Album: Here's Little Richard
Artist: Little Richard
Born: Macon, Georgia
Released: March 1957
Genre: Rock
Influenced: Jimi Hendrix, Beatles, Michael Jackson, David Bowie
Rock & roll's original wild man, Little Richard's influence is almost too wide to really appreciate. Jimi Hendrix aimed to do with his guitar what Little Richard (full name Richard Wayne Penniman) did with his voice, while Bowie was no doubt influenced by his eyeliner and androgynous sexuality. What made Little Richard such an innovator was not so much the music, but the showman. That voice was so loud and the shock factor of an African-American performing with such freedom and raw sexuality is hard to appreciate nowadays.
Nearly every song on this album is brilliant, but the real standouts are Rip It Up, Slippin' and Slidin' and Tutti Frutti. It's not clear in my mind when I first heard the latter song, though it's likely it was as a sample in one of those Jive Bunny mixes popular in the 80s and 90s. The shrieks of Tutti Frutti are like those of a rock & roll baby being born. More than the songs, there was an energy and an excitement about him as a performer that made people want to see him live, not just listen to the records. The same was true of Elvis, although his influence was not as far-reaching as that of Little Richard; Elvis' greater success was no doubt partly thanks to his being a more acceptable proposition for white America at the time. Little Richard was the first black artist to get played on the Top 40 stations, and opened the door for a whole wealth of talent to hit the pop music mainstream. Going back to a theme in the previous post on Hank Williams about pop stars dying young, the fact that the quartet of founding fathers of rock & roll (Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino and Little Richard) are still alive & kicking today definitely explodes that myth.
Artist: Little Richard
Born: Macon, Georgia
Released: March 1957
Genre: Rock
Influenced: Jimi Hendrix, Beatles, Michael Jackson, David Bowie
Rock & roll's original wild man, Little Richard's influence is almost too wide to really appreciate. Jimi Hendrix aimed to do with his guitar what Little Richard (full name Richard Wayne Penniman) did with his voice, while Bowie was no doubt influenced by his eyeliner and androgynous sexuality. What made Little Richard such an innovator was not so much the music, but the showman. That voice was so loud and the shock factor of an African-American performing with such freedom and raw sexuality is hard to appreciate nowadays.
Nearly every song on this album is brilliant, but the real standouts are Rip It Up, Slippin' and Slidin' and Tutti Frutti. It's not clear in my mind when I first heard the latter song, though it's likely it was as a sample in one of those Jive Bunny mixes popular in the 80s and 90s. The shrieks of Tutti Frutti are like those of a rock & roll baby being born. More than the songs, there was an energy and an excitement about him as a performer that made people want to see him live, not just listen to the records. The same was true of Elvis, although his influence was not as far-reaching as that of Little Richard; Elvis' greater success was no doubt partly thanks to his being a more acceptable proposition for white America at the time. Little Richard was the first black artist to get played on the Top 40 stations, and opened the door for a whole wealth of talent to hit the pop music mainstream. Going back to a theme in the previous post on Hank Williams about pop stars dying young, the fact that the quartet of founding fathers of rock & roll (Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino and Little Richard) are still alive & kicking today definitely explodes that myth.
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