“THE KING AND QUEEN OF ROCK’N’ROLL”
Little Richard Penniman 1932-2020
Richard Penniman – better known as Little Richard – “combined the sacred shouts of the black church and the profane sounds of the blues to create some of the first – and most influential – rock’n’roll songs”, said The New York Times. Although he described himself as the King of Rock’n’Roll – and also its Queen – he did not invent the genre. By the time he exploded onto the scene with Tutti Frutti – “A-wop-bop-aloo-bop a-wop-bam-boom!” – Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley had both had hit records. But “pounding the piano furiously, and screaming as if for his very life”, he created a distinctive new sound – one that was thrilling, sexually charged and “more than a bit dangerous”.
Little Richard’s live performances were electrifying; his music, he said, would make
“your liver quiver, your bladder splatter and your knees freeze”. And standing at his piano, his eyes heavily kohled, his hair styled in a lavish pompadour, he was unlike anything that had preceded him. Legions of artists were inspired by his music, his gender-bending style and his attitude. “Mick Jagger used to watch my act,” he said. “Where do you think he got that walk?” As for Prince, “I was wearing purple before he was born.” In his high school yearbook, Bob Dylan wrote that his ambition was “to join Little Richard”. Elton John said that seeing Little Richard play was the single most exciting thing that had happened to him at that point. Paul McCartney – who befriended Little Richard in the early 1960s – covered his songs and learnt to copy his scream. “It’s like an out-of-body experience,” he said. “You have to actually go outside yourself.”
Richard Penniman was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1932, one of 12 children. His father was a stonemason, a preacher and a bootlegger. Richard began singing with his parents in church, and wanted to become a preacher. But he was beaten by his father for wearing his mother’s clothes; and at school, other boys called him a “faggot, sissy, freak”. He left home at 14, after a row with his father (who was shot dead a few years later) and started performing in the Deep South’s segregated dance halls, as well as in drag clubs and bordellos, under the name Princess LaVonne. He won his first record contract in 1951, but his career progressed fitfully, said Rolling Stone. Then in 1955, he sent a demo to Speciality Records, and recorded a cleaned-up version of a bawdy song he had written while working as a dishwasher in a bus station. “Tutti Frutti, good booty” became “Tutti Frutti, aw rooty”. It was a hit with black and white music-lovers in racially segregated America, and reached No. 21 in the pop chart. But a sanitised cover by the white singer Pat Boone got to No. 12. The young Elvis Presley also covered Tutti Frutti. “If I had been white, there would never have been an Elvis Presley,” Penniman observed. The next year, he released
Long Tall Sally: this time, his version placed higher than Boone’s “white bread” one. It was followed by hits including Lucille, in 1957, and
Good Golly, Miss Molly, in 1958.
Little Richard’s private life was as wild as his stage act: he had a taste for voyeurism and was known for hosting drug-fuelled orgies (he claimed to have had at threesome with Buddy Holly). But he was tortured by the conflict with his faith – his sexual partners often woke up to hear him declaiming verses from the Bible he kept by his bed – and in 1957, he decided the ministry was calling. By the time he was tempted back to the “devil’s music” in the early 1960s, fashions were changing. He never regained his chart dominance, said The Times, but his influence remained incalculable. On tours of Britain in 1962 and 1963, he was supported by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. He later claimed to have taught McCartney everything he knew, and McCartney has never demurred; while Jagger has described the fascination with which he observed Little Richard whip his live audiences into a frenzy. In the US a year later, a talented but introverted young guitarist calling himself Maurice James joined his backing group, and emerged as Jimi Hendrix.
Penniman described himself as “omnisexual”, and in 1959, he married Ernestine Campbell, a fellow evangelical. They divorced in 1964. They adopted a baby son together, after the child’s own mother had died. Danny survives him.