[msb-alumni] Little Richard, Pioneering Rock 'n Roll Hall of Famer, Dies at 87 on May 9, 2020 (two articles added at end)
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- Date: Sun, 10 May 2020 15:48:05 -0400
BlankLittle Richard, flamboyant rocker who fused gospel fervor and R&B
sexuality,
dies at 87
Little Richard, the flamboyant, piano-pounding showman who injected sheer
abandon
into rock ’n’ roll in its early days, only to abandon the music again and again
because it conflicted with his religious yearnings, died Saturday. He was 87.
Pastor Bill Minson, a close friend of the singer, confirmed his death to the
Associated Press. Minson said he also spoke to Little Richard’s son and brother.
Minson added that the family is not releasing the cause of death.
In hits such as “Tutti-Frutti,” “Long Tall Sally” and “Good Golly, Miss Molly,”
the
singer pushed the limits of tempo and vocal intensity, creating frantic
explosions of
sonic confetti. His records entered a pure, primal realm that transcended
verbal
expression, embodied in his falsetto whoops and signature incantation:
a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom.
The Georgia native’s raucous sound fused gospel fervor and R&B sexuality into
an
enduring template, exerting a profound influence on the Beatles. Other notable
artists with an affinity for Richard include Bruce Springsteen, James Brown
(who
succeeded him in one of his early bands), Jimi Hendrix (one of his backup
musicians
in the mid-'60s) and John Fogerty.
In addition, Richard’s sexual ambiguity and outrageous look — high pompadour,
makeup,
wild outfits — resonate through generations of pop’s gender rebels, including
Mick
Jagger, Elton John, David Bowie, Michael Jackson and Prince.
His songs (most of which bore his credit as a co-writer) were bawdy, but still
relatively innocent next to the blues of the era, marked by a comical,
slapstick
energy. “I saw Uncle John/With bald-headed Sally/He saw Aunt Mary coming and he
jumped back in the alley,” he sang at breakneck speed in “Long Tall Sally,” his
first
top 10 hit, in 1956.
Even so, his pansexual posture and onstage antics were enough to scandalize
mainstream America — which only made him more appealing to the teenagers who
were
forming a new marketing category for the record business.
It was an audience open to performers regardless of race, and while black
artists had
occasionally cracked the pop charts in the past, it was now a whole new world,
as
Little Richard and other African American singers — Chuck Berry, Fats Domino,
Bo
Diddley, Frankie Lymon, et al. — mingled with their white counterparts to
create the
polyglot vitality of late-'50s pop radio.
Little Richard’s exaggerated persona eventually evolved into caricature,
obscuring
his initial impact but helping him return repeatedly from obscurity in his
later
years, when he acted in films, appeared on TV game shows and in commercials and
recorded a children’s album.
The self-proclaimed “architect of rock ’n’ roll” often complained that he
didn’t get
his due recognition or financial rewards, blaming racism, conspiracies, unfair
contracts and the practice of having more conventional, white singers such as
Pat
Boone record his songs in watered-down versions that outsold the originals.
“God bless Elvis — he and I were very close friends — but I didn’t get the
credit I
deserved,” Richard said in a 2004 interview with the Dallas Morning News. “The
industry back then didn’t allow me to get the credit, because I was black and
the
kids who were buying my records were white.”
But in a remarkably concentrated two-year output beginning in early 1956 he
formed an
honored foundation of rock. Richard was one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s
inaugural inductees in 1986, and he received the Recording Academy’s lifetime
achievement award in 1993.
“It was an era for kids to get crazy, man, crazy, to quote the Bill Haley
record, and
Richard was the craziest of them all,” musician and music historian Billy Vera
told
The Times. “He allowed kids the freedom to get wild and feel wild and give vent
to
those feelings.
“It was just, ‘Wow, look at him, look at him, wow, look what he’s doing, he’s
screaming, he fell on the floor, he’s jumping up on the piano, just listen to
that
crazy voice,’” added Vera, who oversaw a 1989 boxed set of Little Richard’s
seminal
recordings, “Nobody was as crazed as Richard.”
Richard Wayne Penniman was born Dec. 5, 1932, in Macon, Ga., the third of his
family’s
12 children. His father supplemented his earnings as a bricklayer by dealing in
bootleg liquor, and the Penniman family enjoyed a comfortable standard of
living.
Richard was saddled with some physical quirks -- one leg longer than the other,
a
large head, one enlarged eye -- but they didn’t inhibit him. He was outgoing
and
mischievous, hungry for attention, fond of pulling outlandish pranks and
singing in
public.
His was a religious family in a musical neighborhood, and he sampled different
denominations, including Baptist and Pentecostal. He performed church music
with a
children’s vocal quartet, the Tiny Tots, and later with a group of his siblings.
As a teenager, according to his own account in Charles White’s 1984 book "The
Life
and Times of Little Richard," he became sexually active with both men and
women,
though over the years he variously modified his story and renounced and/or
denied his
homosexuality.
