Little Richard
The Best Of Little Richard

THE REVIEW

When I wake up on a Saturday morning, still feeling the effects of the previous Friday, and realize that I'm once again a 'guest' at my mom and dad's house, I feel indebted, terribly indebted to them. My mother's ironic phrase - Quanno te ne andrai sarà sempre troppo tardi! - makes me smile and instantly re-verberates my head, still swimming from last night's alcohol. Then, with that mischievous awareness on my skin, which makes my mouth even more bitter than last night's final drink while my biological clock tells me it's time again, I get a craving for rock and roll. But the real kind, the wild and lived one, the sensual and vicious one. I get the urge for the r'n'r of mister Richard Wayne Penniman: Little Richard.

The trouble is that I'm still in debt. My parents raised me with Little Richard, at elementary and middle school parties when they'd play 'Tutti Frutti' at stellar volumes, and I, from afar among the guests, would watch with a big glass of Fanta in hand, my 'favorite little sweetheart' of the moment, overwhelmed and speechless, not daring to talk to him. Once it was almost like that. Now that the glass wouldn't be of Fanta, I’m not sure if this time I'd leave the 'favorite little sweetheart' standing there in the corner looking around or if I'd kindly devour him. On second thought, I suppose settling the score with my conscience, at this point, wouldn't be so easy, but I could start by tidying up this room or my thoughts, neglected and disorderly for years; Little Richard would do the rest.

Have you ever tried to tidy up your life with him singing, screaming, shaking, winking like only the great singers of the '50s knew how to do? Try it; the result is guaranteed chaos. Just the time to slip the CD into the player and Mr. Richard kicks off with a heart-stopping triptych: 'Long Tall Sally' the irresistible, 'Lucille' the carnal, 'Keep A Knockin' the assertive, with the most emphatically insistent drum intro of all time. Rock is rock, and it must be heard at suitably appropriate volumes. So if the walls shake, and the neighbors collapse to the ground, do yourself a favor: ignore them.

The most beloved, praised, adored, and damnably copied Little Richard with that explosive voice (which betrays no gospel origins) powerful and exuberant, with his sinful performances, engaging and furious settles the scores. He captures you like a bandit. He is whirlwind, exceptional, frenzied in his vividly performed songs ('Good Golly Miss Molly' and 'Long Tall Sally'); excessive, cutting ('The Girl Can’t Help It'); unseemly, animalistic, sacrilegious in rhythm ('Groovy Little Suzy') as well as in look. He is audacious, rude, disrespectful in his often incomprehensible lyrics ('Hound Dog' and 'Tutti Frutti'), but for this very reason, exhilarating and primitive. With that epileptic, uncontrolled groan that bursts from his chest with every note, he anoints you as a sinner with him... (that a-wop-bop-a-loo-lop a-lop-bam-boo in 'Tutti Frutti' will scorch the throats of many and herald an era). He sings screeching his 'mass' and does it without false modesty: made-up, masked with that indelible eyeliner line on his eyes, those teased hair, those outfits that verge on kitsch but with a voice and a piano that could make you sell your soul or change religion on the spot if it were necessary, (incredible the fact that it was he who first in '57 and later in the mid-'60s abandoned the excesses of rock and roll because called back in prayer by his merciful god..).

A consecration of living r'n'r, the 'little' Richard from Georgia capable of making history. Flanked by the faithful saxophones of Lee Allen and Alvin Tyler, modeled onto a roaring drum and his incandescent and boiling piano, among howls, unlikely scat and pressing phrasings this 'rock priest' is capable of giving us not only examples of the most visceral and holy r'n'r but also illuminating soul-blues 'sermons' ('Talking 'Bout Soul'), sensual soul ballads all piano voice and sax ('Send Me Some Lovin', 'Without Love'), 'parables' R&B ('Cherry Red'). All this while always lavishly indulging his rock-boogie soul, which aggressively resurfaces ('Groovy Little Suzy', 'Money Honey') and managing always to keep in sight the 'way': that inviolable path that is the purest and wildest rock'n'roll ('Jenny Jenny', 'Tutti Frutti') that distinguishes him.

It was the 1950s and this man and his music made of sonic excess and unruliness, jolts and fits suddenly overwhelming, had said a lot, maybe too much... condemning the sinful and mortal souls of the poor spectators enchanted by every vocal and physical contortion of his. Condemning us all to a seductive uncontrollable and beautiful beast called rock'n'roll.