Introduction
Chapter 1: Early One Morning
Chapter 2: The Ninety-Nine Names of the Prophet
Chapter 3: Keep A Knockin'
Chapter 4: I've Got It
Chapter 5: All Around the World
Sources
Bibliography
This book is a concise, evocative, and thoroughly researched study of one of the great rock'n'roll pioneers. After "Tutti Frutti," Little Richard began garnering fans from both sides of the civil rights divide. He brought black and white youngsters together on the dance floor and even helped to transform race relations.
David Kirby is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University and lives in Tallahassee, Florida. Among his thirty books is The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems (Louisiana State University Press, 2007), which was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. He has written on music for The Chicago Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times Book Review, TriQuarterly, The Washington Post, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Georgia Music, and others. For more information, visit www.davidkirby.com.
"...a huge cultural shift that Richard, unlike Elvis, say, has
never been given full credit for. With one foot firmly planted in
academia, and concentrating on that one song, Kirby makes a valiant
attempt to right that perceived wrong." Q Magazine, February
2010
3 extracts in The Word, February 2010.
"An entertaining read." Total Music, February 2010. Read the full
review at http://www.totalmusicmagazine.com/bookreviews.htm
"[Kirby] writes with the fast-talking charm of the music he
loves...a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense."
Times Literary Supplement, March 2010
'The contentiousness of [this book] is refreshing, and a welcome
alternative to merely rehashing facts and figures.' Record
Collector
*Terry Staunton*
So much about the 'architect of rock 'n' roll' defies linear logic
that his life and work lend themselves to a more digressive and
intuitive chronicle. It takes a poet, in other words, to
convey the miracle of Little Richard. David Kirby limns his subject
with the loop-de-loops of wonder, mischief, and insight that
characterize his verse, and the resulting account sings in a
way that, like the singer's hammy, barn-storming performances,
makes you gyrate with pleasure. It is less a straightforward
biography than a meditation on art, music, and culture through a
lens lined heavily with kohl and 'Pancake 31' makeup. Kirby's
hagiography fits his subject like a sequined cape. Its fringe of
odd details and learned asides affirms his contention that, 'All
new music changes the world, but no music changed the world the way
this song did.'" - Candice Dyer, author of "Street Singers,
Soul Shakers, and Rebels With a Cause: Music from Macon
"In Kirby's book, Elvis and Chuck Berry are milquetoasts next to
Little Richard: The former Richard Penniman channeled
Baudelaire, hard bop and juke-joint hoodoo, and invented rock &
roll in two and a half minutes with 'Tutti Frutti.' The Georgia
Peach is well and truly buffed."- Rolling Stone
"In the poem "The House of Blue Light"—whose eponym is where Miss
Molly does her rockin', dontcha know—Kirby says that when he, à la
Whitman, hears America singing, it "sounds like Little Richard." He
sticks to his line in this high-spirited, ambulatory meditation on
Richard's America. Ambulatory literally as Kirby pinballs mostly
around Macon, Georgia, Richard's hometown, but also New Orleans,
where Richard recorded his first big hit, and L.A., home of
Specialty Records, which Richard made a major independent label.
Ambulatory spiritually, too, because Kirby adopts Greil Marcus'
canny conception of Old, Weird America—poor, superstitious,
culturally "backward," but always striving—as the homeground of
rock 'n' roll (along with the other vernacular American pop musics:
gospel, blues, country) to explain Richard's artistic roots. Kirby
insists that that first big hit, "Tutti Frutti," a cleaned-up
"paean to heinie-poking" howled by "a gay black cripple from a town
nobody ever heard of," is the first 100-proof rock 'n' roll song
and devotes the central chapter here to its creation and impact.
Kirby packs his prose as fully as he does his verse and likewise
runs it on high octane, pedal to the metal. He beats all the
professional rock scribes hollow with this light-footed but
profound little book."-Booklist, STARRED Review
"David Kirby, a poet and professor in Tallahassee, Florida, is on
an uphill, uproarious mission to rewrite the legacy of Macon's
outsize Little Richard. "‘Tutti Frutti' occupies a finite space
smack in the middle of our huge-ass Crab Nebula of a culture,"
Kirby writes. "It's like the skinniest part of an hourglass;
everything that came before flows into this narrow pass, and the
world we live in today flows out the other side." Even if you don't
agree with the sentiment, you have to admire Kirby's enthusiasm.
This is a very personal biography, full of good-humored energy and
insightful wit."-Theresa Weaver, Atlanta Magazine
"Kirby isn't interested in stolidly documenting all of Little
Richard's life; he's interested in him as a transformative figure
who embodies a whole array of antitheses in one pompadoured,
satin-and-glitter-clad person, like some trickster god of 20th
century pop culture. ...A rich subject for a scholar and poet, and
Kirby has a ball with it."-St. Petersberg Times
"...it's hard to imagine [Little Richard] will ever find himself
championed by a more enthusiastic and persuasive advocate."
Washington Post Sunday, December 2009
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