He didn’t invent rock and roll, but he sure as hell defined it. Those who came behind him—Elvis, The Beatles (who, while still an unknown band, opened for him while on tour), The Rolling Stones, Otis Redding, James Brown, Baton Rouge’s Joe Tex, Robert Plant, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Jimi Hendrix—were all unquestionably influenced by his frenetic, hard-driving, screaming style.
LITTLE RICHARD, who recorded his first hit record, TUTTI FRUTTI, at Cosimo Matassa’s tiny J&M Studio on Sept. 14-16, 1955, died today. He was 87.
When I was a kid back in Ruston, I would sneak up two flights of stairs to the KRUS studios after school to watch a local black disc jockey named Poppa Looboppa preside over the station’s short-lived R&B show that ran from 3:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. That’s when I first heard Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers sing Why Do Teenagers Fall in Love and a screaming, piano-pounding singer named Little Richard, whose real name was Richard Wayne Penniman.
I became a fixture (a pest, really) in the station to watch through a large studio window as the DJ performed what I believed was the coolest job on the planet. Little did I know that I would one day be sitting in his chair trying emulate national DJs like CC Courtney (a native of Ruston) and Bluebeard of WNOE in New Orleans, Dan Diamond of the legendary New Orleans station WTIX, George Carlin (really) of Shreveport’s KJOE, and Dick Biondi of WLS in Chicago. Boy, did I try to be all of them but alas, I was but a poor imitation.
But the music was real and Little Richard kept turning them out. GOOD GOLLY MISS MOLLY, RIP IT UP, LUCILLE, KEEP A KNOCKIN’, JENNY JENNY, LONG TALL SALLY, and SLIPPIN’ AND SLIDIN’.
Because studio executives in those pioneer days of rock ‘n’ roll believed white kids wouldn’t buy black music, any time a black artist had a hit, they’d rush a white singer into the studio to do a cover version for the white kids. Thus did Pat Boone, of all people, provide us with his sanitized version of TUTTI FRUTTI.
I devoted nearly five full pages to Little Richard in my first book, Louisiana Rocks: The True Genesis of Rock & Roll. That chapter is reprinted here:
There are, quite simply, not enough superlatives to describe the impact Richard Wayne Penniman, aka. Little Richard had – and still has – on rock & roll music and on so many of its practitioners, from Elvis Presley to the Beatles, from David Bowie to Keith Richards, from Jimi Hendrix to Billy Preston, from Gene Vincent to the Rolling Stones, from Pat Boone to…. Well, Pat Boone might be a bit of a stretch, though Boone did cover two of Little Richard’s early hits: Long Tall Sally and Tutti Frutti, the latter inexplicably a bigger hit for Boone than for Little Richard.
Elvis is credited with introducing the black sound to white audiences but Little Richard, born December 5, 1932, in Macon, Georgia, did more than anyone else to break down those barriers. He brought white kids over to black radio stations to hear – and feel – a sound that was so exciting, so authentic, and so unlike anything they’d ever heard before. In Memphis, Dewey Phillips of radio station WHBQ recognized the appeal of blues music as early as October 1949 when he first aired a forty-five minute show that featured blues musicians. Within weeks, the show was expanded from the 10:15 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. time slot to three hours – from nine to midnight.
Less than three years later, on March 21, 1952, Alan Freed created a riot in Cleveland when he sold 25,000 tickets to a 10,000-seat arena for his inaugural Moondog Coronation Ball. The incident made him an overnight media star. The following year Freed, by then working for a station in New York City, returned to Cleveland to host a rhythm & blues revue that would be the largest money maker of its kind up to that date. The groundwork was laid for those who came along afterward – like Little Richard.
