Get Rich Quick

AMG Review of Get Rich Quick

Mark Deming
All Music Guide

Little Richard made some of the most frantic and thrilling singles of the first ock & roll era of the 1950s, but he'd been cutting records for several years before he rolled into Cosimo Matassa's New Orleans recording studio and threw his career into high gear with the epochal "Tutti Frutti." Get Rich Quick: The Birth of a Legend, 1951-1954 is a compilation which pulls together Richard's early sides for RCA's Peacock label and documents his formative years while he was still getting his trademark style in order. Richard's voice is in fine shape on the 16 Peacock cuts included here (as well as six alternate takes which also appear), but he had yet to unleash the trademark scream that so memorably punctuated his Specialty recordings, and his flailing piano style (supposedly modeled after his mentor, Esquerita) had similarly yet to manifest itself in the studio. As a result, Richard sounds less like a manic rocker and more like an old-school R&B act in the manner of Wynonie Harris or the Treniers, but without the intensity of either. One gets the sense that while Richard sounds fine here, this isn't quite what he was cut out to do, and in retrospect it's not surprising that these sessions didn't click with listeners the way his later New Orleans sessions did. But there's still some fine sounds here, including the mouth-watering "Rice, Red Beans and Turnip Greens," "Fool at the Wheel," and the rollicking title cut, and if this isn't Little Richard at his best, it shows that even heading in the wrong direction the man had something worthwhile to offer. Also included are three sides by Christine Kittrell with Little Richard on piano, and sounding livelier than he does on much of his own material here.