The Beatles — “Ooh! My Soul”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — January 21, 2024

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

1,087) The Beatles — “Ooh! My Soul”

Ooh, in the blink of an eye, the Beatles do Little Richard proud with one of Paul McCartney’s “all-time greatest rock ‘n’ roll vocal performances”. (The Beatles Bible, https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/ooh-my-soul/)

The Good Book goes on:

The Beatles recorded just one version of Little Richard’s ‘Ooh! My Soul’, for a BBC radio show in 1963. The song was first released as a single [by LR] in June 1958 . . . . It was a minor transatlantic hit, reaching number 31 in the US and number 22 in the UK. The Beatles’ recording was made on 1 August 1963 at the Playhouse Theatre, Manchester. . . . the first song performed for the 11th edition of the Pop Go The Beatles programme. It was first broadcast on 27 August . . . . The song lasts just 1’37” – less time than Richard’s own frenetic version.

https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/ooh-my-soul/

Pail McCartney talks about Little Richard:

I could do Little Richard’s voice, which is a wild, hoarse, screaming thing, it’s like an out-of-body experience. You have to leave your current sensibilities and go about a foot above your head to sing it. You have to actually go outside yourself. It’s a funny little trick and when you find it, it’s very interesting. A lot of people were fans of Little Richard so I used to sing his stuff.

Barry Miles, Many Years from Now

Faabfan tells us about the Beatles and Little Richard:

Paul loved Little Richard so much that . . . he chose to sing ‘Long Tall Sally’ for his first ever stage appearance, at Butlins holiday camp in 1956, and also h[e] serenaded fellow pupils at the Liverpool Institute with that and ‘Tutti Frutti’ on the last day of one school term, climbing onto a desk with his guitar and no little self-confidence.” And while everyone knows the story of Paul impressing John with a word-perfect guitar run-through of Eddie Cochrane’s ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ when they first met at the Woolton Church Fete in July 1957, it’s not so widely discussed that Paul then switched to piano and launched into his well-practiced Little Richard routine. As Mark Lewisohn so memorably puts it in his peerless Fabs biography Tune In, “Paul couldn’t have known it, but by slipping into ‘Long Tall Sally’ he was sliding into John’s main artery…. No matter how much John affected an air of coolness, his insides had to be leaping.” George was also a big fan and, as the Quarrymen slowly evolved into The Beatles, their setlists invariably featured at least one Richard number. And, in the same way as Chuck Berry songs were mostly sung by John, Little Richard ones were always sung by Paul. Macca had mastered not only his growling timbre and frenzied screams but also his high pitched, gospel-inflected whoops. Richard’s material would remain a fixture in their live shows, right until the very end; they closed their last-ever concert, at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, with ‘Long Tall Sally’.

https://freeasahub.wordpress.com/2020/06/20/little-richard-and-the-scream-that-fired-the-beatles/

As to John and LR, Jordan Potter writes:

In the book The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Authorised Biography, Lennon reflected on the overriding influence of Presley and Little Richard. “Elvis was bigger than religion in my life,” Lennon expressed. “Then this boy at school said he’d got this record by somebody called Little Richard who was better than Elvis — we used to go to this boy’s house after school and listen to Elvis on 78s: we’d buy five ciggies loose and some chips and go along.” Lennon recalled being blown away when he first listened to Richard’s energetic verse. The 1956 single ‘Long Tall Sally’ was his first experience with the American star. “The new record was Little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally’,” he recalled. “When I heard it, it was so great I couldn’t speak.” So enamoured was Lennon with Richard that he questioned his allegiance to Presley. “You know how you are torn,” he said. “I didn’t want to leave Elvis, but this was so much better. We all looked at each other, but I didn’t want to say anything against Elvis, even in my mind. How could they both be happening in my life?”

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/john-lennon-favourite-little-richard-songs/

Here is Little Richard:

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