At the same time Alan Freed and Dewey Phillips were doing their thing, Little Richard was doing his: washing dishes in the Greyhound bus station restaurant in his hometown of Macon, Georgia. He’d cut a few songs for RCA and Peacock records, but none of them hinted at what was to come. In 1955, New Orleans singer Lloyd Price, fresh from scoring big with Lawdy Miss Clawdy for Specialty Records, suggested that Penniman send a demo tape to Specialty owner Abe Rupe. Rupe liked what he heard and lost no time flying Specialty A&R man Robert “Bumps” Blackwell into New Orleans to set up a recording session at Cosimo Matassa’s studio. Some of the city’s top musicians were brought in: drummer Earl Palmer, sax players Lee Allen and Alvin “Red” Tyler, guitarists Edgar Blanchard and Justin Adams, bassist Frank Fields, and pianist Huey “Piano” Smith. Most of the same musicians were used by producer Dave Bartholomew to back Fats Domino, Roy Brown, Shirley & Lee, and Lloyd Price. Just whose idea it was to bring in a piano player for a Little Richard session is not quite clear but it soon became apparent that it was a mistake.
The session began on September 14, 1955, and languished for more than two days with nothing to show for it. Without his piano, Richard was subdued, even boring. Not even his version of Leiber and Stoller’s Kansas City could enliven the listless session. Blackwell wanted something raw and on the edge, something like the current Ray Charles hit I Got a Woman, but it just wasn’t happening; the studio session appeared fruitless. Frustrated, Blackwell adjourned with Penniman and the other players for lunch at the Dew Drop Inn.
One story has Richard, seeing the piano on the stage, leaping to the bandstand and launching into A-wop-bop-a-Loo-Bop-a-Lop-Bam-Boom. What followed was a raunchy rendition of Tutti Frutti, a song he’d been using in his shows that smacked of homosexual overtones. Blackwell rushed everyone back to the studio for the few remaining hours for which they were booked. The song was unacceptable in its present state, so he chased down a local songwriter, Dorothy Labostrie, to clean up the lyrics. The problem with that strategy was Richard was the son of a minister and was unwilling to recite the lyrics to the female songwriter who was equally unwilling to hear them. Blackwell persisted, using the argument that each of them could use the money. Finally, with Richard facing the wall, he sang the lyrics a few times, enough for Labostrie to get a feel for the song and to write substitute lyrics.
Labostrie remembered it differently in an interview with author Jeff Hannusch for his book I Hear You Knockin’. She said she was listening to the radio on September 3, 1955, when she heard that Bumps Blackwell was looking for songwriters. She said she practically broke Cosimo’s door down the next day. Little Richard was sitting at the piano and it was the first time she ever laid eyes on him, she said, claiming that she asked to hear his voice and then sat down and put Tutti Frutti down on paper in fifteen minutes. Little Richard, on many occasions, has said he wrote the song and that he was cheated out of songwriter’s royalties. Little Richard didn’t write Tutti Frutti, Labostrie insisted. She said she once lived on Galvez Street and she and a girlfriend often went to the drug store and buy ice cream. One day we went in and saw this new flavor, tutti frutti. She said right away she thought that would be a great idea for a song and she kept it in the back of her mind until she got to the studio that day.
No matter which version is accurate, Huey Smith was excused from the session and Richard took over the piano. Combining the passion of gospel and New Orleans R&B with the stylings of the local session artists, Tutti Frutti became the first of a string of Little Richard hits recorded in New Orleans for Specialty Records. It reached number 2 on the R&B chart and number 17 on the pop charts, selling over five hundred thousand copies. Others that followed included Long Tall Sally (his biggest hit, topping the R&B chart for eight weeks and reaching number 6 on Billboard’s Hot 100), Slippin’ and Slidin’ (number 1 on R&B and number 17 on the pop chart), Rip it Up, Ready Teddy, Heeby-Jeebies, The Girl Can’t Help It (which would become the title track to the Jayne Mansfield movie), Lucille (number 1 and 21 on the R&B and pop charts, respectively), Send Me Some Lovin’ (number 2 on the R&B chart), Keep a Knockin’ (number 2 R&B and number 8 pop), Good Golly Miss Molly (numbers four R&B and 10 pop), and Jenny, Jenny (number 2 and number 10). Matassa remembered Little Richard’s recording sessions at his J&M Studio. The sessions were always real high energy just because Richard was that kind of guy, he said. Bumps Blackwell would come to town to produce the sessions for Art Rupe at Specialty. There were always several good takes on Little Richard songs because everyone wanted to get the best take possible for Bumps who was a perfectionist, and for Richard. The two always thought they could do better, so the sessions were extended.
