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Just slightly more than a year after releasing a well-received (if non-charting) comeback album in The Rill Thing<\/i>, Little Richard returned with the audaciously-titled King of Rock and Roll<\/i> in September 1971. But while The Rill Thing<\/i>\u2019s defining aesthetic was a Southern soul sound (thanks in large part to its being made at FAME Studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama), for King of Rock and Roll<\/i>, Little Richard would head in a very different direction.<\/p>\n
A gleefully over-the-top introduction by a carnival barker-styled announcer heralds the king\u2019s entrance, leading to the title track. \u201cKing of Rock and Roll\u201d is characterized by a retro arrangement, massed female \u201cshoop-shoop\u201d vocals and a brassy backing. The tune signals that this album has more in common with Little Richard\u2019s late \u201850s output than the comparatively modern The Rill Thing<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Drawing on his gospel roots, Richard is in tent-revival mode for \u201cJoy to the World.\u201d A rousing shouted introduction \u2013 complete with crowd noises \u2013 goes on for a full two minutes before the music starts. The band eventually starts vamping as Penniman leads the crowd in a brief call-and-response. When the music finally comes in, Little Richard seems almost to be parodying himself. And the tune\u2019s curiously muted saxophone solo seems an odd production choice.<\/p>\n
King of Rock and Roll<\/i> relies heavily on covers; a reading of The Rolling Stones\u2019 \u201cBrown Sugar\u201d is credible enough, though it\u2019s reasonable to think that the arrangement worked better live onstage than it does on this record. The far superior \u201cMidnight Special\u201d is delivered as country-gospel; Richard\u2019s trademark vocal whoops effectively imitate a train whistle. And while the tasty, the funkified cover of \u201cThe Way You Do The Things You Do\u201d may be the best cut on King of Rock and Roll<\/i>, it feels more like a stylistic homage to Otis Redding than anything else.<\/p>\n
Richard\u2019s original \u201cIn the Name\u201d dispenses with the non-musical trappings; it\u2019s more of a piece with The Rill Thing<\/i>. But the introduction to his cover of Martha and the Vandellas\u2019 \u201cDancing in the Street\u201d drones on far too long. The song itself sounds a bit like a Rare Earth outtake. Cowritten by producer H.B. Barnum, \u201cGreen Power\u201d finds Richard dialing back the intensity in favor of a more smoldering approach that suits him well; more songs in this style would have made King of Rock and Roll<\/i> a better record.<\/p>\n
With its understated horn chart and supple rhythm section accompaniment, the complete reinvention of Hank Williams\u2019 \u201cI\u2019m So Lonesome I Could Cry\u201d takes the song to a place its composer likely could never have conceived. \u201cSettin\u2019 the Woods on Fire\u201d has all of the requisite elements for success, but somehow falls flat. And a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival\u2019s \u201cBorn on the Bayou\u201d suffers from the same needlessly long introduction that mars several other tracks on the album. Again, it probably worked better live.<\/p>\n
Not exactly an embarrassment, King of Rock and Roll<\/i> is merely middling and uneven, and fails to sustain the creative momentum of its predecessor. Oddly enough, on release the LP did something The Rill Thing<\/i> failed to do: it cracked \u2013 if just barely \u2013 the Top 200 album chart.<\/p>\n
Omnivore\u2019s reissue features seven bonus tracks, previously available only on a limited-edition Rhino Handmade release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just slightly more than a year after releasing a well-received (if non-charting) comeback album in The Rill Thing, Little Richard returned with the audaciously-titled King of Rock and Roll in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20054,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,62,64,65],"tags":[1325,1622],"class_list":["post-20053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rb","category-rawk","category-reissue","category-review","tag-little-richard","tag-omnivore-recordings","cat-60-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20055,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20053\/revisions\/20055"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}