Lifetime Friend - Little Richard - Audio CD (Arrives in 20 days)

The Architect of Rock And Roll’s final album. Packaging contains bonus tracks and a new essay from Bill Dahl. Features the original version of “Great Gosh A’Mighty” featured in Down And Out In Beverly Hills.

After the 1984 release of his autobiography, The Quasar of Rock and Roll, Little Richard
decided to come out of retirement. It had been seven years since his last record, the gospelfocused
God’s Beautiful City, and over a decade from his 1970s return album run on the
Reprise label (The Rill Thing, King Of Rock And Roll, and The Second Coming, plus the one
that Reprise shelved at the time, Southern Child). For the new album, Richard went overseas
to record in London with a powerhouse band including Billy Preston, Muscle Shoals guitarist
Travis Wammack, bassist Jesse Boyce, and drummer James Stroud with producer Stuart
Colman at the helm. Warner Bros., unleashed Lifetime Friend in 1986.
With ten tracks of rock and roll mixed with spiritual lyrics (and even an early rap appearance),
the release was another return to form. His third coming, one could say. The album’s
blistering opener “Great Gosh A’Mighty” (co-written with Billy Preston) would even be recut
by Richard for the film Down And Out In Beverly Hills, nearly cracking the Top 40. Two other
tracks, “Operator” and “Somebody’s Comin’,” would make chart appearances in the UK.
This reissue adds both the single edit and an extended mix of the single “Operator,” and the
packaging contains photos, ephemera, and new liner notes for Bill Dahl.
As Dahl writes in his liners, “Rock ’n’ roll never had a better friend than Little Richard
Penniman. He devoted most of his life to it. Lifetime Friend was his last great recorded
statement, and even if Long Tall Sally, Miss Molly, and Lucille weren’t in the choir, Richard
gave the album his heavenly best.”

Tracklist

1. Great Gosh A'mighty
2. Operator
3. Somebody's Comin'
4. Lifetime Friend
5. Destruction
6. I Found My Way
7. The World Can't Do Me
8. One Ray of Sunshine
9. Someone Cares
10. Big House Reunion
11. Operator (Single Edit) [Bonus Track]
12. Operator (Extended Mix) [Bonus Track]

Label: Ada | Origin: Europe