Little Richard Biography, Photos and Posters

Little Richard

Biography

Born: December 5, 1932
City and Country of Origin: Macon, Georgia
Music Training: family singing group The Pennimans
Awards: 1986 inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; 1990 star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; 1993 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award; 2003 inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame
Top Recordings: "Tutti Frutti," "Long Tall Sally," "Slippin' and Slidin'," "Rip It Up," "Lucille," "Keep A Knockin'," "Good Golly, Miss Molly,"
Little Richard Biography: Richard Wayne Penniman, better known by the stage name Little Richard, is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist, who began performing in the 1940's and recording from 1951. An early pioneer of rock and roll music, Penniman's reputation rests primarily on a string of groundbreaking hit singles from 1955 through 1957, such as "Tutti Frutti" and "Long Tall Sally", which helped lay the foundation for rock and roll music, influencing generations of rhythm and blues, rock and soul music artists. Little Richard's injection of funk during this period influenced the development of that music genre.

Little Richard early work was a mix of boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues and gospel music, but with a heavily accentuated back-beat, funky saxaphone grooves and raspy, shouted vocals, moans, screams, and other emotive inflections that marked a new kind of music. In 1957, while at the height of stardom, he become a born-again Christian and withdrew from recording and performing secular music.

James Brown, who called Little Richard his idol, credited him with "first putting the funk in the rock and roll beat" via his saxaphone-studded, mid-50's road band, by Smokey Robinson, in 1997 as, "the start of that driving, funky, never let up rock 'n' roll", by Dick Clark as "the model for almost every rock and roll performer of the '50s and years thereafter", and Ray Charles, in 1989, as "the man that started a kind of music that set the pace for a lot of what's happening today." In 1969, Elvis Presley told Little Richard, "Your music has inspired me - you are the greatest."

Penniman was born in Macon, Georgia to Leva Mae Stewart and Charles ("Bud") Penniman. He grew up in a spiritual family, amid poverty and prejudice, and it was singing that made his family feel closer to God. His family had a group called the Penniman Singers, who would go around and sing in local churches, and enter contests with other singing families. Richard's siblings called him 'War Hawk' because of his loud, screaming singing voice. His paternal grandfather, Walter Penniman, was a preacher, and his father's family were members of the Foundation Templar African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Macon, Georgia. Richard's grandmother on his mother's side was a member of the Holiness Temple Baptist Church, also in Macon. Richard regularly attended the New Hope Baptist Church in Macon, where his mother was a member. However, of all the churches he frequented, Richard's favorite were the Pentecostal churches because of the music and the fun he and his friends would have doing the holy dance and talking in tongues along with members of the congregation. When he was as young as ten, he would go around as a healer, singing Gospel songs and touching people, who would testify that they felt better after he ministered to them. Inspired by Brother Joe May, a singing evangelist known as 'The Thunderbolt of the West', Richard wanted to become a preacher.

Nearly all of Richard Penniman's dramatic phrasing and swift vocal turns are derived from Black Gospel artists of the 1930's and 1940's. He referred to Sister Rosetta Tharpe as his favorite singer when he was a child. She had invited him to sing a song with her onstage at the Macon City Auditorium in 1945, after hearing him sing before the concert. The crowd went applauded and cheered and she paid him more money than he had ever seen after the show. Other influences on his career were Marion Williams, Mahalia Jackson and Brother Joe May. His stage personna was influenced by jump blues shouter Billy Wright, who was known as the 'Prince of the Blues'.

He learned to mix ministerial qualities with theatrics by watching the traveling medicine shows that rolled through his native Macon. Colorful medicine men would wear lavish capes, robes and turbans, all of which left an impression on Penniman.

Little Richard recorded songs for the Peacock Records label between 1951 and 1954, including "Little Richard's Boogie". These records sold poorly and Penniman had little success until he sent a demo tape to Specialty Records on February 17, 1955. Specialty's owner Art Rupe placed Richard's career in the hands of Robert 'Bumps' Blackwell, who had nurtured and groomed Ray Charles (then known as R.C. Robinson) and Quincy Jones at the start of their careers in the music business.

Blackwell intended to have Little Richard record blues tracks. During a break, at a recording session in New Orleans in the late summer of 1955, Penniman began singing an impromptu recital of "Tutti Frutti," in his raspy, shouted vocal style, while pounding out a boogie-woogie based rhythm on the piano. Blackwell, who knew a hit when he heard one, was knocked out and had Little Richard record the song. To make the song commercially acceptable, he had Little Richard's lyrics changed from "tutti-frutti, good booty" to "tutti frutti, aw rooty." The song, with Little Richard shouting its unique introductory "A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-whop-bam-boom!", became the model for many subsequent Little Richard songs, with a driving piano, boogie-woogie bass, funky saxophone arrangements, with sax solos usually from Lee Allen. Over the next few years, Little Richard had many hit singles, such as "Long Tall Sally", "Rip It Up". "The Girl Can't Help It", "Slippin' and Slidin'", "Jenny, Jenny", "Good Golly, Miss Molly", and "Keep A Knockin'". His performing style can be seen in such period films as Don't Knock the Rock (1956) and The Girl Can't Help It (also 1956), for which he sang the title song.

In the commercial fashion of the day, several of his early hits were re-recorded in other styles. Little Richard's first national success, "Tutti Frutti," was covered by Pat Boone, whose version outdid the source record, number 12 to number 17. Boone also released a version of "Long Tall Sally," with slightly bowdlerized lyrics. But this time, the Little Richard original outperformed it on the Billboard charts, number 6 to number 8. Bill Haley tackled Little Richard's third major hit, "Rip It Up," but again, Little Richard prevailed. With the record-buying public's preference established, Little Richard's subsequent releases did not face the same chart competition. Little Richard quit the music business in 1957, while on tour in Australia, claiming he had been warned of his own damnation in a vision.

Since then, he has been in and out of rock and roll as well as in and out of religion. He took the Voice of Prophecy courses run by members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, attended Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, and was ordained a minister in the Church of God of the Ten Commandments. His stance at that time in his life was that rock music was of the Devil and that it is not possible to play rock and roll and to please God at the same time. He began performing Gospel music throughout the United States. In 1959, he married a Christian girl named Ernestine.

While Specialty Records released a few new songs based on past sessions, Richard recorded only Gospel music in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He performed only Gospel material on the Gospel circuit. During this time, he did not perform his early rock and roll hits, resenting the secular themes of the songs.

In 1962, Little Richard was invited to tour Europe. He took a young Billy Preston with him on the road as past of his band. They intended on performing only Gospel music, but were lured into started performing his old, secular hits. That year, an unknown British group called The Beatles were his opening act. In 1963, his opening band was another young band, the Rolling Stones. In 1964, Little Richard then introduced another then-unknown artist, Jimi Hendrix, as part of his band. Hendrix said in 1966, "I want to do with my guitar what Little Richard does with his voice."

Through the remainder of the 1980s, 1990s and into the twenty-first century, Little Richard has remained a popular guest on television, in music videos, commercials, movies and as a recording artist. He has contributed new recordings to movie soundtracks (ex. Twins, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Why Do Fools Fall in Love), sang background vocals on the U2 / BB King hit song "When Love Comes To Town, and preaches, as well, at times amid funky saxophone playing, in the extended "Live From The Kingdom Mix' of the track."

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