Perhaps my favorite Little Richard song is "Troubles of the World." It isn't your basic gospel, it has real passion and a kind of horror of the physical realm

Perhaps my favorite Little Richard song is "Troubles of the World." It isn't your basic gospel, it has real passion and a kind of horror of the physical realm to it. The organ lurches around like a carousel horse as he sings of both wanting to escape the anguish of earthly life even as he looks forward to being reunited with his parents with all of the feel of revelation in a drunken moment. It was off of his second gospel album, a little break from the rock'n'roll, often attributed to some difficulties he had with a plane being a very sharp sign from God. It borders on the sacrilegious with the sound, but the hope to escape misery in his voice turns the sound into a repudiation of the world. I'm not religious myself but I can feel what it must be like from the track, a sense that the man wanted to escape this swampy carnival with leering pitchmen even as you sense just how comfortable he is with the environment as a whole, how well he fits in. Salvation must have seemed as out of reach, like any brass ring, to a man lured by the money that came rolling in, flattered by the adulation, pampered by the lifestyle, and at ease with casual accommodation of his apparently voracious (and omnivorous) sexuality. Being a lot further to one side of the Kinsey scale than the other must have been another layer on the leaden robe, however gilt, as he struggled to heed the call. He would of course go back to rock'n'roll. Like Willie Sutton said, that's where the money is. And it's hard to argue with a paycheck, even as unsteady as they are when they're royalties from the record business.