Rock pioneer Little Richard dies 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 confirmed his father’s death, first 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 influence 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 riffs 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-lopbam-boom.”

AP Little Richard, who burst onto the music scene with the 1956 hit single “Tutti Frutti,” was a charter member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.