#Little Richard

[batteredshoes]

Words fail me.

[rockincountryblues]

Little Richard

[javelinbk]

When The Beatles met Little Richard, 1962. From ‘Little Richard: King and Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ (2023)

[lilybug-02]

me vibing to the absolute, most broad spectrum of music humanity can conjure

[jedivoodoochile]

This is a photo of Brian Auger (on top) with Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and Fats Domino. It's not photoshopped - they actually stacked the pianos. Taken on the set of the Monkees TV special ‘33⅓ Revolutions per Monkee’, 1969.

©️NBC/Getty Images

[holyphantomtimetravel]

Gene Vincent and Little Richard 1962

[bitter69uk]

On this day 69 years ago (14 September 1955), a promising still mostly unknown 22-year-old rhythm and blues musician calling himself Little Richard (Richard Wayne Penniman) recorded the outrageous landmark rock’n’roll single “Tutti Frutti” at J & M Studio in New Orleans. In his ambitious 2024 book The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Performers Shaped Popular Culture (1955 - 1979), Jon Savage (author of the 1991 tome England’s Dreaming: The Sex Pistols and Punk Rock – a sacred text for me) argues “Tutti Frutti” represents year zero and forensically deconstructs and analyzes the song. “From the first eruption to the final exclamation, “Tutti Frutti” had a harsh, relentlessly driving sound, with an unrestrained vocalist who punctuated the simple lyrics with gospel shrieks and weird outbursts,” Savage writes. “Honed in the dives and drag bars of the American South and informed by his thorough knowledge of the sexual underground, Richard’s lyrics were a deliberate provocation: “Tutti frutti, good booty / If it don’t fit, don’t force it / You can grease it, make it easy …” In the volatile climate of 1955, they were also a barrier to any kind of wider exposure. [Producer Robert] Blackwell knew that a verse about sodomy would create such a storm as to kill both the record and Richard’s career. Substitute lyrics were needed if the record was ever to get a chance of airplay … Riffing off this basic phrase, Richard pounded the piano, yelled, shrieked and testified over just under two and a half minutes, and in doing so opened up the underground that he had inhabited … By early November, “Tutti Frutti” had sold 200,000 copies, entering the R&B charts in the middle of the month at #12. It was the breakthrough sound of freedom, couched in an extreme androgyny. The game was on.”

[zilabee]

Three years earlier the Beatles had been second on the bill to Little Richard at the New Brighton Tower Ballroom, just outside Liverpool. [...] They loved Little Richard, despite the fact that he could be a bit weird and a bit of a prima donna.

I was there that night when I saw “a look” pass between him and Brian, a kind of recognition. Nothing was said, everything was cool. Don [Arden] frowned, but he didn’t work it out because he didn’t understand the subtleties of gayness. He thought something secret was going on, that Brian was trying to lure Little Richard away to sign with him.

Don didn’t understand someone like Brian at all. Brian would never dream of luring anyone away from their agency, unless sorely tried. But that’s the way Don always thought. He once broke Robert Stigwood’s desk with a single blow with a giant ashtray, and then hung him out of the third floor window of his office when he thought Stiggy was trying to steal the Small Faces. [...]

In New Brighton that night, Don started an argument with Brian over Little Richard. In fact he went crazy. Brian didn’t respond. He just stood, quietly gazing into space and when Don had run out of steam, Brian said quite mildly, “I will be calling your employers on Monday and demand that they terminate your employment.” This was Brian’s sophisticated version of today’s, “Your ass is grass.”

Still, it stopped Don dead in his tracks. He said he’d been all over the world and nobody had ever talked to him like that. Politely. He was even more incensed, when Brian actually did book Little Richard a couple of weeks later at the Liverpool Empire.

Tony Bramwell - Magical Mystery Tours

[greenparakeetwantsbananas]

[musickickztoo]

Little Richard † May 9, 2020

[dateinthelife]

12 October 1962

On this date, at the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton, all four Beatles got to touch Little Richard at the same time.

[hibiscusbabyboy]

"Now as long as there's the two of us,

We've got this world and all its charms"

(Dividers by @dollywons )

[javelinbk]

Did Little Richard teach Paul to ‘woo’? From ‘Little Richard: King and Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ (2023)

[robotpussy]

Disclaimer:

This is part of a series of polls I want to make. This set of musicians are those who were making rock music prior to the late 1970s/1980s, (That is why artists like Prince and Tina Turner are not featured on here). As well as this not including subgenres of rock like punk, metal, funk rock and so forth.

I also just wanted to make this so I could probably get some suggestions on BLACK musicians that made rock music. It's not a contest, I just want to see which musicians some people like and for this to be a way for people to discover them.

Other Polls:

Punk

Metal

Randomly selected musicians in rock

[soupy-sez]

Little Richard, ca. 1957

[thislovintime]

On the set of 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee, November 1968.

“As a matter of fact, I think I might fairly say that 33 & 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee, I sat down and started to play the piano, I started to try to find again some of those old licks. I had played them almost more as joke than anything when they… when I was first playing piano in the late 50s. But later on I got to do them seriously, listening to the Fats Domino style of playing, Jerry Lee Lewis style of playing piano, Little Richard, I mean, those guys.” - Peter Tork, Headquarters Radio, 1989 “When rock and roll came in in the 50's, it was the bluesiest of the songs that got me the most. Early Elvis, Little Richard, these were the performers I was drawn to. As I got into folk music for myself toward the end of the 50's and into the early 60's, I didn't have the confidence it took to even try the blues. It's taken me all these years to believe that a) I understand the blues enough socially and emotionally, and b) that I have the technique to play them. A well played blues NOTE, to this day, makes my heart sing.” - Peter Tork, Ask Peter Tork, 2008 “We [Shoe Suede Blues] play blues, we play some Chicago blues, we play some rockabilly blues, that’s where the name comes from, ‘Blue Suede Shoes,’ ‘Rip It Up,’ Little Richard’s ‘Rip It Up.’” - Peter Tork, GOLD 104.5, 1999 “I love Little Richard; I think he is the greatest rock ’n’ roll singer of all time. He was just a powerhouse and taught us all how to do it. Then along came The Beatles who deeply influenced me. But the blues-pop thing just sends me.” - Peter Tork, Shindig Magazine, 2010