Roy Brown, it is easy to see why they were recording him. Richard's voice is more powerful than Wright's and more facile than Brown's, he was only the proper material and circumstances away from a hit in this style but somehow that never really happened. Instead fate waited for him to have Bumps Blackwell hear him ape a filthy bar ditty in the style of his friend Eskew Reeder (Tutti Frutti), and a clean-up rewrite later, history!

The first 12 songs here are with RCA and while they did not sell, a) they did pay him $750 for each session which was quite good money then and b) they attracted the attention of Don Robey who was impressed enough to literally beat Richard into signing a contract. If Robey hadn't given up on him, history suggests that Richard would have been there until Robey died. The remainder of this material was recorded for Robey's Peacock label.

I would still say that nothing in the set is earth shattering by any means but the blues ballads in particular show a side of Penniman that would later be lost. Much like James Brown, Little Richard was forced to stop being such a good singer in order to cross over to the pop market.

We have Morris to thank for this lovely flac rip.