Little Richard

The Full Biography

Little Richard. Singer. Pianist. The Macon scream that taught rock and roll its grammar, then spent a long life walking between the pulpit and the piano.

This is his story.

The image most people still carry is a pompadour, pancake makeup, a standing piano, and a whoop that does not ask permission: A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom. The year is 1955. The record is “Tutti Frutti.” What the still cannot show is Richard Wayne Penniman of Macon, Georgia, one of twelve children in a house that smelled of church, a man who left the stage for the ministry and came back more than once, and a death in Tullahoma, Tennessee, that did not retire the whoop.

He was born on December 5, 1932, in Macon. His parents were Charles “Bud” Penniman and Leva Mae. He was the third of twelve. The weather in the house was Seventh-day Adventist and, around town, Pentecostal — shouting rooms, a piano that could be either a hymn or a problem. He sold Coca-Cola at the Macon City Auditorium and sang wherever a congregation would have him. In 1947 Sister Rosetta Tharpe heard him there and put him on her stage. He was fourteen. That is the first public whoop. The family did not always know what to do with a boy who already dressed like a decision.

He worked traveling shows, then jump-blues sides that did not yet have a country in them. In September 1955, on Lloyd Price’s advice, he sent a demo to Specialty Records in Los Angeles. Art Rupe sent him to Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studio in New Orleans, to a producer named Bumps Blackwell. “Tutti Frutti” had been a club number too dirty for a 78. Dorothy LaBostrie rewrote the lyric. They cut it in a handful of takes. Specialty released it that November. It went to No. 2 on the rhythm-and-blues chart and crossed into pop. The scream and the piano were now a grammar other people could steal in the open.

“Long Tall Sally” and “Rip It Up” followed in 1956. “Lucille” and “Keep A Knockin’” in 1957. “Good Golly, Miss Molly” went out in 1958, after he had already walked away. Pat Boone cut polite versions that outsold him on the pop chart; the kids who mattered learned the Specialty sides instead. He appeared in The Girl Can’t Help It and Don’t Knock the Rock as himself, which was the only part the camera could hold. The British boys who would become the Invasion learned those records the way other children learned hymns. The Beatles opened for him. The Rolling Stones took the posture. James Brown took the James Brown. Prince, decades on, took the mascara and the shriek and did not pretend the debt was theoretical.

In October 1957 he was on a package tour of Australia with Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, at the height of the first fame, when he stepped away. He told the story of a fireball over the ocean — which he took to be Sputnik — and of a plane that felt like a warning. The story is often told. What is not in dispute is the walk-off. He gave a farewell at the Apollo, cut a last Specialty session, and enrolled at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, a Seventh-day Adventist school, to study for the ministry. He preached. He recorded gospel. He married Ernestine Campbell in 1959. The marriage did not hold the conflict still.

I am the originator. I am the emancipator. I am the architect of rock and roll.Little Richard

That is the turn, and it is easy to file as a conversion with a reunion tour attached. The turn is the argument he never settled. For decades he went back and forth, in public, between the pulpit and the life the pulpit wanted recanted. He said he was gay. He said he was not. He said the stage was sin. He said the stage was the calling. Both files are true because he kept both files open. The music is the plot. The conflict sits in the file. A complete life of Little Richard has to hold the whoop and the sermon without making either a punchline.

Before Specialty there were jump-blues sides that did not yet have a country in them. RCA’s Camden label cut him in Atlanta in 1951 and 1952 — “Every Hour,” “Get Rich Quick” — records that treat him as a blues shouter, not yet a grammar. Peacock in Houston put him with the Tempo Toppers. The club number that became “Tutti Frutti” was already too dirty for a 78 when Bumps Blackwell heard it at J&M. Dorothy LaBostrie cleaned the lyric in a handful of minutes. They cut it in a handful of takes. Specialty released it in November 1955. The whoop survived the cleanup. The piano figure became a thing Britain could steal without asking. The Specialty catalog is the grammar other people stole in the open. Here’s Little Richard (1957) collected “Tutti Frutti,” “Long Tall Sally,” “Rip It Up,” “Ready Teddy,” and “Jenny, Jenny” as if a year could be a textbook. “Lucille” and “Keep A Knockin’” (1957) kept the piano standing. “Good Golly, Miss Molly” went out in 1958, after he had already walked away. He appeared as himself in The Girl Can’t Help It (1956) and Don’t Knock the Rock (1956), which is the only part the camera could hold. Pat Boone’s polite covers outsold him on the pop chart. The kids who mattered learned the Specialty sides instead. The Beatles opened for him on a 1962 British tour. The Rolling Stones took the posture. James Brown took the James Brown. Prince, decades on, took the mascara and the shriek and did not pretend the debt was theoretical. Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, is a Seventh-day Adventist campus, not a publicity pause. He enrolled to study for the ministry after the Australia walk-off. He preached. He recorded gospel for End, Mercury, and Atlantic — “I Found Peace of Mind,” “Joy Joy Joy,” sides a rock bill does not play. He married Ernestine Campbell in 1959. The marriage did not hold the conflict still. In 1962 he accepted European dates because the young bands already knew every break and because a man has to eat. The Beatles opened. He taught Paul McCartney a whoop McCartney has never pretended to have invented. He came back to secular rooms in 1962, first in Europe, where the young bands already knew every break. He never again had the 1956 chart run. He did not need it. The first records had already done the inventing. The next three decades were the same walk in a smaller font: gospel, then rock, then the pulpit, then a club that wanted the whoop one more time. He recorded for Vee-Jay, Modern, Okeh, and Reprise. The King of Rock and Roll (1971) and The Second Coming (1972) are the Reprise attempt to put the scream back on a contemporary label. He played the chitlin’ circuit and the oldies bills. In 1986, the same year the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in its first class with Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, he turned up in Paul Mazursky’s Down and Out in Beverly Hills as Orvis Goodnight, a man who still knew exactly where the camera was. The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award came in 1993. The Songwriters Hall of Fame took him. A star went onto the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2015 the Library of Congress put “Tutti Frutti” in the National Recording Registry. He kept appearing — a flash of sequins, a sermon in the encore, a cameo that reminded a room who had built the room — until the body would not.

