Little Richard
Richard Wayne Penniman, better known by his stage name Little Richard, was an American singer-songwriter and pianist. He was an influential figure in popular music and culture for seven decades. Referred to as the "Architect of Rock and Roll", Richard's most celebrated work dates from the mid-1950s, when his charismatic showmanship and dynamic music, characterized by frenetic piano playing, pounding backbeat and powerful raspy vocals, laid the foundation for rock and roll. Richard's innovative emotive vocalizations and uptempo rhythmic music played a key role in the formation of other popular music genres, including soul and funk. He influenced singers and musicians across musical genres and his music helped shape rhythm and blues for generations.
"Tutti Frutti", one of Richard's signature songs, became an instant hit, crossing over to the pop charts in the United States and the United Kingdom. His next hit single, "Long Tall Sally", hit No. 1 on the Billboard Rhythm and Blues Best-Sellers chart, followed by a rapid succession of fifteen more in less than three years. In 1962, after a five-year period during which Richard abandoned rock and roll music for born-again Christianity, concert promoter Don Arden persuaded him to tour Europe. During this time, the Beatles opened for Richard on some tour dates.
Richard is cited as one of the first crossover black artists, reaching audiences of all races. His music and concerts broke the color line, drawing black and white people together despite attempts to sustain segregation. Many of his contemporaries, including Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Gene Vincent, Pat Boone, and Eddie Cochran, recorded covers of his works.
Richard was honored by many institutions. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of its first group of inductees in 1986. He was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He was the recipient of Lifetime Achievement Awards from The Recording Academy and the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. In 2015, Richard received a Rhapsody & Rhythm Award from the National Museum of African American Music. "Tutti Frutti" was included in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2009, which stated that his "unique vocalizing over the irresistible beat announced a new era in music."
Early life
Richard Wayne Penniman was born in Macon, Georgia, on December 5, 1932, the third of twelve children of Leva Mae and Charles "Bud" Penniman. His father was a church deacon and a brick mason, who sold bootlegged moonshine on the side and owned a nightclub called the Tip in Inn. His mother was a member of Macon's New Hope Baptist Church. Initially, his first name was supposed to have been "Ricardo", but an error switched it to "Richard". The Penniman children were raised in Macon's Pleasant Hill neighborhood. In childhood, he was nicknamed "Lil' Richard" by his family because of his small and skinny frame. He was a mischievous child who played pranks on neighbors. He began singing in church and taking piano lessons at a young age. Possibly as a result of complications at birth, he had a slight deformity that left one of his legs shorter than the other. This produced an unusual gait, and he was mocked for his effeminate appearance.His family was religious and joined various A.M.E., Baptist, and Pentecostal churches, with some family members becoming ministers. He enjoyed the Pentecostal churches the most, because of their charismatic worship and live music. He later recalled that people in his neighborhood sang gospel songs throughout the day during segregation to keep a positive outlook, because "there was so much poverty, so much prejudice in those days". He had observed that people sang "to feel their connection with God" and to wash their trials and burdens away. Gifted with a loud singing voice, he recalled that he was "always changing the key upwards" and that he was once stopped from singing in church for "screaming and hollering" so loud, earning him the nickname "War Hawk". As a child, he would "beat on the steps of the house, and on tin cans and pots and pans, or whatever" while singing, which annoyed neighbors.
His initial musical influences were gospel performers such as Brother Joe May, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mahalia Jackson, and Marion Williams. May, a singing evangelist who was known as "the Thunderbolt of the Middle West" because of his phenomenal range and vocal power, inspired Richard to become a preacher. He credited the Clara Ward Singers for one of his distinctive hollers. Richard attended Macon's Hudson High School, where he was a below-average student. He eventually learned to play alto saxophone, joining his school's marching band in fifth grade. While in high school, he got a part-time job at Macon City Auditorium for local secular and gospel concert promoter Clint Brantley. He sold Coca-Cola to crowds during concerts of star performers of the day such as Cab Calloway, Lucky Millinder, and his favorite singer, Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
Music career
1947–1955: Beginnings
In October 1947, Sister Rosetta Tharpe overheard the fourteen-year-old Richard singing her songs before a performance at the Macon City Auditorium. She invited him to open her show. After the show, Tharpe paid him, inspiring him to become a professional performer. In 1949, he began performing in Doctor Nubillo's traveling show. Richard was inspired to wear turbans and capes in his career by Nubillo, who also "carried a black stick and exhibited something he called 'the devil's child'—the dried-up body of a baby with claw feet like a bird and horns on its head." Nubillo told Richard he was "gonna be famous".Before entering the tenth grade, Richard left his family home and joined Hudson's Medicine Show in 1949, performing Louis Jordan's "Caldonia". Richard recalled that the song was the first secular R&B song he learned since his family had strict rules against playing R&B music, which they considered "devil music". Other sources also indicate that Little Richard was influenced by Jordan. In fact, according to one reliable source, the whoop sound on Jordan's record "Caldonia" sounds eerily like the vocal tone Little Richard would adopt in addition to the "Jordan-style pencil-thin mustache".