His enthusiasm for music and performing coincided with his lack of interest in
school, and he left home to travel with minstrel and medicine shows, consorting
with
drag performers and musicians from big bands and blues groups.
He admired gospel artists such as Clara Ward, Brother Joe May and especially
Mahalia
Jackson, as well as blues singers such as Ruth Brown. In Atlanta, he studied
bluesman
Billy Wright, a flashy showman who favored a high hairdo and loud suits.
Wright helped steer the young singer to RCA Records, and the blues songs he
recorded
in 1951 yielded a regional hit, "Every Hour."
When his father was murdered in 1952, Richard became the family’s breadwinner,
washing dishes at the Macon bus station while prospering on the regional club
circuit
with his new band, the Upsetters.
In the mid-’50s he met R&B star Lloyd Price, who advised him to contact his
label,
Specialty Records. Richard sent a demo tape to the Los Angeles company, whose
owner
Art Rupe was looking for someone to compete with Atlantic Records’ new
sensation Ray
Charles.
Sensing some potential in the urgent voice on the crude tape, Rupe signed
Little
Richard and dispatched producer Robert “Bumps” Blackwell to record him in New
Orleans
in September 1955, with the cream of the city’s studio players, including
saxophonist
Lee Allen and drummer Earl Palmer.
As the first session proceeded, Blackwell was disappointed with Richard’s
inhibited
performance. They took a break for lunch at the nearby Dew Drop Inn, where
Richard
had frequently played in the past, and he decided to do an impromptu
performance.
"He’s on stage reckoning to show Lee Allen his piano style," Blackwell recalled
in
the Charles White book. "So WOW! He gets going. He hits that piano,
didididididididididi ... and starts to sing "‘Awop-bop-a-Loo-Mop a-good Goddam
--
Tutti Frutti, good booty..."
"I said, "Wow! That’s what I want from you, Richard. That’s a hit!’"
Before they recorded it, though, they assigned a young songwriter, Dorothy La
Bostrie, to revamp the sexually explicit lyrics. She arrived at the studio 15
minutes
before the end of the session, and three takes later, they had their hit.
"Tutti-Fruitti" reached No. 2 on the national R&B chart and No. 17 on the pop
chart
early in early 1956.
The followup, "Long Tall Sally," made the top 10, and was joined there later by
"Jenny Jenny," "Keep a Knockin’" and "Good Golly Miss Molly."
Richard’s other notable singles were "“Rip It Up," "Slippin’ and Slidin'
(Peepin’ and
Hidin’)" and "Lucille."
Richard capitalized on his flurry of hits, playing countless concerts and
appearing
in a couple of quickie rock ’n’ roll movies, as well as the Jayne Mansfield
comedy
"The Girl Can’t Help It" (his title song was another hit).
He moved to Los Angeles, buying an elegant house next door to Joe Louis in the
Mid-City area and bringing his mother out west.
And as suddenly as he had arrived, he walked away.
The latent conflict between his show business lifestyle and his ingrained
religious
beliefs came to a head during a 1957 tour of Australia.
Richard later cited an in-flight vision in which angels supported his stricken
airplane, as well as the launching of the Russian satellite Sputnik, as signs
that
inspired his rebirth.
He quit music with 10 days left on the tour and, back in California, joined the
Church of God of the Ten Commandments. He traveled and preached, and enrolled
at
Oakwood College in Alabama to study for the ministry.
At the urging of church colleagues, he looked for a wife, and married Ernestine
Campbell in 1959. They were divorced several years later.
Richard began recording religious music, and in 1962 he took an offer to tour
England
singing gospel songs. But when he saw the audience response to Sam Cooke, one
of his
opening acts, he dusted off the old hits.
Little Richard was back -- though he later called it a relapse.
Another of his opening acts on that trip was the Beatles, still unknown and
thrilled
to meet the master.
Richard recalled teaching Paul McCartney how to execute the falsetto whoop
during a
subsequent sojourn in Hamburg. It would resurface as a key hook in the
foursome’s "I
Saw Her Standing There" and "She Loves You."
The Beatles also paid homage by recording "Long Tall Sally" and Richard’s
arrangement
of "Kansas City," but while they and their contemporaries used his model as a
stepping stone to stardom, Richard recorded gospel and soul music and toiled as
a
touring rock ’n’ roll act through the ’60s. He eventually worked his way up to
prominent bookings, including Las Vegas stages and the Fillmore East in New
York.
There were a couple of minor hits in the early ’70s, but Richard had become
ensnared
in a life of drugs, drink and hedonism.
A string of incidents in the mid-'70's -- including his brother Tony’s death
from a
heart attack and a drug-related threat on his life by an old friend, singer
Larry
Williams -- prompted him to leave music a second time.
He again renounced rock ’n’ roll as “demonic” and turned to religion, moving to
Riverside to shake his drug habit. He preached for the Universal Remnant Church
of
God and sold copies of the Black Heritage Bible.
