#Little Richard

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Little Richard - Tutti Frutti 1955

Richard Wayne Penniman was an American singer, pianist, and songwriter. He was an influential figure in popular music and culture for seven decades. Described as the "Architect of Rock and Roll", Richard's most celebrated work dates from the mid-1950s, when his charismatic showmanship and dynamic music, characterized by frenetic piano playing, pounding backbeat and powerful raspy vocals, laid the foundation for rock and roll. Richard's innovative emotive vocalizations and uptempo rhythmic music played a key role in the formation of other popular music genres, including soul and funk. He influenced singers and musicians across musical genres from rock to hip hop; his music helped shape rhythm and blues for generations.

Richard was honoured by many institutions. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of its first group of inductees in 1986. He was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He was the recipient of Lifetime Achievement Awards from The Recording Academy and the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. In 2015, Richard received a Rhapsody & Rhythm Award from the National Museum of African American Music.

"Tutti Frutti" (Italian for "all fruits") is a song written by Little Richard and Dorothy LaBostrie, recorded in 1955, which was his first major hit. With its energetic refrain, and its hard-driving sound and wild lyrics, it became not only a model for many future Little Richard songs, but also for rock and roll itself. The song introduced several of rock music's most characteristic musical features, including its loud volume, powerful vocal style, and distinctive beat and rhythm. In 2007, an eclectic panel of renowned recording artists ranked "Tutti Frutti" at number 1 on Mojo's "The Top 100 Records That Changed The World" and hailed the recording as "the sound of the birth of rock and roll". In 2009, the US Library of Congress National Recording Registry added the recording to its registry, claiming the "unique vocalizing over the irresistible beat announced a new era in music". It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.

"Tutti Frutti" received a total of 86,3% yes votes!

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Backstage with Little Richard

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Words fail me.

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Little Richard

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Photo by Les Chadwick.

“Actually no. We [The Beatles] weren’t the first. In the beginning we used to play only the music of the artists we loved, like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, etcetera. Everything must start from someone else. Nobody is one-hundred percent original. And The Beatles became very original thanks to their songs, but we began simply by trying to copy Buddy Holly, Little Richard and people like that.” - George Harrison, interview conducted by Red Ronnie, early 1990s “We always loved those American girls groups, like the Shirelles and the Ronettes. So yeah, we developed our harmonies from trying to come up with an English, male version of their vocal feel. We discovered the option of having three-part harmonies, or lead vocal and two-part backup, from doing that old girl-group material. We even covered some of those songs, like ‘Baby, It's You,’ on our first album.” - George Harrison, Guitar World, 1992 “The great thing about the [all-night art school party] (and I’m sure John and Paul would agree) was that somebody had a copy of ‘What’d I Say’ by Ray Charles, a 45rpm with Part Two on the B side. That record was played all night, probably eight or ten hours non-stop. It was one of the best records I ever heard.” - George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology (More about The Ronettes, and more, later this month...)

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

[fuckyeahpaulmccartney]

"When you get right down to it, in everything I've ever done - The Beatles, Wings, solo - there's an undercurrent of black music. You could say it's blues, but it could be soul. So many of the white groups looked to the black players and singers for inspiration. If you think of The Beatles' early stuff, it was mostly covers of black guys: 'You Really Got a Hold on Me', 'Twist and Shout'. We loved Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard. Then there were the white guys - Elvis, Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis - who were already influenced by the black guys. So, even though we were admiring these white guys, we were admiring white guys who admired black guys. That's definitely the underpinning of almost everything I've done." - Paul McCartney, The Lyrics, 2021

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

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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

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Gene Vincent and Little Richard 1962

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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.”

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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

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