Rock'n'roll pioneer Little Richard died at age 87

Little Richard, one of the American pioneers of rock'n'roll, known for his catchy hymns like "Tutti Frutti" or "Long Tall Sally" and his wild presence on stage, died Saturday at the age of 87 years announced his son to Rolling Stone magazine.

This planetary tube was to seal the advent of an era. Carried by his deep voice, Little Richard has fascinated a whole generation and inspired countless artists. With Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, he helped transform the blues.

But much more than these two relatively wise contemporaries, Little Richard helped give rock'n'roll an air of scandal, with its garish shirts like no man wore at the time, his banana hairstyle 15 cm high, and his mustache as thin as a pencil line. 

The Beatles and the Stones opened for the first time

Long before the rockers of the 1960s, his excesses made rock rhyme with decadence: on tour, this assumed voyeur spoke openly of his bisexual nocturnal orgies. But he also turned out to be a tortured personality with multiple reversals.

His influence was nevertheless considerable. The first great white rockers - Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley - all took up his songs. Both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones played in the early stages of his concerts, and the young Jimi Hendrix started out as a musician in his group.

Little Richard (1932-2020) consenting to pose with obscure opening act in Hamburg, 1962: pic.twitter.com/HRFyE3knJE

At nine, David Bowie was fascinated when he saw a film by Little Richard. "Without him, I would probably never have become a musician," he admitted later.

Debut in drag queen shows

His real name Richard Wayne Penniman, Little Richard was born on December 5, 1932 to a poor family in Macon, Georgia, in the South. 

In his 1984 autobiography, he said that his father, who ran a bar and was shot dead early in his career, once said to him, "My father had seven sons, and I wanted seven sons too. You ruined everything, you're only half a son. "

His nickname "Little Richard" was misleading: the man was 1.80 m tall. Rebel child, handicapped by two legs of different length, he hung around in churches, attracted by their music, and distinguished himself by his effeminate gaits.

He was noticed in 1947 by a gospel singer. He then began to sing professionally, notably in clandestine drag queen shows. In a booming music market, first record companies are interested in him. "Tutti Frutti," which evokes sex between men, becomes a staple of his shows.

But he never thought of recording it, until a producer at Specialty Records, a Los Angeles label specializing in black artists, heard the title. He offered to record it in the studio with watered-down lyrics to allow the title to go on the radio. 

Instead of "if it doesn't fit, don't force", the lyrics, reinvented by a young composer, now said: "I have a girlfriend Sue, who knows exactly what to do".

Thus calmed down, "Tutti Frutti" caused a stir. At a concert in Baltimore in 1956, the women undressed and threw their underwear on stage, while the police prevented euphoric fans from invading the scene or throwing themselves from the balconies. 

A conversion for a life change

"We had never seen an artist from R&B so extroverted, so wild, so noisy," said AFP Chris Morris, a musicologist who remastered his album "Here's Little Richard" (1957). 

Then came other successes such as "Good Golly, Miss Molly" (1956). Become rich, Little Richard buys a villa in Los Angeles and moves there with his mother.

But at the height of his glory, in 1957, he brutally canceled a tour of Australia to proclaim himself a missionary of the evangelical congregation "Church of God".

After his conversion, he married Ernestine Campbell, a secretary of this church, and together they adopted a son. But four years later, the marriage broke down, after Richard was arrested for indecent behavior with men in a toilet. 

His positions on sexuality will however always remain ambivalent. In 1995, he said to Penthouse magazine: "I have been gay all my life, and I know that God is a God of love, not of hate". But at the end of 2017, he declared, on a religious television channel in Illinois, homosexuality "contrary to nature".

With AFP

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