Fats Domino
Sweet Patootie: The Complete Reprise Recordings (Rhino Handmade)
Little Richard
King of Rock and Roll: The Complete Reprise Recordings (Rhino Handmade)
Don’t call it a comeback – call it a pair of comebacks. The British Invasion revitalized the careers of countless American musical precursors, and in the case of this pair of new Rhino Handmade reissues, that translates into three Beatles covers by Fats Domino on one disc, and one by Little Richard across a 3-CD box set – plus the Stones’ “Brown Sugar.” Fats Is Back (1968), the Crescent City piano king’s rollicking, stereo-era reboot, has had its bling cover art restored, and is now conjoined with Fats, an unreleased Warner Bros. album from 1971 produced by the Fatman’s Midas touch, Dave Bartholomew. It’s an earthier, down-home affair, as well as an archeological bauble. Macon, Ga.’s piano pompadour, Little Richard, cut four LPs for the label between ’70-’72, three of them released: the Muscle Shoals groove of The Rill Thing; pandering covers concept King of Rock and Roll; middle ground The Second Coming; and previously unheard Southern Child. Between The Rill Things’ banging “Dew Drop Inn,” featuring the intro Bonzo lifted for Zeppelin’s “Rock & Roll”; its vamping, 10-minute title track; the workaday “Lovesick Blues”; and the stripped, back-to-roots find Southern Child, completely autobiographied by Richard himself, The Complete Reprise Recordings isn’t the wildman’s Specialty heyday, but it is special.
(Both) 
This article appears in February 25 • 2005.
