Mr. Penniman
Morning Mixtape, Vol. 4
Mixtape #4, from me to you. For previous mixtapes, see here for incandescent women, here for good vibrations, and here for drinking and not drinking songs.
To celebrate Little Richard’s birthday last Tuesday (he would have been 91 years old), here’s some of my favorite songs from the king and queen of rock & roll.
As lagniappe, I’ll also recommend my 2015 Oxford American piece—the time I got ahold of his number and cold-called Little Richard—which I’m pretty sure is the most read article I’ve ever written. Here’s a little sample:
This was the Little Richard they called “War Hawk” in church because of his hollering and screaming. This was the Little Richard who used to bang on tin cans and wail as a boy; one of his brothers remembered, “I thought he couldn’t sing, anyway, just a noise.” The Little Richard whose protégé, Jimi Hendrix, would later say that he wanted to do with his guitar what Richard did with his voice. This was the freak, the circus showman, the vamping diva, the Holy Ghost. He sounds breathless and fierce, a little unhinged. He sounds like the last man on earth singing the first song ever written.
Consider this mixtape a companion to that piece, or its own excursion. I was originally going to limit myself to songs that didn’t crack the top of the charts, but then I decided that was stupid. Little Richard without hits is like a suit without sequins. You could. But why? So the songs you know are sprinkled in with others you might not.
Unfortunately, limited to what’s on Spotify, there’s a few gems that are’t available, like his gospel manifesto “I’m Quitting Show Business” (and his preaching, included on his second gospel album as “I’m Quitting Show Business Pt. 2”), or from the same album, his riveting performance of “Troubles of the World.”
My only complaint about Little Richard as an artist is that he was a very weird guy who turned the cultural world upside down with a very weird pop song, but his later catalog has surprisingly little music that we can really call weird. It was as if carrying on the flair and fury of his persona year after year juiced him dry of his shimmering strangeness, so that by the time he got to the studio in later years, he mostly played it straight. That said, he delivered. If we skip past the inevitable filler, he was a slayer for twenty-five years or so (and by the 1980s, he was still a slayer as a personality and performer despite recording stuff like, um, the song for the movie Twins).
When he was a child, a lady in Macon put the “bad-mouth” on Richard, a curse that he would die at twenty-one. “I always believed that,” he told his biographer. “But it just made me wilder.”
So: here you go. Forty-two Little Richard songs from me to you, of varying quality and style, all irreducibly him. I tried to honor the wobbly arc of his full career, a scattershot and unpredictable affair with incandescent highs. Let me know if I’m missing a song you dig. Listen one notch too loud, on your way to do something of great importance, or something of no importance at all. Liner notes below.
Track list and liner notes
“I Don’t Know What You’ve Got But It’s Got Me”
One of my very favorite Little Richard songs. That’s a young Jimi Hendrix on guitar.
“It Ain’t What You Do, It’s the Way How You Do It”
“Joy Joy Joy”
From Richard’s three-album foray into gospel music after temporarily quitting rock & roll. The tension between the sacred and the secular was a running theme throughout Richard’s life: “I would get up off an orgy and go pick up my Bible. Sometimes I would have the Bible right by me.”
“By the Light of the Silvery Moon”
“Dew Drop Inn”
From his first album for Reprise in 1970, a comeback after a few years out of the limelight, Richard content to go back to his boogie-woogie bread and butter on this track, with an ode to the New Orleans bar where “Tutti-Frutti” first came to be (the Dew Drop is apparently opening back up for live music soon).
“Get Down With It”
“Long Tall Sally (The Thing)
Still a firecracker nearly seventy years after its initial release. What a killer.
“Short Fat Fanny”
“In the Name — Version 2”
Another of my all-time favorite Little Richard songs. I’ve mentioned before that there are certain songs that are fun to play for people and have them guess who is singing it. This is a good one for that—don’t think I’ve ever had anyone guess right.
“(There Will Be) Peace in the Valley (For Me)”
Little Richard was a versatile singer, capable of subtle and tender ballads. Here is one of his more nuanced gospel numbers.
“Directly From My Heart”
A B-Side released about a month after “Long Tall Sally,” then mostly fell into obscurity. Here Richard leans into his his feminine side, vamping as he once did as Princess LaVonne, the character he performed in drag in the early days on the medicine show circuit.
“Tutti Frutti”
The one and only.