He reemerged in the 1980s, acting on television "Miami Vice" and in film "Down
and
Out in Beverly Hills", and returning to secular music. He recorded a children’s
album
for Disney, sang the theme for the "Magic School Bus" TV series, and played at
President Clinton’s inaugural in 1993.
More recently, he gave the keynote address at the 2004 South by Southwest music
festival in Austin, Texas.
His latest recordings appeared on a tribute album to Johnny Cash in 2002 and
Jerry
Lee Lewis’ 2008 collection of duets.
He was still performing occasionally as of 2009, having reconciled his sacred
mission
and secular passion, and promised to return to the stage following hip surgery
late
in the year.
"I believe there is good and bad in everything," he said in the mid-'80's. "I
believe
some rock ’n’ roll music is really bad, but I believe that there is some not as
bad.
I believe that if the message is positive and elevating, and wholesome and
uplifting,
this makes you think clearly. If it’s not, then it is not good even in gospel."
Cromelin is a former Times staff writer.
*****
Little Richard, Flamboyant Wild Man of Rock ’n’ Roll, Dies at 87
Delving deeply into the wellsprings of gospel music and the blues, and
screaming as
if for his very life, he created something new, thrilling and dangerous.
Little Richard in performance at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in New York
in
2007. “He was crucial,” one historian said, “in upping the
voltage
from high-powered R&B into the similar, yet different, guise of rock
’n’ roll.”
By Tim Weiner
May 9, 2020Updated 11:26 a.m. ET
Richard Penniman, better known as Little Richard, who combined the sacred
shouts of
the black church and the profane sounds of the blues to create some of the
world’s
first and most influential rock ’n’ roll records, died on Saturday morning. He
was
87.
His death was confirmed by his son, Danny Jones Penniman, who said the cause
was
cancer. He did not say where his father died.
Little Richard did not invent rock ’n’ roll. Other musicians had already been
mining
a similar vein by the time he recorded his first hit, “Tutti Frutti” — a
raucous song
about sex, its lyrics cleaned up but its meaning hard to miss — in a New
Orleans
recording studio in September 1955. Chuck Berry and Fats Domino had reached the
pop
Top 10, Bo Diddley had topped the rhythm-and-blues charts, and Elvis Presley
had been
making records for a year.
But Little Richard, delving deeply into the wellsprings of gospel music and the
blues, pounding the piano furiously and screaming as if for his very life,
raised the
energy level several notches and created something not quite like any music
that had
been heard before — something new, thrilling and more than a little dangerous.
As the
rock historian Richie Unterberger put it, “He was crucial in upping the voltage
from
high-powered R&B into the similar, yet different, guise of rock ’n’ roll.”
Art Rupe of Specialty Records, the label for which he recorded his biggest
hits,
called Little Richard “dynamic, completely uninhibited, unpredictable, wild.”
“Tutti Frutti” rocketed up the charts and was quickly followed by “Long Tall
Sally”
and other records now acknowledged as classics. His live performances were
electrifying.
“He’d just burst onto the stage from anywhere, and you wouldn’t be able to hear
anything but the roar of the audience,” the record producer and arranger H.B.
Barnum,
who played saxophone with Little Richard early in his career, recalled in “The
Life
and Times of Little Richard” (1984), an authorized biography by Charles White.
“He’d
be on the stage, he’d be off the stage, he’d be jumping and yelling, screaming,
whipping the audience on.”
An Immeasurable Influence
Rock ’n’ roll was an unabashedly macho music in its early days, but Little
Richard,
who had performed in drag as a teenager, presented a very different picture
onstage:
gaudily dressed, his hair piled six inches high, his face aglow with cinematic
makeup. He was fond of saying in later years that if Elvis was the king of rock
’n’
roll, he was the queen. Offstage, he characterized himself variously as gay,
bisexual
and “omnisexual.”
His influence as a performer was immeasurable. It could be seen and heard in
the
flamboyant showmanship of James Brown, who idolized him (and used some of his
musicians when Little Richard began a long hiatus from performing in 1957), and
of
Prince, whose ambisexual image owed a major debt to his.
Presley recorded his songs. The Beatles adopted his trademark sound, an
octave-leaping exultation: “Woooo!” (Paul McCartney said that the first song he
ever
sang in public was “Long Tall Sally,” which he later recorded with the
Beatles.) Bob
Dylan wrote in his high school yearbook that his ambition was “to join Little
Richard.”
Little Richard’s impact was social as well.
ImageLittle Richard in the mid-1950s, around the time his first hit record,
“Tutti Frutti,” was released.
Little Richard in the mid-1950s, around the time his first hit record, “Tutti
Frutti,” was released.Credit...Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
“I’ve always thought that rock ’n’ roll brought the races together,” Mr. White
quoted
him as saying. “Especially being from the South, where you see the barriers,
having
all these people who we thought hated us showing all this love.”
