How often does an author's inspiration for a book arrive more than 50 years before its creation? Professor David Kirby believes that the spark for his new biography on the dynamic, charismatic musician Little Richard flew from his little green Westinghouse radio back in 1955, when he first heard Richard's soul-shaking signature scream, "A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop, a-lop-bam-boom!"

"All the songs were things like 'How Much is That Doggie in the Window?'" Kirby says about music of the era. "Suddenly there's this voice that sounds like a guy shouting from the window of an insane asylum. And I figured, okay, this is for me."

Fast forward from that childhood memory to the recent publication of Kirby's newest book, Little Richard: The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll (Continuum 2009). Atlanta Magazine calls it "a very personal biography, full of good-humored energy and insightful wit." Georgia Music adds that the biography "sings in a way that, like the singer's hammy, barn-storming performances, makes you gyrate with pleasure."

Kirby found the process of writing Little Richard…well, entertaining. Even though his publisher pushed him to produce Little Richard in just over a year—"I had to make this baby as tight as a drum head. No self-indulgent guitar solos here!"—Kirby thoroughly enjoyed the time he worked on this book.

"If every copy of this book disappeared before lunchtime, I'd start over again between now and supper," he says. "I've never had so much fun writing something. Part of the fun was just clowning around in Macon with people who knew Richard back in the day. "One of my files is labeled 'OTGs' for 'Old Toothless Guys,' though some of them actually still have their teeth."

Given the pressure of a deadline during the writing of Little Richard, Kirby would routinely look over his interview notes and research materials and "riff for a couple of thousand words." Although he had a word count limit from his editor of between 50,000 and 55,000, he overwrote, he says, and bumped up his first draft to 76,000 words and then cut back.

"The book in your hands is actually 54,999 words in length—I didn't want to be greedy," he says.

Oddly, the main character of the book—who in 1986 entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and whose song "Tutti Frutti" topped Mojo's 2007 list of "The Top 100 Records That Changed the World"—remained rather elusive during the course of Kirby's research and writing. But Kirby wove the idea of that scarce communication with Little Richard as a theme throughout the book, one that involved the writer attempting to acquire the performer's phone number.

"I really had everything I needed to write this book without Richard's participation, so the more he resisted me, the more I made that an illustration of his quirky character," Kirby says. "I actually didn't start talking to him regularly until after the book was in press, and I must say that we've had some lovely conversations."

One of the people Kirby did meet during his visits to Little Richard's birthplace for the book's research is Richard's 79-year-old cousin, Willie Ruth Howard. Little Richard begins and ends with Willie Ruth, who still lives in Macon; Kirby says the two of them still talk on the phone frequently.

Kirby and his wife Barbara Hamby are hard at work on a new project, a co-edited volume, Seriously Funny: Poems About Love, Death, Religion, Art, Politics, Sex, and Everything Else, a compilation of nearly two hundred poems by hundred-plus American poets, due out in April 2010. Kirby's next book of poems, Talking About Movies With Jesus, is in works for a 2011 release date.