“Keep A-Knockin’”
This one doesn’t get quite the iconic status it deserves; went to #8 at the height of Little Richard’s stardom, outpacing “Lucille,” for example—but for some reason doesn’t get as much rotation on the oldies circuit. Outside of “Tutti Frutti,” maybe the peak of Richard’s superstar vibe (I think it holds up alongside “Long Tall Sally” and “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” or at least close to the same tier).
“Two-Time Loser”
Little Richard was primed to fully embrace a 1970s vibe, but too often got distracted by questionable production choices. Wish we had more funky, dingy Richard like this.
“Wonderin’”
Dig this one despite the gratuitous overdubbed backing vocals from the Stewart Sisters. This was from The Fabulous Little Richard, the third full-length album from Specialty, released in 1958 (March 1959 stateside), nearly a year and a half after Richard had quit Speciality. At this point, the label was releasing any material they had, doctoring it with some new backing tracks, and doing whatever they could to capitalize one last time on their star, who by this time had renounced rock & roll and enrolled in Bible college. From the liner notes, you can hear the suits at Specialty seething: Little Richard “is at present deeply engrossed in religious activities, thus sacrificing the millions of dollars he could be earning through personal appearances on television, in motion pictures, and in concerts.”
Slippin’ and Slidin’ (Peepin’ And Hidin’)
Okay, he could spit out songs like this in his sleep. But I like it! B-Side to “Long Tall Sally” and a hit in its own right (#33 on the pop charts and #2 R&B). One of the all-time great pop masterpieces that toddlers appreciate.
“Never Gonna Let You Go”
Always dig the tender side of Richard. Those emotive breaks in his voice find the same pulse when he’s cooing as when he’s shouting. One of his most underrated talents—he could be an all-timer when he leaned into a soul song.
“Taxi Blues”
Richard’s very first single, for RCA in November 1951. It would take four more years before he finally hit the charts, finding his wild side with “Tutti-Frutti.”
“Heeby-Jeebies”
Another killer from his classic era. For some reason, this one didn’t chart.
“Shake a Hand (If You Can)”
“Hound Dog”
From his first album for Vee-Jay in 1964, a return to rock after three gospel albums, kind of a messy effort, but I dig the sweaty vamping in moments. Here Richard starts like he’s ready to take down the King and claim his rightful crown, but winds up happily playing jester.
“Milky White Way”
“Mississippi”
From his grimy 1974 album Right Now!, which I believe was recorded in Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, though the records are unclear. The whole album was recorded in one night with his old hitmaker Bumps Blackwell of Tutti-Frutti fame. The backup band members are lost to history and the record was released as a cheapo LP with no publicity.
“Jenny, Jenny”
“Don’t You Know”
Still had it, a sweet soul vibe in 1974.
“Lawdy Miss Claudy”
“Hot Nuts”
Okay admittedly Richard falls a little too deeply into a mid-70s dive bar hole on this one and you may have to skip but still, I like how thirsty he is on this one, like an Asbury Park cover band hustling for tips. Richard of course in his wheelhouse singing about nuts.
“Ready Teddy”
B-Side to “Rip it Up” in 1956, made #8 on R&B charts.
“Settin’ the Woods on Fire”
“Money Is”
With Quincy Jones, for the surprisingly entertaining soundtrack for the 1971 heist film Dollars, now in my queue.
“Green Power”
Always a disappointment that Richard never went full psychedelic. Here he dabbles with mixed results in 1971. I have a soft spot for this song reasons I can’t really explain.
“Lucille”
And here’s another classic to keep us rolling, though not my favorite of his mega-hits.
“Miss Ann”
Richard’s ode to Ann Howard, the purveyor of the anything-goes, gender-bending, mixed-race Tick-Tock Club in Macon, where Richard performed in the early days. Miss Ann was an early mother (or lover?) figure for the young Richard.
“God is Real”
“Baby Face”
“Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey (Goin’ Back to Birmingham)”
“Do It-To It”
Another track with Quincy Jones from Dollars.
“Rip It Up”
“Somethin’ Else”
Lol. With Tanya Tucker, from the Rhythm, Country & Blues soundtrack.
“Thinkin’ About my Mother”
Very early pre-stardom track from RCA, with Richard in a bluesy mood (1952 B-Side)
“Good Golly, Miss Molly”
Ooooooow!
“Hurry Sundown”
Let’s close with this beauty, one of my favorites in the catalog. Rest in pleasure, Mr. Penniman.