Mr. Barnum told Mr. White that “they still had the audiences segregated” at
concerts
in the South in those days, but that when Little Richard performed, “most
times,
before the end of the night, they would all be mixed together.”
If uniting black and white audiences was a point of pride for Little Richard,
it was
a cause of concern for others, especially in the South. The White Citizens
Council of
North Alabama issued a denunciation of rock ’n’ roll largely because it brought
“people of both races together.” And with many radio stations under pressure to
keep
black music off the air, Pat Boone’s cleaned-up, toned-down version of “Tutti
Frutti”
was a bigger hit than Little Richard’s original. (He also had a hit with “Long
Tall
Sally.”)
Still, it seemed that nothing could stop Little Richard’s drive to the top —
until he
stopped it himself.
He was at the height of his fame when he left the United States in late
September
1957 to begin a tour in Australia. As he told the story, he was exhausted,
under
intense pressure from the Internal Revenue Service and furious at the low
royalty
rate he was receiving from Specialty. Without anyone to advise him, he had
signed a
contract that gave him half a cent for every record he sold. “Tutti Frutti” had
sold
half a million copies but had netted him only $25,000.
One night in early October, before 40,000 fans at an outdoor arena in Sydney,
he had
an epiphany.
“That night Russia sent off that very first Sputnik,” he told Mr. White,
referring to
the first satellite sent into space. “It looked as though the big ball of fire
came
directly over the stadium about two or three hundred feet above our heads. It
shook
my mind. It really shook my mind. I got up from the piano and said, ‘This is
it. I am
through. I am leaving show business to go back to God.’”
He had one last Top 10 hit: “Good Golly Miss Molly,” recorded in 1956 but not
released until early 1958. By then, he had left rock ’n’ roll behind.
He became a traveling evangelist. He entered Oakwood College (now Oakwood
University)
in Huntsville, Ala., a Seventh-day Adventist school, to study for the ministry.
He
cut his hair, got married and began recording gospel music.
For the rest of his life, he would be torn between the gravity of the pulpit
and the
pull of the stage.
“Although I sing rock ’n’ roll, God still loves me,” he said in 2009. “I’m a
rock ’n’
roll singer, but I’m still a Christian.”
He was lured back to the stage in 1962, and over the next two years he played
to wild
acclaim in England, Germany and France. Among his opening acts were the Beatles
and
the Rolling Stones, then at the start of their careers.
He went on to tour relentlessly in the United States, with a band that at one
time
included Jimi Hendrix on guitar. By the end of the 1960s, sold-out performances
in
Las Vegas and triumphant appearances at rock festivals in Atlantic City and
Toronto
were sending a clear message: Little Richard was back to stay.
But he wasn’t.
‘I Lost My Reasoning’
By his own account, alcohol and cocaine began to sap his soul (“I lost my
reasoning,”
he would later say), and in 1977, he once again turned from rock ’n’ roll to
God. He
became a Bible salesman, began recording religious songs again and, for the
second
time, disappeared from the spotlight.
He did not stay away forever. The publication of his biography in 1984 signaled
his
return to the public eye, and he began performing again.
By now, he was as much a personality as a musician. In 1986 he played a
prominent
role as a record producer in Paul Mazursky’s hit movie “Down and Out in Beverly
Hills.” On television, he appeared on talk, variety, comedy and awards shows.
He
officiated at celebrity weddings and preached at celebrity funerals.
He could still raise the roof in concert. In December 1992, he stole the show
at a
rock ’n’ roll revival concert at Wembley Arena in London. “I’m 60 years old
today,”
he told the audience, “and I still look remarkable.”
He continued to look remarkable — with the help of wigs and thick pancake
makeup — as
he toured intermittently into the 21st century. But age eventually took its
toll.
By 2007, he was walking onstage with the aid of two canes. In 2012, he abruptly
ended
a performance at the Howard Theater in Washington, telling the crowd, “I can’t
hardly
breathe.” A year later, he told Rolling Stone magazine that he was retiring.
“I am done, in a sense,” he said. “I don’t feel like doing anything right now.”
Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
Image
Little Richard onstage at Wembley Stadium in London in 1972, on a bill that
also
included his fellow rock ’n’ roll pioneers Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck
Berry.Credit...David Redferns/Redferns
Richard Wayne Penniman was born in Macon, Ga., on Dec. 5, 1932, the third of 12
children born to Charles and Leva Mae (Stewart) Penniman. His father was a
brick
mason who sold moonshine on the side. An uncle, a cousin and a grandfather were
preachers, and as a boy he attended Seventh-day Adventist, Baptist and Holiness
churches and aspired to be a singing evangelist. An early influence was the
gospel
singer and guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe, one of the first performers to
combine a
religious message with the urgency of R&B.
