Little Richard

• 1. Introduction

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  In October 1947, a fourteen-year-old boy was singing Sister Rosetta Tharpe's songs to himself before her performance at the Macon City Auditorium. Tharpe overheard him, invited him onstage to open her show, and paid him afterward. That moment lit the fuse on Little Richard, born Richard Wayne Penniman in Macon, Georgia, on the 5th of December 1932. He would become the singer once called the Architect of Rock and Roll. His piano was frenetic, his backbeat pounded, and his voice was a raspy roar. But the boy who screamed so loud in church that he was once stopped from singing carried contradictions his whole life. How did a deacon's son who sold Coca-Cola to concertgoers reshape the sound of the twentieth century? Why would a man at the peak of his fame walk away from rock and roll to study theology? And how did one performer, in an era of segregation, get black and white audiences to dance in the same room?

• 2. Macon Roots

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  Leva Mae and Charles Bud Penniman raised twelve children in Macon's Pleasant Hill neighborhood, and Richard was the third. His father was a church deacon and a brick mason who sold bootlegged moonshine and owned a nightclub called the Tip in Inn. A small, skinny frame earned him the family nickname Lil' Richard, and a slight deformity left one leg shorter than the other. That gave him an unusual gait, and he was mocked for an effeminate appearance. He sang in church and took piano lessons young, beating on steps, tin cans, and pots and pans while he sang, to the annoyance of neighbors. His loud voice carried a tendency he described as always changing the key upwards. The screaming and hollering once got him stopped from singing in church and earned him the nickname War Hawk. His earliest influences were gospel performers: Brother Joe May, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mahalia Jackson, and Marion Williams. May, known as the Thunderbolt of the Middle West for his range and power, made Richard want to become a preacher. At Macon's Hudson High School he was a below-average student who learned alto saxophone and joined the marching band in fifth grade. A part-time job at the Macon City Auditorium let him sell Coca-Cola at concerts by Cab Calloway, Lucky Millinder, and his favorite singer, Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

• 3. Becoming An Entertainer

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  Doctor Nubillo's traveling show, which Richard joined in 1949, taught him to wear turbans and capes. Nubillo carried a black stick and exhibited a dried-up baby's body he called the devil's child, and he told Richard he was gonna be famous. Richard left home before tenth grade to join Hudson's Medicine Show, performing Louis Jordan's Caldonia, the first secular R&B song he learned in a family that called such music devil music. He performed in drag under the name Princess LaVonne. In 1950 he joined Buster Brown's Orchestra, where Brown gave him the name Little Richard, and he toured the minstrel and vaudeville circuit with acts like Sugarfoot Sam from Alabam and the Broadway Follies. Settled in Atlanta, he watched Roy Brown and Billy Wright at clubs like the Royal Peacock, and Wright's flamboyant persona pulled him toward becoming a rhythm-and-blues singer. Wright taught him to use pancake makeup, wear a pompadour, and dress flashier. Wright also introduced him to DJ Zenas Sears, whose recordings led to a 1951 contract with RCA Victor. Richard cut eight sides there, including the blues ballad Every Hour, a hit in Georgia that his father began playing on his nightclub jukebox. He left RCA Victor in February 1952 after his records failed to chart, then signed with Don Robey's Peacock Records in 1953. None of his Peacock singles charted, and a dispute over money ended with Robey knocking him out in a scuffle.

• 4. Tutti Frutti

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  At the suggestion of Lloyd Price, Richard sent a demo to Specialty Records in February 1955, then waited months for a call. In September, owner Art Rupe loaned him money to buy out his Peacock contract and paired him with producer Robert Bumps Blackwell. Blackwell sent him to Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studios in New Orleans, where he recorded with session musicians including drummer Earl Palmer and saxophonist Lee Allen. The first day produced little inspiration. Frustrated, Blackwell and Richard relaxed at the Dew Drop Inn, where Richard launched into a risqué dirty blues he called Tutti Frutti. Blackwell heard hit potential and hired songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie to swap the sexual lyrics for tamer ones. Recorded in three takes in September 1955 and released that November, Tutti Frutti reached No. 2 on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues Best-Sellers chart and crossed to the pop charts in the United States and the United Kingdom. It hit No. 21 on the Billboard Top 100 and No. 29 in Britain, selling a million copies. Safer white artists pounced quickly, with Pat Boone's cover charting higher than Richard's own. In 2009 the Library of Congress added Tutti Frutti to its National Recording Registry, saying his unique vocalizing over the irresistible beat announced a new era in music.

