From "Little Richard, the Great Innovator of Rock and Roll" by David Remnick (The New Yorker).
I wanted to find a photograph of Little Richard in the Princess Lavonne persona. I did find this description at Talkhouse, "Pour on the Steam: Little Richard at Age 19/Adam Weiner (Low Cut Connie) tells a tale of magical personhood in a Macon, Georgia bus station":
It was a medicine show spiritualist pseudo-psychic passing through town named Doctor Nobilio who was the first to tell Richard he would be massively famous—he just needed to get the hell out of Macon. He quit high school and joined up with a series of amazingly-titled rinky-dink traveling shows, initially billed as Little Richard, and then as the great Princess Lavonne. He performed with Dr. Hudson’s Medicine Show, Sugarfoot Sam from Alabam, the Tidy Jolly Steppers, and the Broadway Follies. Princess Lavonne was an intense, hilarious Queen in Pancake 31 makeup. He worked on his schtick, but ultimately was an awkward drag performer. He had a natural gift to electrify and seduce, but with his mismatched legs, he couldn’t figure out how to walk or dance in heels so he would just stand still and wait for someone to open and close the curtain...I'd also love to hear the story from the perspective of Ann and Johnny Johnson. Who were these white people who took in Little Richard when his father was so cruel to him? Or was his father cruel to him?
Bud Penniman. What voice did that man have?
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Putin liked Blueberry Hill. No swing and swagger to that.
Happy Mother's Day.
Little Richard was one of those 'one of a kind' performers. There will never be another like him, breaking out a new way to perform, as he did. He was way ahead of his time. He was one of the foundational legs of rock. So many, many great musicians and even more, great performers came later because of what Little Richard did. He inspired much of the great music of our 60's and 70's which, in turn, led us to what we have today. Wait...what?
Somehow I missed the rock DNA that led us from Little Richard to Taylor Swift. Someone help draw the line.
You're a church-going African-American brick mason in Georgia just after World War II. Your 16 year old song is dressing up as a woman and performing as "Princess Lavonne". Naturally you are delighted. Did the article mention Johnny Otis? There were plenty of folks experimenting with their identity back then. I challenge anyone here to watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEeeGMpM_Nk and not feel a sense of wonder.
Little Richard's influence is undeniable and massive. His biography is basically a history of African-American from the late 19th century through the 1950's. He was raised on gospel in the 1930's in the Deep South and took off from home in the 1940's to perform R&B on the remnants of the black vaudeville circuit, where he came into contact with people like Fats Domino and Ike Turner. who didn't know they were pioneering a style that was going to sweep the globe in the next decade. His personality combined a devout Christian with a flamboyant homosexual. Charismatic black Pentecostalism and dirty blues.
Try to imagine a New Yorker obit that doesn't open with a swipe at Trump.
Lots of nice things being said today after his passing. While researching him and his life today I note that it is reported he was mocked, ridiculed, criticized, and bullied for much of his life.
I was introduced to Little Richard's music by a local parish priest in the 1960's. This priest loved all the black music and musicians, but Little Richard was among the favorites.
wow - an obit that obsesses over Trump. It's the McCain funeral all over again.
The New Yorker is racist. Why drag a white guy into Little Richard's obit?
A lot of people appreciated Little Richard only after it was safe to do so. When the music had become part of the museum and his life was safely wrecked. David Remnick loved him, but wasn't even born when Little Richard began recording. Isn't he culturally appropriating? His attitude would once have been called slumming. But now the New Yorker can love Little Richard, six decades late.
"Throughout his teens, [Little Richard] was in and out of outfits like Buster Brown’s Orchestra (where he got the name Little Richard) and the Tidy Jolly Steppers."
And significantly he was never in and out of trouble. So lets just celebrate him, hoping with all wishes that he never forgot the Christian promise.
Typically, obits of famous people are written long before they die. They are kept stored away, where some ink-stained drudge can update them as events demand. When the subject passes, the obits are pulled from the stack and given the once-over.
I'm trying to imagine all that kind of stuff without [Flamboyant 1940s and Fifties wrestler] Gorgeous George, who invented bragging and attracting attention.
Try to imagine David Remnick with Little Richard’s winking persona, his swing and swagger ('I am the King!'). Go ahead. It makes him easier to put up with.
