Little Richard, King of Rock & Roll

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY

“‘Womp-baba-loo-bomp-a-lomp-bam-boom . . .’ said Little Richard, and to a lot of Americans that about said it all,” wrote Robert Duncan once—just nine syllables in a loop-the-loop so ribald and ragged that the MC5 version was smooth as a boy’s choir’s by comparison, and to Duncan that was enough not only to backbone the book he was writing (The Noise, 1984, one of the best pieces of ‘70s rock writing despite the publication date) but explanation, provocation, justification, and—woooooo!—incarnation all at once for (or of) everything vital and alive in America between the world war and Watergate. An order above world-class—who else could you ask for to appear before you except maybe Bo Diddley? James Brown looked up to Little Richard; Little Richard looked back at James Brown with break-bait funk songs like “Rill Thing” (picked out by Pete Rock, KMD, Organized Konfusion, and Lord Finesse). Elvis looked up to Little Richard; Little Richard looked back at Elvis with hard-ass Southern rock/funk/soul records in the ‘70s like King of Rock ‘n’ Roll (“The undisputed” left implied). The Beatles looked up to Little Richard; Little Richard looked back at the Beatles with an cover of “Saw Her Standing There” (“Just seventeen, if you know what I mean . . . ”) that starts like one of those unraveled Bette Davis pick-me-up tracks, except it came three years earlier. “I am ALL of it, Little Richard HIMSELF,” he got caught saying in Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train, and 10 years after that was written down, Duncan picked up the salute. Little Richard himself remembered once S.Q. Reeder, the man who made him want to play piano, who sat down to rumble out a Clovers song and little Little Richard thought, “‘Oooh boy, if I could just do that,’ not knowing that one day I would do that—and I picked it up, and carried it out. . . .”

LITTLE RICHARD AND MANY MORE AT THE LONG BEACH BLUES FESTIVAL CSULB ATHLETIC FIELD | SAT-SUN 10:30AM | $45-75 | PLUS BERNARD “PRETTY” PURDIE AND MORE LONG BEACH BLUES FESTIVAL KICK-OFF PARTY | VAULT 350 | FRI 8PM | $25 | VAULT350.COM | COMPLETE LINE-UP INFORMATION AT JAZZANDBLUES.ORG

Tags: little richard, long beach blues festival, rill thing