And with one yell of rapture, the world broke free

RIGHTLY, this paper devoted a page to an obituary of Little Richard last week — but there’s no need to just leave it at that.

Many men and women are checking out these days from the rock’n’roll hotel — but Little Richard was the man who built the damn thing, when he hollered “Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom”.

Which makes him one of the most important artists of any kind, of the last 75 years.

Writer Greil Marcus knew this too, starting his seminal 1975 book Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock’n’Roll Music scene on The Dick Cavett Show, on TV with guests including

Erich Segal, author of Love Story, and the critic John Simon, and Little Richard.

Simon is most critical of Love Story, and as he and Segal bicker, it is clear that Little Richard is getting restless. When Segal starts rambling about “the history of art”, Little Richard snaps, embarking on a loud and vainglorious account of his own place in that history.

When he is done, as Greil Marcus writes, “Little Richard sits with the arbiters of taste, oblivious to their bitter stares, savouring his moment. He is Little Richard. Who are they? Who will remember

Erich Segal, John Simon, Dick Cavett? Who will care? Ah, but Little Richard, Little Richard

Himself! There is a man who matters. He knows how to rock.”

Marcus continues...

“Little Richard was the only artist on the set that night, the only man who disrupted an era, the only man with a claim to immortality. The one who broke rules, created a form; the one who gave shape to a vitality that wailed silently in each of us until he found a voice for it.”

Or, if you like, awopbopaloobop, alopbamboom.

Of the many magic moments from Trump last week, I would select as a personal highlight the trick that Kayleigh McEnany did with the binder.

The new press secretary was with Trump as the helicopter prepared to leave the White House — he has missed this routine, it enables him to shout over the sound of the chopper, and he likes shouting.

But last week he let Kayleigh do some shouting in her own right, as she produced a binder which allegedly contained Trump’s comprehensive “pandemic preparedness plan” from 2018 — an impressive document next to the “paper packet” left by Obama.

It was a reprise of that classic screwball scene when the president spoke at a long table with various folders and files on it, allegedly the records of his businesses from which he was now withdrawing, lest there be any perceived conflicts of interest.

At one level it was simply a con man at work — yet a con man is supposed to be fooling his audience, whereas nobody in that room believed there was anything in those folders.

But he did it anyway, and he did it again last week because it’s what he does. Or rather, Kayleigh McEnany did it for him.

I guess without that “pandemic preparedness plan”, things mightn’t have worked out so well.