• 5. Hits And Showmanship

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  Long Tall Sally, released in 1956, hit number one on the R&B chart, reached number 13 on the Top 100, and sold more than a million copies. A rapid run followed, including Slippin' and Slidin', Rip It Up, Ready Teddy, The Girl Can't Help It, and Lucille, with Keep A-Knockin' becoming his first top ten single on the Billboard Top 100. By the time he left Specialty in 1959 he had scored nine top-40 pop singles and seventeen top-40 R&B singles. Art Rupe described him as very dynamic, completely uninhibited, unpredictable, wild, contrasting him with the plodding, very slow Fats Domino. His antics included lifting his leg while playing piano, climbing on top of the instrument, and throwing souvenirs to the crowd. He wore capes and suits studded with multi-colored stones and sequins. Richard said he became more flamboyant so no one would think he was after the white girls. A June 1956 show at Baltimore's Royal Theatre led women to throw their undergarments onstage, which he claimed was the first time that had happened to any artist. His first album, Here's Little Richard, came out in March 1957 and peaked at number thirteen on the Billboard Top LPs chart. Befriending disc jockey Alan Freed brought film roles in pictures like Don't Knock the Rock and a larger singing part in The Girl Can't Help It.

• 6. The Conversion

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  A flight from Melbourne to Sydney in October 1957 changed everything. During an Australian tour with Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, Richard's plane hit difficulty, and he claimed he saw its red-hot engines and felt angels holding it up. At the end of his Sydney show, a bright red fireball crossed the sky, deeply shaking him. Though told it was the satellite Sputnik 1, he read it as a sign from God to stop performing secular music. When he learned his original flight had crashed into the Pacific Ocean after he returned home early, he took it as further confirmation. He gave a farewell performance at the Apollo Theater, then enrolled at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, to study theology. He later admitted his reasons were more monetary, since he had complained of reduced royalties despite earning millions for Specialty. In 1958 he formed the Little Richard Evangelistic Team. He married Ernestine Harvin, a secretary from Washington, D.C., on the 12th of July 1959 in Santa Barbara, California. He recorded King of the Gospel Singers in 1962, produced by Quincy Jones, who said Richard's vocals impressed him more than any vocalist he had worked with. His childhood heroine Mahalia Jackson wrote in the liner notes that Richard sang gospel the way it should be sung.

• 7. Comeback And Crossover

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  Concert promoter Don Arden persuaded Richard back to Europe in 1962, telling him his records sold well there. Believing it a gospel tour, he sang only gospel on the opening night and was booed, until he watched opening act Sam Cooke's reception and brought back his competitive drive. He and a teenage Billy Preston warmed up in darkness before launching into Long Tall Sally, drawing hysterical responses. Brian Epstein asked Arden to let the Beatles open for Richard, and their first such date was at New Brighton's Tower Ballroom that October. Richard taught Paul McCartney his distinctive vocalizations. In November or December 1964 Jimi Hendrix joined Richard's Upsetters as a full member, and the two clashed over the spotlight and pay; Hendrix was owed 1,000 dollars and quit. Richard's flamboyance once got him thrown off a Brooklyn Paramount show. Through the 1960s and 1970s he cycled through labels, the Chitlin' Circuit, and the rock and roll revival, stealing the show from Janis Joplin at the Atlantic City Pop Festival. He filed a $112 million lawsuit against Specialty Records and Art Rupe in 1984, settled out of court in 1986. That year he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in its first group of inductees, sending a recorded message after a car crash broke his right leg.

• 8. Faith And Final Years

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  Richard's family carried deep Baptist and African Methodist Episcopal roots, with two uncles and a grandfather who preached. At age ten he went around calling himself a faith healer, singing gospel to the sick and sometimes receiving money. His relationship with his sexuality stayed turbulent across decades. His father kicked him out at fifteen, saying he wanted seven boys and Richard had spoiled it. On Late Night with David Letterman on the 4th of May 1982, he said God gave him the victory and that he believed he was one of the first gay people to come out. In his 1984 book he called himself omnisexual, in 1995 he told Penthouse he had been gay all his life, and in October 2017 he again denounced homosexuality on a Christian broadcast. A teetotaler in the 1950s who fined bandmates for drug use, he later developed addictions to cocaine, heroin, and PCP costing as much as $1,000 a day. Personal tragedies in 1977, including his brother Tony's death and the murder of two close friends, pushed him back to the ministry. He gave his last concert in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in 2014. On the 9th of May 2020, after a two-month illness, Richard died at 87 at his home in Tullahoma, Tennessee, of bone cancer, his brother, sister, and son beside him. Bob Dylan, who once wrote in his high school yearbook that his ambition was to join Little Richard, was among the musicians who paid tribute. Richard is interred at Oakwood University Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Huntsville, Alabama, near the college where his ministry began.