By the time he was in his teens, Richard’s ambition had taken a detour. He left
home
and began performing with traveling medicine and minstrel shows, part of a
19th-century tradition that was dying out. By 1948, billed as Little Richard —
the
name was a reference to his youth and not his physical stature — he was a
cross-dressing performer with a minstrel troupe called Sugarfoot Sam From
Alabam,
which had been touring for decades.
In 1951, while singing alongside strippers, comics and drag queens on the
Decataur
Street strip in Atlanta, he recorded his first songs. The records were generic
R&B,
with no distinct style, and attracted almost no attention.
Around this time, he met two performers whose look and sound would have a
profound
impact on his own: Billy Wright and S.Q. Reeder, who performed and recorded as
Esquerita. They were both accomplished pianists, flashy dressers, flamboyant
entertainers and as openly gay as it was possible to be in the South in the
1950s.
Little Richard acknowledged his debt to Esquerita, who he said gave him some
piano-playing tips, and Mr. Wright, whom he once called “the most fantastic
entertainer I had ever seen.” But however much he borrowed from either man, the
music
and persona that emerged were his own.
His break came in 1955, when Mr. Rupe signed him to Specialty and arranged for
him to
record with local musicians in New Orleans. During a break at that session, he
began
singing a raucous but obscene song that Mr. Rupe thought had the potential to
capture
the nascent teenage record-buying audience. Mr. Rupe enlisted a New Orleans
songwriter, Dorothy LaBostrie, to clean up the lyrics; the song became “Tutti
Frutti”;
and a rock ’n’ roll star was born.
By the time he stopped performing, Little Richard was in both the Rock & Roll
Hall of
Fame (he was inducted in the Hall’s first year) and the Songwriters Hall of
Fame and
the recipient of lifetime achievement awards from the National Academy of
Recording
Arts and Sciences and the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. “Tutti Frutti” was added
to
the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2010.
If Little Richard ever doubted that he deserved all the honors he received, he
never
admitted it. “A lot of people call me the architect of rock ’n’ roll,” he once
said.
“I don’t call myself that, but I believe it’s true.”
Peter Keepnews and Ben Sisario contributed reporting.
******
Piano-pounding singer defined rock-and-roll's incendiary spirit by Terence
McArdle.
In rock's infancy, Little Richard was the unstoppable pacesetter, the
pompadoured
wild man whose flamboyant showmanship and incendiary spirit of abandon -
"a-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-wop-bam-boom" - would drive the music for generations.
He sang but more often shrieked with falsetto whoops and an electrifying gospel
fervor. He pounded the piano with one leg in the air. He often climaxed his
shows by
climbing on top of the stage speakers, leaping offstage to run through the
crowd or
tossing articles of clothing to the audience -- even stripping to his bare
chest on
one raucous tour in 1957.
Little Richard died May 9 at age 87 in Tullahoma, Tenn. The cause was bone
cancer,
according to his lawyer, William Sobel.
He was widely regarded as a foundational figure in rock-and-roll, and he
aggressively
promoted his role in music history.
"There's only one originator, there's only one architect: Little Richard," he
once
told Playboy.
That's not to say his assessment, however immodest, was inaccurate.
In the span of three years -- 1955 to 1958 -- he poured out hit after
definitive hit,
including "Tutti-Frutti," "Long Tall Sally," "Good Golly Miss Molly," "Rip It
Up,"
"Jenny, Jenny," "Slippin' and Slidin' " and "Lucille."
He had an incalculable influence on the frenetic attitude of rock music, long
after
his heyday and his extended forays into religious music. He saw his sound and
its
feeling of howling abandon as rock incarnate.
As he often said, "My music made your liver quiver, your bladder splatter, your
knees
freeze -- and your big toe shoot right up in your boot!"
Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones issued a statement on Instagram, calling
Little
Richard "the biggest inspiration of my early teens. . . . When we were on tour
with
him I would watch his moves every night and learn from him how to entertain and
involve the audience and he was always so generous with advice to me. He
contributed
so much to popular music."
Little Richard's road band, the Upsetters, lived up to their name, by outdoing
the
frantic rhythms on his records.
Guitarist Jimi Hendrix -- then calling himself Maurice James -- was an Upsetter
in
1964 and 1965, appearing on such records as "I Don't Know What You've Got, But
It's
Got Me."
Soul men including James Brown, Otis Redding, Joe Tex and Don Covay all began
their
careers copying Little Richard's harsh singing style, as did Paul McCartney,
who once
described Little Richard's voice as "a wild, hoarse, screaming thing, it's like
an
out-of-body experience."
Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Travelin' Band" (1970), borrowed its structure
and
melody from "Long Tall Sally."
Led Zeppelin, a band with yet another screaming singer, Robert Plant, used the
pounding drum rhythms from Little Richard's "Keep A-Knockin'" as the basis of
their
1972 hit "Rock and Roll."
Later echoes of Little Richard's unbridled style could be heard in the falsetto
whoops of Prince in his song "Kiss" (1986) and in hip-hop duo Outkast's
up-tempo 2003
hit "Hey Ya!"
