RIP Little Richard

Little Richard, Founding Father of Rock Who Broke Musical Barriers, Dead at 87

 

James Brown and Prince stole his act by dying first.

 

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

What a legend.

 

One of the greatest performers ever. RIP.

 

Low Cut Connie frontman wrote this about a year ago. He live-streams every Saturday at 6 pm EST. You can bet there will be plenty of Little Richard discussion tonight.

Pour on the Steam: Little Richard at Age 19

 

Had no idea he was that old. True musical pioneer. RIP.

 

“So, let me see if I heard you right. You’d like us to glue his eyelids open for the visitation?”

 

Good golly!

 

I can’t imagine what it would have been like to see and hear Little Richard for the first time. By the time I heard him in the 1980s, he was more or a caricature of himself and I already knew of more “dangerous” acts such as Kiss and Ozzy. It was tough to fathom that he had ever been considered dangerous, but he was.

 

So many of his songs were about sex, and he was an outrageously flamboyant black man. To Fifties America he was dangerous as hell, especially if little white girls liked his records. He was worse than Elvis, who covered his records. Good white families bought Pat Boone's versions to stay safe... and their kids bought Little Richard.

Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Elvis, and Jerry Lee Lewis were the pillars of rock n' roll. You can throw in some marginal players like Bill Haley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, but those guys lit the fuse and were influential as hell in both the sound and the shows that came later.

I learned to love rock from the Beatles, and early on they gave me "Roll Over Beethoven" and "Long Tall Sally". I didn't know Chuck Berry and Little Richard then, but I found them soon enough.

Rest, Richard Penniman, sweet tortured soul. Helluva band in heaven.