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by TOMMY REYNOLDS
“He’s a bird,” says Phil Everly (left). “He’s a dog,” says brother Don (right). “ He’s a Bird Dog,” chorus T ommy Reynolds and Ella Di Blasio, “we dig the song.”
T ooking forward to a groovy Christmas? All set for a swingin’ New Year? It sort of puts you in a reviewing and previewing mood as you ring out the old and ring in the new, doesn’t it? Me, too. And it started me thinking of some music milestones — in particular, a startling retirement and comeback that seems to have been overlooked in all the justifiable fuss about El going to Germany and 1958’s other exciting music-world happenings.
It was just one year ago that a fellow by the name of Richard Penniman, better known as “Little Richard,” retired from the disc scene with these surprising words: “I’d like to tell all my fans that rock ’n’ roll glorifies Satan. From now on, my singing will glorify God.” An amazing turnabout for the husky twenty-three-year-old who in two years leaped from a thirty-five dollar a week to a 250.000 dollar a year job, racking up a whooping best-seller score with such hits as “Long Tall Sally,” “Ready Teddy” and “Tutti Fruiti.” What happened? That’s what we wanted to know, thus a phone call to Oakwood College in Huntsville. Ala
bama, to talk to pal Richard in person.
At first he didn’t seem to want to discuss the subject, but after a while he got warmed up and words came quickly. Asked about college life at Oakwood and what he was studying there, he answered:
“There are about three hundred boys here. Most of them are studying for the ministry. We live in big dormitories. Most of us are vegetarians. It’s run by the Seventh Day Adventists. I go to classes twice a day. Between classes I
study my Bible. I never go into town. We have a sports field for recreation.”
Asked what he planned to do with the rest of his life, he answered:
“I don’t think I'll be a minister. I might be a teacher. I want to help win souls to the Lord. This is a four-year course, but I don’t know if I’ll stay the whole time or not.”
How would he make his living?
“I don’t want any money — just enough to buy some food to eat. Maybe I’ll sell magazines from door to door. Religious magazines, that is.”
I asked him why he had given up music as a full-time job for the ministry.
He said: “The Lord has been good to me many times. He has taken care of me.” He told me of driving down a slippery street in his Cadillac and spinning around and thinking that the end had come for him. But he didn’t hit anything. “The Lord took care of me.”
He told of another time when he was enroute to the Philippines and on the airplane between Los Angeles and Honolulu an engine went out on them. He thought he was finished. He was scared. He prayed. And finally they made it. “The Lord took care of me again,” he said.
But the most amazing series of incidents happened in Australia while he was there on tour. “One day I was standing near the ocean shore in Sydney. The sputnik — you know, Russia’s sput
Vic, Joe, Ed and Gene — the Arnes Brothers who made RCA’s “ Pussy Cat” a national best-seller — rehearse a new number that’ll carry on their “big hit” tradition.
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