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Friday, September 28, 2007
KEEP A KNOCKIN'
Little Richard
1957
Available on: The Georgia Peach
Specialty : 1991
[Buy It]
KEEP A-KNOCKIN' BUT YOU CAN'T COME IN
Louis Jordan and His Tympani Five
1939
Available on: Louis Jordan and His Tympani Five
JSP : 2001
[Buy It]
LET THEM KNOCK
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
100 Days, 100 Nights
Daptone : 2007
[Buy It]
KEEP A KNOCKIN'
The Sonics
Here Are the Sonics
Norton : 1965
[Buy It]
KEEP A KNOCKIN'
Mott the Hoople
Wildlife
Angel Air : 1971
[Buy It]
On August 18, 2007, at half past two in the afternoon, a repairman came to fix the buzzer at my apartment. I believe his name was Bill. Bill looked at the buzzer box, then at the door. He untwisted some wires and retwisted some others. It still didn't work. "Why don't people just knock?" he said.
It's a valid question, and--like a knock--it's been answered repeatedly in song. Knocking has been part of blues, R&B, soul, and rock and roll as long as there's been blues, R&B, soul, and rock and roll. There's Mississippi John Hurt's "Keep On Knocking." There's Lazy Lester's "I Hear You Knockin." There's the Rolling Stones' "Can You Hear Me Knocking." There's "I Hear You Knocking" and "Knock on Wood" and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." But mainly, truly, there's Little Richard's "Keep A Knockin." Originally recorded fifty years ago this month--that's September, 1957, in case you're reading this in the distant future and can't redo the math--the song opens with one of the most famous bits of drumming in rock and roll. (In fact, it became "Rock and Roll" when Led Zeppelin stole it wholesale.) About thirty seconds into the song, Little Richard, who has evidently been trapped in a soundproof glass box until then, bursts into the song with superhuman and possibly inhuman intensity. There are many songs that people point to as the beginning of rock and roll, but once you point at "Keep A Knockin," you'll never point away.Keep a knockin' and you can't come in
Keep a knockin' and you can't come in
Keep a knockin' and you can't come in
Come back tomorrow night and try it again. "Keep A Knockin'" wasn't original, of course. It was an old Louis Jordan number from 1939 that goes back even further, to Lil Johnson's "Keep On Knocking" in the early thirties. At that time, the (double) meaning was clear: it's a woman singing and a man knocking, and what he's knocking on is her front door (you know--the kind of door you can slide a key into and out of until that key ejaculates), and she's not letting him in no matter how much he knocks, so he might as well not even bother. This has been taken up recently, with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings' excellent "Let Them Knock":Let them knock upon my door
Until their hands are black and blue
I'm not answering for no one
Until my man and I are through When the gender switches, and it's a man singing, the knocking is a little stranger. Is it a woman knocking? How persistent is she? And why does the man have to bar the door, anyway? And when the gender switches again, and it's Little Richard singing, the strangeness turns into something tremendous--something threatening and seductive and terrified and terrifying, all at the same time. The same theme recurs in other Little Richard songs, like "Heeby-Jeebies" from the previous year, where he says, somewhat sadistically, that he's going to "ring your door til I break your bell." These songs rarely raise the issue of Little Richard's sexual orientation, even obliquely, but they frequently raise the issue of his sexual aggressiveness. If Louis Jordan swings, Little Richard swings a hammer.
"Keep A Knockin'" is a nearly perfect hit, all on its own, but it's even more perfect when you relive that nuclear two and a half minutes with the various takes on the Specialty Sessions box set. Imagine being in the studio, hearing the explosive vocals of the first take, and then calling for a second take. And then a third. And then a fourth. Hearing them in series is like taking a car up to a hundred, smashing it into a wall, and then heading right back to the drag strip. It just doesn't seem possible.
Plenty of people have covered "Keep A Knockin'": Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Doug Sahm, the Everly Brothers, Suzi Quatro. It might be easier to list the bands that haven't covered it. Of all of the covers, there are two that deserve honorable mention. First, there's the version by the ultimate garage band, the Sonics, whose lead vocalist, Gerry Roslie, does such a convincing job replicating Little Richard's carnal fury that he transcends imitation or parody and creates one of the great monuments of white R&B. And then there's the marathon ten-minute live version by Mott the Hoople, which incorporates pieces of "I Got a Woman," "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On," and "What'd I Say," and serves as a capstone to the otherwise subdued album "Wildlife."
I remember once, years ago, I was starting to date a woman. This was in Miami, and we were in her apartment, watching some old movie on TV. I was dozing off, or at least pretending to, and when I seemed plausibly half-asleep, I reached over and flopped a hand onto her thigh. Where the hands of a sleeping man will go, who can know? She picked my hand up, put it back in my lap, and laughed. "Come back tomorrow night and try it again," she said. Love bloomed instantly.
KEEP A KNOCKIN' (take 1)
Little Richard
1957
Available on: The Specialty Sessions
Specialty : 1990
[Buy It]
KEEP A KNOCKIN' (take 2)
Little Richard
1957
Available on: The Specialty Sessions
Specialty : 1990
[Buy It]
KEEP A KNOCKIN' (take 3)
Little Richard
1957
Available on: The Specialty Sessions
Specialty : 1990
[Buy It]
KEEP A KNOCKIN' (take 4)
Little Richard
1957
Available on:
The Specialty Sessions
Specialty : 1990
[Buy It]Labels: ben, rock and roll
posted by Ben
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