Directly From My Heart (Best Of The Specialty & Vee-Jay Years) [3 CD] (Audio CD)

It's hard to believe, but Little Richard's key sides - "Tutti Frutti," "Long Tall Sally," "Rip it Up," "Lucille," "Jenny, Jenny," "Keep A-Knockin'," "Good Golly Miss Molly" and others - were recorded in only seventeen months, between September 1955 and January 1957. This will particularly surprise fans who first heard the original releases stretched out another eighteen months, through July 1958. Part of that schedule was due to the natural tempo of radio play and the singles charts, but a larger part was a byproduct of Richard's late 1957 exit and subsequent hiatus from secular recording.In the Fall of 1957, at the very height of his fame, Richard stepped out of the rock `n' roll spotlight to devote his life to God and record gospel for End, Mercury, Atlantic and Coral. He returned with a one-off secular single for Little Star in 1962, recorded briefly for Specialty in 1964 (scoring a minor hit with "Bama Lama...Read more