Tribute to Little Richard
By: Joe Farmer Follow
When the first notes of Rock'n'Roll appeared on American radio in the mid-1950s, no one wanted to believe that this new form of expression had, in fact, been invented by black artists who had been ignored for too long. . What Elvis Presley sang to amazed crowds was nothing more than a timely adaptation of a blues repertoire borrowed from despised African-American musicians. It will take the courage and enthusiasm of a few agitators like the unpredictable and whimsical Little Richard for the condescending look of white America to finally confront an indisputable reality: black culture was indeed the matrix of popular American music!
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The struggle was long and bitter to impose a heritage in a society blind and deaf to the artistic prowess of a community flouted and often gagged. However, the tenacity of the first bluesmen to make their complaint heard, the constancy of the jazzmen to swing their racial combat and the unshakable faith of the gospel choirs to believe in fair justice maintained the flame of the black people and drew the contours of a multicolored soundscape. From Robert Johnson to Chuck Berry, from John Lee Hooker to Bo Diddley, from Mahalia Jackson to Willie Dixon, ancestral African fervor has resisted the intolerant assaults of the simple-minded.
You had to learn to distinguish yourself in order to exist in the face of the racist abuses of a still very conservative population. The personality of Richard Wayne Penniman says Little Richard is, as such, fascinating ... Born in 1932 in Macon in Georgia, one of the most ferocious segregationist American states in the 20th century, this formidable "showman" preferred the excess and exuberant postures to counter jibes and insults. Black, homosexual, artist, his social status was immediately tarnished, scratched, vilified. However, he managed to dodge the low blows by becoming one of the most brilliant singers of his generation. His many successes and his flamboyant stage play were his screen and his best defense.
Beyond these painful vicissitudes, Little Richard imposed a style, a genre, a musical mood totally new at the time. He very early affirmed the black identity of Rock'n'Roll. A look back at a hectic life in the company of the French musician, designer and author, Bruno Blum whose anthology of 3CDs (Fremeaux & Associés) published in 2015 and devoted to the boom years of this iconoclastic pianist and troublemaker of rock, allows us today to comment, analyze, illustrate, an epic that ended on May 9, 2020. Little Richard was 87 years old.
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