Richard also performed in drag during this time, performing under the name "Princess LaVonne". In 1950, Richard joined his first musical band, Buster Brown's Orchestra, where Brown named him Little Richard. Performing in the minstrel show circuit, Richard, in and out of drag, appeared for vaudeville acts such as Sugarfoot Sam from Alabam, the Tidy Jolly Steppers, the King Brothers Circus, and the Broadway Follies. Having settled in Atlanta at this point, Richard began listening to rhythm and blues and frequented Atlanta clubs, including the Harlem Theater and the Royal Peacock, where he saw performers such as Roy Brown and Billy Wright onstage. Richard was further influenced by Brown's and Wright's flashy showmanship and even more so by Wright's flamboyant persona. Inspired by Brown and Wright, he decided to become a rhythm-and-blues singer. After befriending Wright, he began to learn how to be an entertainer from him, and began adapting a pompadour hairdo similar to Wright's, wearing flashier clothes, and using Wright's brand of pancake makeup.
Impressed by his singing voice, Wright put him in contact with Zenas Sears, a local DJ. Sears recorded Richard at his station, backed by Wright's band. The recordings led to a contract that year with RCA Victor. Richard recorded a total of eight sides for RCA Victor, including the blues ballad, "Every Hour", which became his first single and a hit in Georgia. The release of "Every Hour" improved his relationship with his father, who began regularly playing the song on his nightclub jukebox. Shortly after the release of "Every Hour", Richard was hired to front Perry Welch and His Orchestra and played at clubs and army bases for $100 a week. Richard left RCA Victor in February 1952 after his records failed to chart; the recordings were marketed with little promotion, although ads for the records showed up in Billboard.
After his father's death in 1952, Richard began to find success through RCA Victor's reissue of the recordings on the budget RCA Camden label. He continued to perform during this time and Clint Brantley agreed to manage Richard's career. Moving to Houston, he formed a band called the Tempo Toppers, performing as part of blues package tours in Southern clubs such as Club Tijuana in New Orleans and Club Matinee in Houston. Richard signed with Don Robey's Peacock Records in February 1953, recording eight sides, including four with Johnny Otis and his band that were not released at that time. Like his venture with RCA Victor, none of his Peacock singles charted, despite his growing reputation for high energy antics onstage. Richard began complaining of monetary issues with Robey, leading Robey to knock him out during a scuffle.
Disillusioned by the record business, Richard returned to Macon in 1954. Struggling with poverty, he settled for work as a dishwasher for Greyhound Lines. While in Macon, he met Esquerita, whose flamboyant onstage persona and dynamic piano playing would deeply influence Richard's approach. That year, he disbanded the Tempo Toppers and formed a harder-driving rhythm and blues band, the Upsetters, which included drummer Charles Connor and saxophonist Wilbert "Lee Diamond" Smith that toured under Brantley's management. The band supported R&B singer Christine Kittrell on some recordings, then began to tour successfully, even without a bassist, forcing drummer Connor to thump "real hard" on his bass drum to get a "bass fiddle effect". In 1954, Richard signed on to a Southern tour with Little Johnny Taylor.
At the suggestion of Lloyd Price, Richard sent a demo to Price's label, Specialty Records, in February 1955. Months passed before Richard got a call from the label. Finally, in September of that year, Specialty owner Art Rupe loaned Richard money to buy out his Peacock contract and set him to work with producer Robert "Bumps" Blackwell. Upon hearing the demo, Blackwell felt Richard was Specialty's answer to Ray Charles, however, Richard told him he preferred the sound of Fats Domino. Blackwell sent him to New Orleans where he recorded at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studios, recording there with several of Domino's session musicians, including drummer Earl Palmer and saxophonist Lee Allen. Richard's recordings that day failed to produce much inspiration or interest.
Frustrated, Blackwell and Richard went to relax at the Dew Drop Inn nightclub. According to Blackwell, Richard then launched into a risqué dirty blues he titled "Tutti Frutti". Blackwell said he felt the song had hit potential and hired songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie to replace some of Richard's sexual lyrics with less controversial ones. Recorded in three takes in September 1955, "Tutti Frutti" was released as a single that November and became an instant hit, reaching No. 2 on Billboard magazine's Rhythm and Blues Best-Sellers chart and crossing over to the pop charts in both the United States and the United Kingdom. It reached No. 21 on the Billboard Top 100 in America and No. 29 on the British singles chart, eventually selling a million copies.