2024-01-28 18:44:58
Lisa Cortés’ documentary ‘Little Richard: I am everything’, premiered in the festival In-Edit and which hits movie theaters this Friday, puts the emphasis on the ‘queer’ and racial factors that, according to the director’s thesis, deprived the singer who died in 2020 of the crown of king of rock and roll. Without overlooking the bleeding contradictions of the character. From the film and the authorized biography ‘The Explosive Story of Little Richard’ (Penniman Books, 2008), written by Charles White and whose reading is like smoking a carton of unfiltered cigarette packets, a capital and hocus-pocus artist is then outlined.
Childhood
Richard Wayne Penniman (Macon, Georgia, 1932) fuHe is the third of Leva Mae and Charles ‘Bud’ Penniman’s 12 children. He had one leg shorter than the other, which is why he walked with irregular steps, and his head was “enormous”, according to his assessment. Between this and the fact that he preferred to play dolls with girls than throw stones with boys, They called him “abortion”, “faggot”, “pig”, “girl”…He had early sexual relations with women and men, sometimes in exchange for money, usually sordid. His father, who was the first to reproach him for his effeminacy, was shot dead. in 1952 outside the Tip In Inn, the jukebox bar he ran. Dad was also a church deacon and bricklayer, and sold moonshine.
Former show business
Little Richard began singing ‘professionally’ in 1949 as a lure for Doctor Nubilo, a psychic.. Soon after she embarked on Doc Hudson’s traveling show, which sold snake ointment. She sang ‘Caldonia’ by Louis Jordan, the only secular song he knew. From there he moved on to B. Brown’s orchestra and, later, to several traveling variety shows in which he performed in drag. Princess Lavonne was one of his stage names. As a member of the Broadway Follies revue he gained access to the Southern circuit of clubs and movie theaters, where there was live entertainment between movies. In 1951 he published his first single, with ‘Taxi blues’ and ‘Every hour’ (RCA).
Maestros
Billy Wright was a decisive influence on Little Richard. Both for “his style of singing blues, with screams typical of gospel music”, according to the pupil, and for his aesthetics: striking clothes, hair permed in an imposing ‘pompadour’ and makeup. Through Wright he obtained the aforementioned first recording. She taught him to play the piano from Esquerita, who dressed even more strikingly and sported an even more impressive ‘pompadour’ than Wright. She met him at the all-night diner at the Macon Greyhound bus station, which Little Richard frequented “looking for sex, of course,” in her words. Onwards, would use musical, visual and verbal exaggeration as a protective layer that allowed him to do whatever he wanted in a world hostile to weirdos, a bit like jesters.
‘Tutti Frutti’
Song published by the Specialty label in October 1955. The original lyrics contained obvious references to anal sex. It reached number 2 on the US rhythm and blues chart and number 21 on the pop chart. The opening jungle cry (“A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bam-boom!”) is a spell that contains the meaning of the very first rock and roll: madness, debauchery, liberation, joy, ingenuity. Due to its impact, ‘Tutti frutti’ may be the clearest birth certificate of rock and roll, although all the ingredients of the potion already existed in black American music. It would be followed by ‘Long tall Sally’, ‘Rip it up’, ‘The girl can’t help it’, ‘Lucille’, ‘Keep a-knockin’, ‘Good golly Miss Molly’…
cultural looting
Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, Buddy Holly and other rockers soon recorded versions of Little Richard songs., sometimes with more success than their releases. It didn’t bother him, after all, although white, they were his own. But he was outraged that the reading of ‘Tutti frutti’ recorded by Pat Boone’s sosaina surpassed his on the charts. With reason: more than a version, it is an emasculation.