There will be lots of writers telling us how much they loved Little Richard. You think David Remnick ever, ever, throws Little Richard on the turntable (or whatever) when he gets home? Me neither.
Early rock was all about swagger and display. So was the post-swing jazz world, Slim Gaillard, for sure. Little Richard took it further than anybody else, but I'm not so sure that he was the origin of everything that came afterwards. But yesterday was Richard's day. RIP
"Make sure you have the record player on at night listening to Richard Little." -- Slow Joe
"swagger and display"
Yet, Bill Haley and the Comets wore jackets and ties. Buddy Holly and the Crickets usually did, too. Even the Beatles started out that way with their little mod uniforms. BB King, Duke Ellington -- also different approaches. So, it varied.
The liberal bourgeois loves black singers like Little Richard. Harmless, fun And Not.White.Working class. Yet pop culture. I haven't read the comments but usually some SWPL will always pop up in discussing Little Richard or Fats Domino and talk about how Elvis or the Buddy Holly "Stole" Black music.
i liked Little Richard, seemed like a nice guy and a good singer. Glad he kept the Gay thing under wraps.
Chuck Berry was the man who really put rock'roll on the map. However, he wasn't warm and cuddly like Little Richard. He spent 1.5 years in prison for violating the Mann act. Did some more time later for income tax evasion.
Little Richard had a significant rap sheet and it included some really unsavory stuff. He was a dangerous performer to book, the opposite of warm and cuddly. After the first few years and first few hits, he was an outcast from the commercial music world most of his life. The New Yorker would no more have said something positive about this guy than they would other outlaws like Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.
Muhammad Ali is more Malcolm X than Little Richard in my humble opinion.
RC ocean is glad Little Richard kept his gayness on the down low. That's a good idea whatever you do don't allow dangerous gay flamboyantly to perform for rcocean because then he will bust a nut and go to hell
During his initial heyday in the 1950s rock and roll scene, Penniman was a teetotaler abstaining from alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. By the mid-1960s, however, Penniman began drinking heavy amounts of alcohol and smoking cigarettes and marijuana.[149] By 1972, he had developed an addiction to cocaine. He later lamented that period, "They should have called me Lil Cocaine, I was sniffing so much of that stuff!"[150] By 1975, he had developed addictions to both heroin and PCP. His drug and alcohol use began to affect his professional career and personal life. "I lost my reasoning", he later recalled.
surprised he lived to be 87, since massive cocaine use effects your heart. And not in a good way.
If you look up Little Richard's rap sheet, its mostly for public voyeurism and having some gay sex in public. That's about it.
His first wife, Robinson is described as a "socialite and stripper" - there's one combo you don't see much.
He did Tutti Frutti? And here I thought it was Nick Rivers. . . . . .
Brit obits are always nice, and The Telegraph has one. Covers a lot of the same territory, of course.
"socialite and stripper"
It does seem rather redundant.
"The original lyrics, according to Little Richard, went as follows:
"A wop bop a loo mop a good goddam, Tutti Frutti, good booty, if it don't fit, don't force it, you can grease it, make it easy."
********************************
Not that there's anything wrong with that!
Althouse wrote:
He sang, sometimes wearing a red evening gown, under the name Princess Lavonne, in Sugarfoot Sam’s Minstrel Show.
Little Richard was part of the "tent show queens" sub-genre in R&B. His cohort in the early 1950s included Billy Wright, Larry Darnell, Bobby Marchan, and Esquerita.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160304081910/https://illkeepyouposted.typepad.com/ill_keep_you_posted/2011/04/bobby-marchan-was-there-something-on-his-mind.html
Little Richard was a grotesque sexual predator.
The songs are secondary.
I’m very definitely a teen of the fifties, we all knew Richard was “different” and you know what? We didn’t care. When “Good Golly Miss Molly” fired up we wanted to dance. Kinda like our parents when Goodman or Dorsey hit the up tempo switch. Because it was fun.
Little Richard was a grotesque sexual predator.
The songs are secondary.
Are you sure you aren't thinking of Chuck Berry?
Or maybe David Bowie?
Or Sam Cooke?
Or Miles Davis?
Or Jerry Lee Lewis?
Or ...
Or... Joe Biden?
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