‘Mr. Personality’ made waves as early rock ’n’ roll influence
NEW YORK — Singersongwriter Lloyd Price, an early rock ’n’ roll star and enduring maverick whose hits included such up-tempo favorites as “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” “Personality ” and the semi-forbidden “Stagger Lee,” has died. He was 88.
Price died Monday at a long-term care facility in New Rochelle, New York, of complications from diabetes, his wife, Jacqueline Price, told Associated Press on Saturday.
Lloyd Price, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, was among the last survivors of a postWorld War II scene in New Orleans that anticipated the shifts in popular music and culture leading to the rise of rock in the mid-1950s. Along with Fats Domino and David Bartholomew, among others, Price fashioned a deep, exuberant sound around the brass and swing of New Orleans jazz and blues that placed high on R&B charts and eventually crossed over to white audiences.
Price’s nickname was “Mr. Personality,” fitting for a performer with a warm smile and a tenor voice to match. But he was far more than an engaging entertainer. He was unusually independent for his time, running his own record label even before such stars as Frank Sinatra did the same, holding on to his publishing rights, and serving as his own agent and manager.
He would often speak of the racial injustices he endured, writing on his Facebook page during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests that behind his “affable exterior” was “a man who is seething.”
Born in Kenner, Louisiana, as one of 11 siblings, Price had been singing in church and playing piano since childhood. He was in his late teens when a local DJ’s catchphrase, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” helped inspire him to write his boundary-breaking first hit, which he worked on in his mother’s fried fish restaurant.
Featuring Domino’s trademark piano trills, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” hit No. 1 on the R&B charts in 1952, sold more than 1 million copies and became a rock standard, covered by Elvis Presley and Little Richard among others. But Price would have mixed feelings about the song’s broad appeal, later remembering how local officials in what was still the Jim Crow South resisted letting both blacks and whites attend his shows.
Price was drafted and spent the mid-1950s in military service in Korea. He began a career restart with the 1957 ballad “Just Because,” and hit the top with the brassy, pop-oriented “Stagger Lee,” one of
the catchiest, most celebratory songs ever recorded about a barroom murder.
He followed with the top 10 hits “Personality” and “I’m Going To Get Married” and the top 20 songs “Lady Luck” and “Question.” He fared no better than many of his contemporaries once the Beatles arrived in the U.S. in 1964, but he found his way into other professions.
His career in music continued, sporadically. He and his business partner Harold Logan started a label in the early 1960s, Double L Records, that gave an early break to Wilson Pickett. But after Logan was murdered in 1969, Price became so disheartened he eventually moved to Nigeria and didn’t return until the 1980s. He would become a favorite on oldies tours, performing with Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis.
Price would credit clean living and steady focus for his endurance.
“I never drank, smoked, used drugs or had bad habits,” he said in 1998. “I’d drive a taxi cab to get me the food I need to live. I never was starstruck.”