Prince, Elton John and David Bowie also owed much of their stage demeanor to
Little
Richard's outré sensibilities and androgynous sexuality.
The son of a Georgia church deacon who also sold moonshine, Little Richard
spent his
own career veering wildly between conflicting public images as he seesawed
among the
worlds of showboating rock-and-roller, staid evangelist and camp icon.
Little Richard reveled in an image of utter bravado and exhibitionism, from a
tall
tower of hair to mascara-coated eyelashes and other makeup. His exhortations
onstage -- "ooh, my soul!" at the finale of a song or "shuddup!" when someone
laughed
at his outrageous patter -- were part of the role he played.
By the late 1960's, his stage attire included a vest made of mirrored glass,
and he
was often flanked onstage by a pair of stage hands dressed as British royal
guardsmen.
On national television, he proclaimed himself "the Bronze Liberace" and "the
Georgia
Peach."
He raved about his beauty and called himself "the founder of gay."
He spoke in worshipful tones about the pope -- but only because of the Catholic
leader's fashion sense. "I liked the pumps he wore," he told filmmaker John
Waters,
who conducted the Playboy interview in 1987. "I think the pope really dresses!"
A tough childhood
Richard Wayne Penniman was born in Macon, Ga., on Dec. 5, 1932, and was the
third of
12 siblings. He stood out in childhood, with his slight build and the way he
sashayed
when he walked because his right leg was slightly shorter than his left.
Classmates taunted him mercilessly, and he also had a tumultuous relationship
with
his stern father. He was 19 when his father was fatally shot outside a bar
under
mysterious circumstances.
By that time, he had already run away from home at least once to hook up with a
traveling medicine show, in which he performed in drag as "Princess Lavonne."
He had learned to sing and play piano in church, but he said it was Esquerita,
the
stage name of pianist S.Q. Reeder Jr., who left an indelible mark on Little
Richard's
piano style.
Little Richard recalled to biographer Charles White that Esquerita "had the
biggest
hands of anybody I'd ever seen. His hands was about the size of two of my hands
put
together. . . . I thought Esquerita was really crazy about me, you know. He was
--
and still is -- one of the greatest pianists and that's including Jerry Lee
Lewis,
Stevie Wonder or anybody I've ever heard."
Later, Esquerita followed Little Richard into a career as a rock-and-roll
singer and
the two would co-write songs.
While performing in Atlanta, Little Richard came under the influence of Billy
Wright,
a popular blues singer with a crying vocal style.
Atlanta disc jockey Zenas Sears recommended Little Richard to RCA Records.
His first record, "Every Hour" (1951), a slow blues, sold well locally but was
eclipsed in popularity when Wright rerecorded it as "Every Evenin'."
Little Richard toured nationally, as a soloist and briefly as lead singer of a
vocal
group, the Tempo Toppers, but the records didn't sell.
He was sending out demo recordings when Specialty Records, a Los Angeles
concern,
contacted him. Label owner Art Rupe instructed producer Robert "Bumps"
Blackwell to
find an artist in the mold of Ray Charles. Little Richard was working at the
time in
New Orleans, performing in a blues band that Blackwell found underwhelming.
It was during a break that Little Richard broke into a frantic, up-tempo
original,
"Tutti-Frutti."
Blackwell was floored and slated it for the next session but called on a local
songwriter, Dorothy LaBostrie, to rewrite the song's risque lyrics.
"Tutti-Frutti,
good booty" became "Tutti-Frutti, aw rooty."
With nonsensical lyrics and driven by Little Richard's pounding piano work, the
disc
hit No. 2 on the Billboard rhythm-and-blues chart and No. 17 on the Billboard
pop
chart in 1956. A tepid cover by crooner Pat Boone later landed on the pop
charts at
No. 12. That same year, Elvis Presley covered "Tutti-Frutti" and two other
Little
Richard hits, "Rip It Up" and "Ready Teddy."
"They needed a rock star to block me out of white homes because I was a hero to
white
kids," Little Richard told The Washington Post in 1984. "The white kids would
have
Pat Boone up on the dresser and me in the drawer 'cause they liked my version
better,
but the families didn't want me because of the image that I was projecting."
Even so, Hollywood beckoned, and Little Richard appeared in teen-centric B
movies
such as "Don't Knock the Rock" (1956) and the music industry satire "The Girl
Can't
Help It!" (1956), singing the title song in the latter while voluptuous actress
Jayne
Mansfield makes her entrance.
In 1957, at the height of his success, he quit performing after an outdoor
performance in Sydney.
"That night Russia sent off that very first Sputnik. It looked as though the
big ball
of fire came directly over the stadium about two or three hundred feet above
our
heads," he told biographer White. "I got up from the piano and said: 'This is
it. I
am through. I am leaving show business to go back to God."
Little Richard pursued Bible studies at Oakwood University, a historically
black
Seventh-day Adventist institution in Huntsville, Ala., and married Ernestine
Campbell, whom he met at a Washington, D.C., revival.
