Bob Bell's Lockdown Thoughts From America - Eulogy to Little Richard

So Richard is gone.

Oh man, how hard it is, all these years later, to sum up just what Little Richard meant to rock n roll fans in the nineteen fifties, especially in the UK where I grew up.

Although his breakthrough hits were in 1955 in the USA, strangely his record label Specialty didn’t have a UK outlet until the end of 1956, a full year after ‘Tutti Frutti’ hit the US charts, which was when Decca’s London American label started to release his records. And what a revelation he was. 

Rock n Roll in the UK was Tommy Steele, Bill Haley, Elvis, and Chuck Berry … all sterling performers of the style, but all paled compared to the frenzied mania that flew from the grooves of those London American 78’s. 

‘Rip It Up’, coupled with ‘Ready Teddy’ was his first UK release, and these celebrations of the moment, these two odes to recklessness, these paeans to joy and daredevil invitations to Dionysian orgiastic pleasure were a bombshell to this eleven-year-old. ‘Rip It Up’ with its devil may care opening statement:

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.

Got me a date and I won't be late,

Picked her up in my 88,

Shag on down by the union hall,

When the joint starts jumpin' I'll have a ball,

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.

'Long about ten I'll be flying high,

Walk on out unto the sky,

But I don't care if I spend my dough,

'Cause tonight I'm gonna be one happy soul,

I'm gonna rock it up, I'm gonna rip it up,

I'm gonna shake it up,…’

So that was the statement, the attitude and the philosophy of Rock n Roll, delivered with a barely controlled passion. If ‘Rip It Up’ set out the plan of attack, then the flip side ‘Ready Teddy’ laid down a barrage of shuddering and manic intensity:

‘Ready, set, Go man Go,

I got a girl that I love so,

I’m ready, ready, ready Teddy (x 3)

I’m ready, ready ready to rock n roll’

The English Teddy Boy fashion meant nothing in the USA of course, but to our young minds this song sang directly to those that we callow English youths saw as the custodians of Rock n Roll, and that imagined fact alone cranked up the significance of the song. As Richard pounded his way through the tune, signalling the tenor solo with the most delicious scream, and then reaching the last verse, his voice teetering at the edge of the apocalypse, hollering:

‘Going to kick off my shoes, roll up my faded jeans,

Grab my rock and roll baby, pour on the steam,

I shuffle to the left, I shuffle to the right,

Going to rock and roll to the early, early night’,

The world changed before our eyes. I played the record over and over - it was the very last two lines of that last verse that really really resonated, the break time of ’shuffle to the left, shuffle to the right’ and the screamed declaration of ‘going to rock and roll to the early early night’. This was indeed the Promised Land.

The years went by. I bought all his records, savouring each one, immersing myself in the glorious sound of his band who I later learned were the cream of New Orleans’ musicians. Some of his records had a slightly differing sound, and I learned that those were made with his road band, The Upsetters. 

Not too long after I had discovered him, I started to hear all kinds of weird rumours. He had killed a man with an axe. He had killed someone with a shovel. He had gone mad and thrown all his rings into the sea in Australia. He had renounced rock and roll and gone into the church. Turned out he had killed no-one. He hadn’t gone mad either, but he had given up rock and roll and joined the church.

Specialty and London American continued to release his records - fortunately he had left a considerable stockpile - the movies he had appeared in continued to be shown around the country, and we could get a glance at just what this shaman looked like, and just dream, speculate and conjecture exactly what being at one of his live performances would have been like. 

I kept a scrapbook and devoured the New Musical Express, Disc, Melody Maker, and the New Record Mirror weekly for news. Now and then a snippet maybe. Nat Hentoff had a weekly column in the New Musical Express and in 1961 made a tantalising mention of him recording for a label called Little Star. 

A few gospel LPs were released, but the material was leaden, the vocals restrained and the production plodding and wooden. A Quincy Jones produced gospel LP on Mercury, with liner notes by Mahalia Jackson, was beautifully produced but was lacking the fireworks we all expected. A couple of Mercury singles, one reuniting him with his Specialty producer, Robert ‘Bumps’ Blackwell came close, but it seemed that Little Richard, the Little Richard who had galvanised a generation, was no more. 

In Britain, by 1962, an interest in Rhythm & Blues was growing. Homegrown bands were playing the songs of Little Walter, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters and they were also playing old rock n roll tunes - Chuck Berry, Larry Williams, and Little Richard. 

In September of that year, the English promoter Don Arden announced he had signed Little Richard for a tour of the UK. For weeks after, I wandered about in an iridescent daze of anticipation, invisible clouds of joy and ecstasy wafting around my very being. He was going to sing rock and roll, not gospel, we were told, although years later we learned that Arden had promised him it would be promoted as a gospel tour. As with so many things surrounding Little Richard, it is hard to discern just what the truth really was, or is.

