When I think of Little Richard, what immediately comes to mind is Donald and Daisy Duck dancing in some Disney-approved music video that would appear between regular cartoons. On the surface to a young kid, this was adult approved music…nothing was like the oldies and Little Richard was a hell of a lot safer than Mötley Crüe or Poison for my developing mind in my parents and grandparents’ eyes. But even in that Disney short, if you look at it with adult eyes, there’s some very thinly veiled sexual overtones in that high-energy music that even Disney wasn’t able to hide. And for those who consider the oldies tame and campy…oh, lord, do your homework.
The story of Richard Penniman is interesting, to say the least. Born in 1932 into a family of twelve children and to a religious family who had a bootlegger for a father, by the age of ten he figured out that showmanship was what he craved. He was a-singin’, a-preachin’ and all sorts right up until the age of thirteen, when he was kicked out of the house, reportedly because he was gay. His early works as Little Richard were gospel songs, blues, with Sister Rosetta Tharp and Mahalia Jackson giving him a path to follow. He started wearing the pompadour hair, he started tweaking his performances a bit, and by the early 1950s he had started catching the eyes of music executives. Now…remember that thing about the oldies being more than campy? Think to the classic “Tutti Frutti”. How many of you sang that song as a kid? Did you ever give thought to what that song was about, or whether or not the lyrics had to be changed? Trust me…do the research. If that song was re-released today with the original lyrics it’d still be an eye-opener. But it worked…his energetic, aggressive music not only caught on like wildfire, but his performances were jaw-droppers, and from there it just snowballed.
From my own perspective, Little Richard was always that safe, bouncy oldies rock and roll, but friend of BangShift Craig Fitzgerald really put things into context earlier today:
“In 2020, it’s easy to dismiss Little Richard as a parody of himself, but god damn, people, nobody had more influence on badass rock and roll than he did. Yeah, he crossed over as a black man playing before white audiences, but there were simply no other black, queer artists crossing over with anybody, except for Little Richard. There weren’t any other people who personified every step of the journey that ended up at rock and roll in its earliest incarnation.
In his youth, he played in minstrel shows, for Christ’s sake. IN DRAG.
When your grandma was 16, she INVENTED throwing her panties on stage, because of Little Richard.
In 1962, Brian Epstein begged to have the F*CKING BEATLES be his opening act. Three years later, JIMI F*CKING HENDRIX would be his guitar player.
He is the ultimate embodiment of the debauchery of Saturday night, and the repentance of Sunday morning, leaving and coming back to rock and roll time and time again throughout his career.
Androgynous, queer, simultaneously profane and devout, he was a goddamn dangerous black man, and one of the most flat out gorgeous, electrifying human beings ever to set fire to a stage. Read Deke Dickerson’s first hand stories of what it was like to have his record autographed by him, but this is the quote that got me: “He must’ve scared the SHIT out of people in 1955.”
Think about that the next time you’re at a car show and hear that piano-pounding music in your ears. The man was wild, the man was at the forefront of a musical revolution, and the man was a part of the scene that broke down the race barriers. But you don’t need to tell your kids that when they’re bopping along to the music.
I made another observation this morning, being a bass player and drummer (I didn’t say a GOOD one…..). He played the piano as a PERCUSSION instrument which, of course, it is. Pretty sure he was the first, certainly the first who got air play. The architect of rock n roll……’