He adopted a son, Danny Jones Penniman. Brothers and sisters in Georgia and Tennessee kept a private house the sequins did not always visit. Friends from the Specialty years describe a man who could be generous at three in the morning and a minister by breakfast. The conflict was not a publicist’s invention. It was a life with two pulpits, and he would not smash one to please the other.

The later years

The honors arrived as late mail and did not retire the whoop. He sat for interviews in which the originator, the emancipator, and the minister all spoke in the same minute. He went home to Macon when Macon would have him — a Coca-Cola town that had become a plaque. He played television, awards shows, and the kind of guest chair a culture uses when it needs to remember that rock and roll had a Black inventor who wore makeup first. Down and Out in Beverly Hills had already proved he could still find the camera. Cameos and a night on a bill with people who had stolen the grammar kept the sequins in circulation. He recorded gospel when the pulpit won the week. He recorded secular sides when the piano won. He never smashed one pulpit to please the other.

The body began to edit the calendar. Hip surgery. Sciatica. A heart attack in 2013 ended the regular touring life. He announced, from Nashville, that the road was over. Friends from the Specialty years describe a man who could be generous at three in the morning and a minister by breakfast. Danny Jones Penniman, the adopted son, and brothers and sisters in Georgia and Tennessee kept a private house the sequins did not always visit. He lived, toward the end, among family in Tennessee — Nashville weather, then Tullahoma. He still sat for a camera when the question was the origin of the scream. He still wore the pompadour as a decision, not a costume.

The last public years were a cane, a sequined jacket, and a voice that could still split a syllable. He appeared at awards shows as a living citation. He sat beside younger singers who owed him a debt they said out loud. He preached when a camera asked about sin. He whooped when a piano asked about joy. Nashville doctors and Tennessee family kept the calendar after the 2013 heart attack ended the road. He did not become a hologram of 1956. He became an old minister who still knew where the downbeat was. Macon is the first room. The City Auditorium is the hinge. J&M in New Orleans is the civic date. Oakwood is in the file. The Hall of Fame plaque is a formality. What he did in those last decades was not a wax museum of 1956. It was the same walk he had taken since the Australia package tour: pulpit, then piano, then pulpit again, a life with two pulpits he would not close.

Bone cancer took him on May 9, 2020, in Tullahoma. He was eighty-seven. His lawyer, Bill Sobel, said the cause. The records did not require a eulogy. They had been preaching since 1955. “Tutti Frutti” is still in the National Recording Registry. Every standing pianist who treats the bench like a trampoline is still in his house. The argument he would not settle remains open because he left it that way. Tennessee was the last address. The whoop is the weather. Specialty is still the textbook. Oakwood is still in the file. The two pulpits are still open.

After he was gone

The whoop is still in other people’s mouths. Every standing pianist who treats the bench like a trampoline is in his house. The Hall of Fame plaque is a formality. Oakwood is in the file. The argument he would not close remains open because he left it that way.

He came out of Macon, sold Cokes, got a lift from Sister Rosetta, rewrote a dirty lyric into a national weather, taught Britain how to scream, walked off a tour toward a pulpit, walked back, and died in Tennessee with the title he had given himself already in common use. If you only remember the pompadour, you have the still. If you remember Oakwood, the twelve children, and a man who would not pick one pulpit and stay, you have him.

Portrait: Ian Dryden, Los Angeles Times · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

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