God
His family was part of Methodist, Baptist and Pentecostal churches, and some relatives were preachers. Since he was little he sang gospel. The clan even formed the group The Penniman Singers. In 1957, on tour in Australia, he interpreted a rough plane ride and a fireball in the sky (he was told it was the launch of Sputnik 1, but it was not true) as divine signs and decided to abandon secular music. He entered Oakwood University, a center of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Huntsville, Alabama, to pursue biblical studies. He prayed, preached, recorded religious albums (among them the notable ‘King of the gospel singers’, from 1962, in whose sessions he impressed Quincy Jones) and married Ernestine Campbell. “I was a terrible husband. “I wouldn’t marry someone like myself who had diamonds instead of nails and rubies in his eyes.” The marriage was a failure, as was the time at Oakwood: a seminarian like Little Richard was sweet, but his yellow Cadillac, His fame, his indiscipline and a homosexual affair with another student were too much for the institution. For the rest of his career he would alternate preaching and rock and roll.until in the end he managed to reconcile one and the other.
Queen of England
Don Arden, British concert promoter and later artist manager, a tough guy in the music business, so tough that his methods bordered on gangsterism, convinced Little Richard to sign up for an English tour with Sam Cooke, Jet Harris, Sounds Incorporated and Gene Vincent, initially only as a presenter since he did not obtain a work visa. The singer traveled, accompanied by teenage keyboard prodigy Billy Preston, with the intention of offering a show of religious songs. This was the case on the first evening, in Doncaster, on October 8, 1962. To the astonishment of the public, since Arden had publicized Little Richard’s performances as his return to rock and roll.. The pressure and the competition with Cooke had an effect and from the second gig onwards the performances were apotheotic rock and roll, with stage tricks such as playing dead to resurrect like lightning. Brian Epstein, representative of the Beatles, arranged for the artist to add two dates to the tour in the Liverpool area with the group as the main support act. The quartet ate from his hand, especially Paul McCartney. Little Richard took the future Fab Four to an extra round of club gigs in Hamburg, a city where the band had already played. At the end of 1963 he returned to England as part of an atomic cartel, with the Everly Brothers, Bo Diddley and the Rolling Stones. “Chuck Berry is my all-time favorite, along with Bo, but neither of them beat Richard on stage.” Word of Mick Jagger.
Trilogy on Reprise
The 1960s counterculture It made phosphatine of previous blues, rhythm and blues and rock and roll artists, even though it all started with them. From first to last, they were relics at the beginning of the 70s. Which doesn’t mean they didn’t make good records. Little Richard, for example, recorded a wonderful trilogy of new material for the then very relevant Reprise label: ‘The rill thing’ (1970), ‘King of rock and roll’ (1971) and ‘The second coming’ (1972). The cover of the third is a peak of ‘queer’ pride, when ‘queer’ activism was not even noticed.
Sexuality
He conflict that his religious upbringing and general homophobia, on the one hand, and his homosexuality, on the other, generated in Little Richard reached its zenith, at least in public, in an interview on David Letterman’s television show in 1982. After boasting that he was one of the first gays to come out of the closet, He said he was no longer gay because “God created Adam to be with Eve, not Steve.”. It was not one of his witticisms, but a favorite slogan of the American Christian right, which was on the rise under President Ronald Reagan. A book example of the self-hatred that many homosexuals felt in an increasingly conservative society and in which voices that considered AIDS a divine punishment for homosexuals had powerful amplifiers. Perhaps the self-loathing was exacerbated by a decade of crazy drug use..
Copyright
In 1984, Little Richard sued Specialty and the music publishers Venice and ATV for millions in compensation for unpaid copyrights since he He left the record company to give himself to God for the first time. For example: “Walt Disney brought out Donald Duck singing ‘Tutti frutti’ and used my songs in three of his films… But Disney didn’t even have the detail to send me a Christmas card.” We can assume that all artists from the beginnings of modern popular music were scammed by the industry to a greater or lesser extent, especially the black ones, but Little Richard was a pioneer in putting the scream in the sky. The lawsuit was settled out of court: Michael Jackson, owner of ATV, to which the Beatles catalog also belonged, would have loosened the fly. At the 1988 Grammy Awards ceremony, Little Richard and David Johansen were in charge of presenting the award for Best New Artist. The one from Macon stole the show with a speech with a buzzy packaging and bitter content in which he disgraced the musical establishment for its lack of recognition towards him.
#Richard #queer #hero #villain