In Memoriam: Little Richard

Richard Wayne Penniman (December 5, 1932 – May 9, 2020), better known as Little Richard,

Little Richard was 39 at the time of the London Rock &  Roll Show  in 1972, one of a series of shows featuring some of the greats of the rock ‘n roll era of the Fifties, and though he was releasing contemporary albums he was already a nostalgia act. The young rockers of the day, then in their mid to late twenties or early thirties, would continue to have careers as contemporary artists well past their forties, yet the gap between, say, 1952 and 1972 was vast, almost unbridgeable, and conceptually far larger than the gap between 1972 and 1992, or even 2002. 

Little Richard made his money as nostalgia act when he was 40; at 40 the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, et al,  were regarded as creatively as vital as ever  and were simply venturing on new musical paths and directions, their popular mainstream appeal undiminished.  No matter how many contemporary records Little Richard released from 1967 onwards, he would always only be known for his hits from the Fifties and those were the tunes the audiences wanted to hear when he performed.

Like Fats Domino and other R & B artists Little Richard became a rock ‘n roll star almost be default, as his music was pure R & B, tougher, louder and faster than Fats Domino’s relaxed Bew Orleans sound, but recognizably jump blues with gospel fervour rather the country and  blues  amalgam of the early rockabilly stars that we think of as the origins of rock ‘n roll, at least from the White American perspective.

Little Richard and his Orchestra, an old-school R & B billing if I’ve ever hears one, was a big, horn driven band where the honking saxophone and the pounding piano were the star solo instruments and not the guitar so characteristic of rockabilly type rock ‘n roll.  This sound changed only much later, especially after Little Richard returned to secular music in the early Sixties and his record companies sought to add contemporary flourishes to the music to bring it up to date with an audience now familiar with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the other British Invasion groups that made old-fashioned rock ‘n roll almost redundant and certainly outdated, even the music informed the new groups.

Vee-Jay Records and Okeh Records tried their best in their own ways to make Little Richard appeal to a modern, young, White audience with a contemporary sound, new songs and modern production values and with The Rill Thing (1970), King of Rock and Roll (1971) and The Second Coming (1972) Little Richard made some three records, with a mix of cover versions,  his interpretations of more original material and a mix of styles from rock, country, blues, soul and funk, and I’d say, if one compares these albums with the kind of thing, for example, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and other rockers from the Sixties, recorded at a similar age, that Little Richard made better, more compelling albums. Updating his sound to the Seventies worked out better for him that the White guys’ sound being updated to the Eighties, a graveyard for all those giants of Sixties and Seventies rock.

Perhaps, at the time, it might have seemed retrograde for Little Richard to stay with his signature sound and to play to his strengths rahter than to push the envelope with a more progressive approach and that might be an explanation for the low level of contemporary appeal and the huge demand for his old hits when he performed. The records are energetic and fun but there are no new standards, no new hits indelibly identified with  Little Richard and the over reliance on well known hits for others, especially on the albums that followed The Rill Thing, may be to blame. As much effort as Little Richard puts into his interpretations, one cannot say that he owns any of these songs, nothing like the way Aretha Franklin took “Respect” from Otis Redding who wrote the song.

Lifetime Friend (1986), released around the time Little Richard had a cameo in the movie Down and Out in Beverley Hills, combines rock and gospel and is yet another album full of energy, verve and joy, yet the Eighties production style and sheen dates the album and detracts a bit from the performances though, admittedly, the album doesn’t suffer from the worst excesses of the decade and is quite entertaining to listen to, especially the gospel tracks.  Even so, one can’t help but see this as yet another exercise in treading water by an artist who’ll never surpass his early successes and who’ll sell albums only to a hardcore fanbase, though one might imagine sales were boosted by his appearance in the movie, without adding a must have inclusion to the discography.

For me Little Richard and Chuck Berry were the two icons of early rock ‘n roll, partly because of their renditions of their own hits and partly because of the huge, wide ranging influence they had on the rockers that followed. It’s also scary how much Eighties period Prince modelled himself on Little Richard’s look around the time of the London Rock and Roll Show.

The visceral thrill of listening to Little Richard howling “Tutti Frutti,” “Good Golly Miss Molly,” “Lucille”  and pounding his piano at the same time, or the gospel drama of “Send Me Some Loving” or “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got,” is unparalleled in early rock ‘n roll or rock in general. Whether he was the king of rock and roll or whether he started it all are immaterial questions. The only important fact is that he was rock royalty and that the was there from the beginning and that his big hits still thrill to this day/