#Little Richard

[batteredshoes]

Words fail me.

[rockincountryblues]

Little Richard

[citizenscreen]

1956 Hollywood publicity portrait of Little Richard. Rock pioneer and unique talent.

[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.”

[musickickztoo]

Little Richard *December 5, 1932

[davidhudson]

Little Richard, December 5, 1932 – May 9, 2020.

[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

[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 )

[loveboatinsanity]

[javelinbk]

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

[rockincountryblues]

Little Richard with Red Robinson at CKWX, for an interview June 12, 1957, probably Vancouver, Canada.