Anyway, dates were announced, and I bought a ticket, for eight shillings and sixpence, to his show at the Southampton Gaumont, on Tuesday, October 16th.  Sam Cooke was to close the first half of the show. Friends and I caught the train from Winchester to Southampton and got to the Gaumont just the first house was turning out. It was joyful mayhem, laughing and screaming kids jumping up and down, imitating what they had just seen and heard. Groups of Teddy Boys strutted their stuff, Edwardian drapes, brothel creepers and string ties, velvet collars, and wild greasy pompadours. 

We went in and found our seats. Mine was L25, nicely in the middle of the theatre. 

It was a moment to be savoured. I had been listening to Richard for over five years, and he had taken over my cultural consciousness with something like the nature of a god. An idol most certainly. I had listened to everything he had recorded, having searched out his then hard to find earlier blues records. I’d seen all his movies, read all I had been able to find in magazines and newspapers. Read, re-read and read again my scrapbook cuttings. And now here I was, shortly to be in His Presence. Were my dreams, my hopes, the rock and roll mysticism that I had so carefully wrapped him in, about to be shattered? Or would they be validated, confirmed, sealed and substantiated?  

Sounds Incorporated was the band hired to back up Cooke and Richard. They had their own spot too, and they were good, one of the few English bands that sported saxes. Sam Cooke, a singer that I love and admire, was, truth to tell, wasted on me that evening. He stood there and sang, beautifully. I’m afraid I just wanted to rock and roll all night, to rip it up, to rock it up, at the Gaumont that night.

After the break, ex-Shadow Jet Harris came on, and then the compere, Bob Bain, brought on Richard. Well, he introduced him. Sounds Incorporated riffed, and the centre of the stage was bare. And then came a voice, his voice, screaming out the names of his hits. ’Tutti Frutti!’ ‘Long Tall Sally!’ ‘Good Golly Miss Molly!’ ’She’s Got It!’ And then a pause ….. ‘Ooh. My Soul!’ And Richard emerged from the wings, running to the piano, and the opening strains of ‘Lucille’ rang out, Sounds Incorporated locked into a solid and grinding groove. 

The night went by in an unending musical pandemonium. Richard ended a song by grabbing the microphone stand, waving it above his hear, and shouting into the  mic, ‘Well, alright, well, alright!’ And then went straight into the next song. No let up, no stopping, no pausing, no resting, no stage patter. He’d grab the mic stand, holding it parallel to the stage, and jump up and down, a man possessed, running from one end of the stage to another, sweat pouring down his face. Tore off his drenched shirt, threw it to the crowd. Climbed up on the speakers at one side of the stage, and jumped off, still screaming. The band kept up with his every action, the saxes pushing for the heavens in solos, and then grunting in rhythmic unison as he’d tear into ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ or ‘Long Tall Sally’. Danced atop the piano, jumped off it and ran to the front of the stage, fell to his knees, paused for one more, ‘Well, alright’, and was up and away with ‘Keep A Knockin’’, an unrelenting, pulsing, implacable, unyielding performance defining the very essence of energy. To borrow a phrase, he was spinning at the apex of creation, a ball of perpetual motion. ‘If you think I am tired, I’m not!’  he shouted out to the audience. It was a show the like of which that no-one in the audience had ever before witnessed. It was the unleashing of dragons, it was the release of burdens, it was a salute to the heebie-jeebies and it was the sound of massed cheering angels, their wings beating rhythms of celebration and joy.

And then it was over.

The crowd roared, screamed for more, the noise was tremendous, thunderous. Voices grew hoarse. And still they shouted, exalted, hollered for more.

A titanic shout went up. Richard emerged from the left side of the stage. Alone. With a wooden chair in his mouth. Slowly he walked the breadth of the stage, and disappeared into the wings opposite, the chair still hoisted aloft, clenched in his teeth. And then he was gone.

I followed his career ever since. Saw many more shows, even spoke to him on the phone on a few occasions. He was always gracious. Over the years he became a bit of a parody of his former self, and his shows tended to amplify the glory of Little Richard rather than the glory of Rock and Roll. He never lost that exquisite voice though, he never lost that.

He influenced musicians by the thousand. I won’t go into all that here - there are voluminous accounts all over the internet that can give you that information. His style, his songs, his recording dates, his constant renunciations of rock and roll, and his constant returns. All that stuff is out there. 

What I will remember about him is his sense of utter abandon. Listen to the closing chorus of ‘Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey’, and how his voice, egged on by that stupendous band, wavers right there on the very edge of shamanistic frenzy, and points the way to ecstasy.

I called Grady Gaines this morning. Grady led The Upsetters during Richard’s halcyon days, and continues to play today, way into his eighties. ‘Richard meant everything to me. He was my mentor, my favourite. You know, after he quit in the fifties the Upsetters played behind everyone, Sam Cooke, Little Willie John, Joe Tex, you name ‘em. Richard was always the best. He was just up there, you know, weren’t no-one like him’.

Grady’s right. There was no-one like Richard. Didn’t have to be. 

He was the one.