The school suspended him after he was accused of propositioning a male student,
and
Campbell later filed for divorce when Little Richard was caught by police in a
raid
of a bus stop men's room, according to the authorized White biography.
In 1961, he recorded a gospel album with arranger Quincy Jones.
Two years later, Little Richard toured England with Sam Cooke as an opening
act.
Little Richard initially attempted an all-gospel show but feared being upstaged
by
Cooke and, in mid-tour, resumed playing rock-and-roll.
Organist and teen prodigy Billy Preston, later famed for his keyboard work on
the
Beatles' recordings "The White Album" and "Let It Be," accompanied Richard and
Cooke.
(The Beatles first met Preston when they opened for Little Richard in England.)
By the mid-1960's, Little Richard embraced the soul genre -- a logical move
since
he'd already laid the groundwork for the genre by bringing the gospel vocal
style
into pop. An appearance at a 1969 Toronto rock festival - he followed Janis
Joplin -
and several television appearances revitalized his career.
However, he again quit performing in the late 1970s, while struggling with
cocaine
and alcohol addictions. This time, he sold Bibles door-to-door and preached
against
homosexual behavior.
He reemerged in director Paul Mazursky's 1986 comedy film "Down and Out in
Beverly
Hills" in the role of Orvis Goodnight, a black record producer unhappy with the
racism of the suburbs.
On the soundtrack, he sang the song "Great Gosh A'Mighty".
In more recent decades, as Little Richard performed rock-and-roll, a member of
his
entourage would hand out pamphlets with the entertainer's religious testimony
to the
audience.
After periods of financial struggle, he filled his coffers as a pitchman for
Revlon,
Taco Bell, McDonald's and Geico.
In 1992, he recorded a children's album, "Shake It All About," which included a
freewheeling version of "The Hokey Pokey" and other kindergarten classics.
He often traveled in the company of Lee Angel, a female exotic dancer whom he
sometimes introduced as his fiancee.
Little Richard endured major health setbacks in recent years, including a
broken hip
in 2009 and a heart attack in 2013 that led to his retirement. He had lived in
Tennessee in recent years. His death was confirmed by the Rev. Bill Minson, a
family
friend. Survivors include a son, Danny Penniman, and a brother.
In 1986, Little Richard was part of the inaugural class inducted into the Rock
and
Roll Hall of Fame, which called him a "living embodiment of the music's roots
in the
Fifties."
In 2010, Rolling Stone magazine listed its 100 Greatest Artists and placed
Little
Richard at No. 8.
Most of the artists' accompanying tributes were written by their peers, but
Little
Richard wrote his own.
"I appreciate being picked one of the top 100 performers, but who is number one
and
who is number two doesn't matter to me anymore. Because it won't be who I think
it
should be," he wrote. "The Rolling Stones started with me, but they're going to
always be in front of me. The Beatles started with me -- at the Star Club in
Hamburg,
Germany, before they ever made an album -- but they're going to always be in
front of
me.
James Brown, Jimi Hendrix -- these people started with me."
"I fed them, I talked to them, and they're going to always be in front of me."
******
Little Richard, flamboyant rock 'n' roll pioneer, dead at 87.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Little Richard, one of the chief architects of rock `n'
roll
whose piercing wail, pounding piano and towering pompadour irrevocably altered
popular music while introducing black R&B to white America, died Saturday after
battling bone cancer. He was 87. Pastor Bill Minson, a close friend of Little
Richard's, told The Associated Press that Little Richard died Saturday morning.
His
son, Danny Jones Penniman, also confirmed his father's death, which was first
reported by Rolling Stone.
Bill Sobel, Little Richard's attorney for more than three decades, told the AP
in an
email that the musician died of bone cancer at a family home in Tullahoma,
Tennessee.
"He was not only an iconic and legendary musician, but he was also a kind,
empathetic, and insightful human being," Sobel said.
Born Richard Penniman, Little Richard was one of rock `n' roll's founding
fathers who
helped shatter the color line on the music charts, joining Chuck Berry and Fats
Domino in bringing what was once called race music into the mainstream.
Richard's hyperkinetic piano playing, coupled with his howling vocals and
hairdo,
made him an implausible sensation -- a gay, black man celebrated across America
during the buttoned-down Eisenhower era.
He sold more than 30 million records worldwide, and his influence on other
musicians
was equally staggering, from the Beatles and Otis Redding to Creedence
Clearwater
Revival and David Bowie.
In his personal life, he wavered between raunch and religion, alternately
embracing
the Good Book and outrageous behavior and looks -- mascara-lined eyes,
pencil-thin
mustache and glittery suits.
"Little Richard? That's rock `n' roll," Neil Young, who heard Richard's riffs
on the
radio in Canada, told biographer Jimmy McDonough. "Little Richard was great on
every
record."
