Fabulous Little Richard [Import]

• Track Listing

Those first two albums are a hard, verging on impossible, act to follow. Little Richard Volume 2 and the third album, The Fabulous Little Richard were both released after Richard had left Specialty in late 1957 and temporarily retired from recording rock 'n' roll for the first time. Whereas all but one of the tracks on Volume 2 (By The Light Of The Silvery Moon) had been issued on US 45 before, The Fabulous, released in 1959, was put together from early recordings that didn't make the first two albums, some of which were recorded before Tutti Frutti, and recordings that, up until that point had been unheard by the world at large, taken from Richard's last 1950s Specialty session. Some of the earlier recordings were overdubbed with vocals from the Stewart Sisters, perhaps in an attempt to update them in the wake of ex-Specialty artist Sam Cooke's pop success, and these overdub versions have come in for some criticism in the past. To be fair, the girl voices are not always entirely welcome. But if you can retune your ears after the full on assault from the first two LP's, The Fabulous will reap rewards.