Exuberant rock’n’roll pioneer struggled to reconcile his sexuality with his faith
Little Richard, who has died aged 87, inspired generations of musicians from Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to Michael Jackson and Prince, with his outrageous, sexually charged music – a blend of rhythm and blues, gospel and rock’n’roll, howled in a wild, falsetto shriek and accompanied by his explosive piano playing; he was also the only man ever to claim to be ‘‘the King and Queen of rock’n’roll’’.
His stage performances could, as he put it, make ‘‘your liver quiver, your bladder splatter and your knees freeze’’. While not everyone experienced all these symptoms during his
Little Richard
extraordinary live shows
(Richard’s musician
androgynous b December 5, 1932
poses, with d May 9, 2020
pompadour and exaggerated eye makeup, alienated some among his potential audience), in the fiercely competitive atmosphere of the 1950s he seemed able to produce classic hit singles such as Lucille, Long Tall Sally and Good Golly Miss Molly almost at will.
Tutti Frutti, in particular, became an anthem of teenage rebellion with its powerful, if semantically challenging, opening line: ‘‘Awop-bopa-loobop Alop-bamboom!’’
Despite his gifts as a singer of blues and gospel, Richard’s characteristic vocal style, and that most appreciated by his fans, was his frenzied falsetto. Although not the most fastidious of pianists where technique and phrasing were concerned, he was undoubtedly the fastest – and the loudest (on several occasions beating the keyboard with such ferocity as to break 80-gauge piano strings).
The element of screaming camp in his performances – never understated, even in his early years – became increasingly pronounced with age.
Richard Wayne Penniman was born in Macon, Georgia, the third of 12 children of Bud Penniman, a stonemason and moonshine liquor dealer, and his wife Leva Mae.
Like most Southern rock and rollers of his time, Richard began by singing gospel music. His robust vocal style, however, was not best suited to numbers like Precious Lord and Peace in the Valley, and he was expelled from the family group, the Penniman Singers, as a result of his wild, screaming contributions to their church performances.
When he was 14, gossip about his romantic encounters with both sexes reached his parents and, after being told by his father that he was ‘‘half a son’’, Richard left home and attached himself to various touring troupes; with B Brown and his Orchestra he was billed for the first time as ‘‘Little Richard’’.
By the mid-1950s he was becoming influenced by performers such as B B King and Little Walter, and in 1955 he recorded his first major success – a bowdlerised version of Tutti Frutti, which he had been playing to local club audiences for several years. The song, reportedly recorded in three takes, was to change his life.
He soon scored another major hit with Long Tall Sally. By now he had developed a somewhat conflicted ‘‘moral code’’ – his obsession with sex was matched only by his passion for the church – that would come to define his life and work. By 1956 he had started to mutter biblical quotations; in 1957, in the middle of an Australian tour, he announced his retirement.
Instead he formed the Little Richard entourage of travelling evangelists and, in an attempt to regain some respectability, married Ernestine Campbell, a secretary, in 1959. The marriage ended after less than three years.
In late 1962 he allowed himself to be persuaded to tour England with the organ player Billy Preston. He ended the tour supported by the Beatles in and around Liverpool; Richard then took the group with him to Hamburg. By 1964 he was touring solidly with increasingly outrageous stage shows. He acquired a new guitarist, Jimi Hendrix, for a time.
The power of Richard’s live performances allowed him to survive into the early 1970s. His life, though, became increasingly dominated by drink and drugs. By the middle of the decade he was spending US$1000 a day on cocaine.
Little Richard was ‘‘born again’’ for a second time in 1977, when he became a travelling salesman for a Bible company. He denounced rock’n’roll as ‘‘demonic’’, and generally shunned the music world.
His influence extended to artists such as James Brown, John Lennon, Otis Redding and David Bowie – though none ever managed to achieve, single-handed, the colossal energy of Richard’s live performances. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones remembered his own stage appearance with the singer as ‘‘the most exciting moment of my life’’.
Latterly, following a hip replacement operation, Little Richard lived in Tennessee, where visitors would encounter a large group of burly minders before meeting the man himself.
His most enduring relationship, despite his admission in 1995 that ‘‘I’ve been gay all my life’’, was with a stripper called Lee Angel (formerly Audrey Robinson), whom he met in 1956 when she was 16. Her friendship with Richard endured for more than 50 years.
Although he fathered no children of his own, Little Richard adopted a son, Danny Jones, after the death of Jones’ mother. – Telegraph Group