It was 1956 when his classic Tutti Frutti landed like a hand grenade in the Top
40,
exploding from radios and off turntables across the country. It was highlighted
by
Richard's memorable call of "wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom."
A string of hits followed, providing the foundation of rock music: "Lucille,"
"Keep A
Knockin'," "Long Tall Sally," "Good Golly Miss Molly." More than 40 years
after the
latter charted, Bruce Springsteen was still performing "Good Golly Miss Molly"
live.
The Beatles' Paul McCartney imitated Richard's signature yelps -- perhaps most
notably in the Wooooo! from the hit "She Loves You."
Ex-bandmate John Lennon covered Richard's "Rip It Up" and "Ready Teddy" on the
1975
Rock and Roll album.
When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened in 1986, he was among the charter
members
with Elvis Presley, Berry, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sam Cooke and others.
"It is with a heavy heart that I ask for prayers for the family of my lifelong
friend
and fellow rocker Little Richard," said Lewis, 84, in a statement provided by
his
publicist. "He will live on always in my heart with his amazing talent and his
friendship! He was one of a kind and I will miss him dearly. God bless his
family and
fans."
Mick Jagger called Little Richard the biggest inspiration of my early teens in
a
social media post Saturday. "His music still has the same raw electric energy
when
you play it now as it did when it first shot through the music scene in the mid
50's," Jagger wrote. "When we were on tour with him I would watch his moves
every
night and learn from him how to entertain and involve the audience and he was
always
so generous with advice to me. He contributed so much to popular music. I will
miss
you Richard, God bless."
Few were quicker to acknowledge Little Richard's seminal role than Richard
himself.
The flamboyant singer claimed he paved the way for Elvis, provided Mick Jagger
with
his stage moves and conducted vocal lessons for McCartney.
"I am the architect of rock `n' roll!" Little Richard crowed at the 1988 Grammy
Awards as the crowd rose in a standing ovation. "I am the originator!"
Richard Wayne Penniman was born in Macon, Georgia, during the Great Depression,
one
of 12 children. He was ostracized because he was effeminate and suffered a
small
deformity: his right leg was shorter than his left.
The family was religious, and Richard sang in local churches with a group
called the
Tiny Tots. The tug-of-war between his upbringing and rock `n' roll excess
tormented
Penniman throughout his career. Penniman was performing with bands by the age
of 14,
but there were problems at home over his sexual orientation.
His father beat the boy and derided him as "half a son." Richard left home to
join a
minstrel show run by a man known as "Sugarloaf Sam," occasionally appearing in
drag.
In late 1955, Little Richard recorded the bawdy "Tutti Frutti," with lyrics
that were
sanitized by a New Orleans songwriter. It went on to sell 1 million records
over the
next year.
When Little Richard's hit was banned by many white-owned radio stations, white
performers like Pat Boone and Elvis Presley did cover versions that topped the
charts.
Little Richard went to Hollywood with an appearance in "Don't Knock the Rock."
But his wild lifestyle remained at odds with his faith, and a conflicted
Richard quit
the business in 1957 to enroll in a theological school and get married.
Richard remained on the charts when his label released previously recorded
material.
And he recorded a gospel record, returning to his roots.
A 1962 arrest for a sexual encounter with a man in a bus station restroom led
to his
divorce and return to performing. He mounted three tours of England between
1962 and
1964, with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones serving as opening acts.
Back in the States, he put together a band that included guitarist Jimi Hendrix
and
later fired Hendrix when he was late for a bus.
In 1968, Richard hit Las Vegas and relaunched his career. Within two years, he
had
another hit single and made the cover of Rolling Stone.
By the mid-1970's, Richard was battling a $1,000-a-day cocaine problem and once
again
abandoned his musical career. He returned to religion, selling Bibles and
renouncing
homosexuality.
For more than a decade, he vanished.
"If God can save an old homosexual like me, he can save anybody," Richard said.
But he returned, in 1986, in spectacular fashion. Little Richard was inducted
into
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and appeared in the movie "Down and Out in
Beverly
Hills." A Little Richard song from the soundtrack, "Great Gosh A'Mighty," even
put
him back on the charts for the first time in more than 15 years.
Little Richard was back to stay, enjoying another dose of celebrity that he
fully
embraced. Macon, Georgia, named a street after its favorite son. And Little
Richard
was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In August 2002, he announced his retirement from live performing. But he
continued to
appear frequently on television, including a humorous appearance on a 2006
commercial
for GEICO insurance.
Richard had hip surgery in November 2009 at Vanderbilt University Medical
Center in
Nashville, and asked fans at the time to pray for him. He lived in the
Nashville area
at the time.
Former Associated Press writer Larry McShane; AP writer Anthony Izaguirre in
Charleston, West Virginia; and AP Music Writer Mesfin Fekadu in New York
contributed
to this report.
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- » [msb-alumni] Little Richard, Pioneering Rock 'n Roll Hall of Famer, Dies at 87 on May 9, 2020 (two articles added at end) - Steve