When playing white clubs, Richard required his band members to wear pancake makeup so as to act gay. The band hated the makeup, he said in a TV Guide interview in 2000, but it was necessary or they wouldn’t have been allowed in the white clubs lest they pose a threat to the white girls.
Then, just as abruptly as he had burst upon the scene, Little Richard Penniman, one of twelve children who grew up in poverty in the Deep South, walked away from fame and fortune. The flamboyant performer who took the stage in sequined costumes, mascara, lipstick and a six-inch pompadour to attack his piano and to shake the rafters in his quivering falsetto, gave it all up, though it was a temporary hiatus. The stories vary. One says he witnessed a space satellite flare in the night sky over Australia as it re-entered the earth’s atmosphere. The other story said he had a close call when an airplane on which he was a passenger caught fire. Either way, it was on October 13, 1957, the fifth date of a two-week tour of Australia with Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran. He unexpectedly turned his back on the life of a rock & roll star, threw his diamond rings valued at eight thousand dollars into the Sydney harbor, and enrolled in Oakwood Bible College in Huntsville, Alabama, to become a Seventh Day Adventist minister.
His exodus from rock & roll lasted five years and on October 8, 1962, he launched his comeback tour in Europe. Opening for him at the Star Club in Hamburg was an as yet undiscovered group calling themselves the Beatles. A year later, he again toured Europe with another unknown group, the Rolling Stones, providing the opening act. In 1964, the Beatles released their own version of Long Tall Sally with Paul McCartney on lead vocal. Richard next appeared with Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent, Bo Diddley, and Louisiana natives Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis at a rock & roll revival show in Toronto. In September 1972, he was reunited with the core session artists from his historic New Orleans ‘50s sessions when his album The Second Coming was released.
In 1986, he began a series of live concerts, recording projects, television, film soundtracks, and commercials. His unique version of the children’s tune Itsy Bitsy Spider was included on the Disney Records’ benefit album For Our Children. The album went gold, reaping millions of dollars for the Pediatric AIDS Foundation. He followed that with the Disney album Shake It All About, which featured children’s songs in his unique style. He also appeared on the children’s shows Mother Goose Rock ‘n’ Rhyme and Sesame Street. Along the way, he employed two chauffeurs who would go on to stellar careers in show business. The first was Peter Grant, later Led Zeppelin’s manager, and the second was an employee of Specialty Records whom the company assigned to drive Richard. His name was Sonny Bono.
On January 23, 1986, Little Richard was one of the first ten inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. That same year, he was featured in the movie Down and Out in Beverly Hills. He was honored with his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1990 and following that, he returned to his hometown of Macon, Georgia, for the dedication of Little Richard Penniman Boulevard. In 1993, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences at the thirty-fifth Grammy Awards. The following year he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhythm & Blues Foundation. In 1997, he was presented the American Music Awards Distinguished Award of Merit in recognition of his contributions to music history. He was inducted into the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame and in 2003 he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Still working in 2006, he was featured as a celebrity in a GEICO Insurance television commercial.
After six stellar decades as a performer, Little Richard’s music, humor and high energy keep him in high demand for live concert dates and guest star spots for film and television projects. So the originator, the emancipator, the architect of rock & roll continues to rock because it would be just as impossible to diminish his influence on rock & roll music as it would be for him to walk away from his music; he tried three times and three times he came back. James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, credited Little Richard with being the first to put the funk in the rock & roll beat.
And it was Little Richard himself who offered an explanation for the birth of rock & roll, proclaiming that boogie-woogie and rhythm & blues mixed is rock & roll.
R.I.P, Little Richard.
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