The singer Bruce Springsteen called the purest rock and roll voice ever: “He is one of the few”
Bruce Springsteen was often the last person to say that he had the best voice in rock and roll.
He wasn’t out there trying to be Freddie Mercury, and even when you compare his voice to some of his contemporaries, that gruff tone that he got out was a lot more to take in than listening to someone like Tom Petty. But ‘The Boss’ learned a long time ago that passion when singing could go much further in rock and roll than simply being one of the greatest vocalists of all time.
Then again, being able to do a lot of things with your voice certainly helps in the genre. Paul McCartney may have been able to turn on his scream whenever he wanted to, but there was also the delicate version of him that could tell everyone a story whenever he sang songs like ‘Let It Be’. The same could be said of David Bowie constantly switching the way his voice moved, but a lot of Springsteen’s influences made everyone see the beauty beyond their traditional voice.
Bob Dylan wasn’t exactly Pavarotti or anything, but when listening to every one of his records, you can hear that he isn’t mincing any one of his words. ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ was something grabbing the listener by the lapels and demanding that they pay attention, and Springsteen wanted to do the same thing from the minute that someone heard a song like ‘Born to Run’ for the first time.
Which isn’t all that different from the way the original rock and rollers got their point across. Elvis Presley may have had the kind of booming voice that any other rock vocalist would have killed for, but it was the raw attitude behind every word that made a song like ‘Hound Dog’ sound so great. Chuck Berry may have been one of the ultimate storytellers that Springsteen followed in the footsteps of, but there’s no way to discount what Little Richard gave to the genre while he was on this Earth.
Because when you listen to Richard’s voice, he isn’t holding back for a second. It took a lot of work for him to scream his way through everything from ‘Lucille’ to ‘Long Tall Sally’, and while Springsteen could only attempt to match that kind of voice, he wasn’t out there trying to copy Little Richard. I mean, even if someone did try to match what he did, they were always going to be competing for second place.
Even when listening to him later down the line, Springsteen had to admit that no one matched Richard’s purity, saying, “That is the purest rock and roll voice of all time, and it belongs to the Georgia Peach, the king of rock and roll. He’s one of the founding fathers of rock and roll and he’s a preeminent vocal genius. He came out of Macon, Georgia, to take the nation, the world, and your body and soul by storm. He is one of the few men that changed the face of world culture.”
And when you listen to the greatest vocalists that rock and roll has today, a lot of them are still chasing after what Richard did. Whether it’s listening to Robert Plant howl his way through Led Zeppelin tunes, Steven Tyler screaming throughout the 1970s, or even Chris Cornell’s booming voice in the midst of grunge, no one else on this Earth was going to get to the top without pulling a few tricks out of Richard’s playbook.
There might be a few times here and there when Springsteen managed to reach a certain intensity on tunes like ‘Adam Raised A Cain’, but Richard was always something different. He was there to shake people up much more than Elvis Presley ever could, and even though he might not have always received the credit he deserved, no one could deny the impact he had on every generation after him.
