The Philosophy of Modern Song: Long Tall Sally

Posted on June 4, 2026 by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

Look it up on Google and you find that “Long Tall Sally” is a clothing shop for women who are over 5’8″ tall.  But the name of course comes from the Little Richard record – the clothing retailer didn’t follow until some 20 years later.

There is also a story that appears in the Genius website which says that “Little Richard’s 1956 song “Long Tall Sally” started with a piece of paper a young girl gave Little Richard’s producer Robert “Bumps” Blackwell. Popular disc-jokey Honey Chile introduced Blackwell to a girl who wanted to write a song in order to raise money for her ailing aunt Mary.

The song the girl had written was only three lines:

Saw Uncle John with Long Tall Sally
They saw Aunt Mary comin’
So they ducked back in the alley.

So the DJ took the lyrics to Little Richard and they turned it into a song.  It may or may not be true but Little Richard picking up on such issues certainly is something that runs through his life.

What we do know is that the song hit number one, and stayed in the rhythm and blues charts and the pop charts for a long while, gaining awards along the way, including being one of the The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.   I bought it in London as a 78rpm with my pocket money, I recall, and Rolling Stone had it at number 55 in the list of the greatest songs of all time.

Certainly, the list of covers of the song is enormous.   Even Fleetwood Mac had a bash.  Although maybe “bash” is the right word for their version.   And there’s Elvis

But it was Little Richard’s recording that went into the Grammy Hall of Fame.  It is said that because Little Richard’s previous songs had been covered by more popular artists, they would create a song that was sung so fast the crooners couldn’t touch it, although Pat Boone certainly had a go.

So there are multiple stories, many of them claiming to be the definitive tale of the origin of the song – you can take your choice.

What we do know is that the Little Richard version was recorded in February 1956 and the Wikipedia article on the song does go into a lot more detail about the various tales of who did what and when.  Although quite what everyone made of the lyrics at the time, I am not sure.

Well, Long Tall Sally
She’s built for speed
She’s got everything that Uncle John needs

Certainly, there is evidence that Little Richard and his band were getting a bit fed up with other artists taking his songs at the time and re-working them, quite often getting more sales than he did.   So the notion of him producing a song that was so fast no one else could outdo him, seems plausible.  Although it is interesting to note that the main rival to Little Richard for this song came from Pat Boone, who had also recorded Tutti Fruiti.   You can find a recording of that version here.

In fact, “Long Tall Sally” was Little Richard’s biggest hit, so the idea of going as fast as possible certainly did pay off to some degree.

Little Richard (Richard Wayne Penniman) is generally included in the list of one of the founding fathers of rock n roll, certainly in terms of his high-speed approach to the music and his most famous works date from the 1950s.  In the 1960s he became a born-again Christian, and on his UK tour at this time, he had the Beatles as the opening band.

But perhaps his greatest long-term influence was as a black singer whose work would be covered by multiple white singers (from Elvis Presley to Buddy Holly), something that, before this era, was very unusual.  His impact on the evolution of rock music was widely recognised subsequently, and he received multiple awards in this regard.

He continued to record and release records regularly until 1992 and thereafter did record and appear occasionally and was honoured throughout the popular music industry as both a performer and a songwriter, with “Tutti Frutti” being included in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2009.

He died at the age of 87 in 2020 from bone cancer.  Among the many tributes paid to him at that time was one from Bob Dylan, who was reported at the time as saying, “he was my shining star.”

Previously in this series

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