LITTLE RICHARD, THE ARCHITECT OF ROCK AND ROLL

Richard Wayne Penniman aka Little Richard

Today is a sad day for music. If some hours before, The Grandma talks about the death of İbrahim Gökçek and Helin Bölek due to a hunger strike, now, she has to talk about Richard Wayne Penniman, aka Little Richard, the American singer, songwriter, and musician.

Richard Wayne Penniman (December 5, 1932-May 9, 2020), better known as Little Richard, was an American singer, songwriter, and musician.

An influential figure in popular music and culture for seven decades, Penniman's most celebrated work dates from the mid-1950s, when his charismatic showmanship and dynamic music, characterized by frenetic piano playing, pounding backbeat and raspy shouted vocals, laid the foundation for rock and roll, leading him to be given the nickname The Innovator, The Originator, and The Architect of Rock and Roll.

Penniman's innovative emotive vocalizations and uptempo rhythmic music also played a key role in the formation of other popular music genres, including soul and funk, respectively. He influenced numerous singers and musicians across musical genres from rock to hip hop; his music helped shape rhythm and blues for generations to come.

More information: Billboard

Penniman was honoured by many institutions. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of its first group of inductees in 1986. He was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He was the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation.

In 2015, Penniman received a Rhapsody & Rhythm Award from the National Museum of African American Music for his key role in the formation of popular music genres and helping to bring an end to the racial divide on the music charts and in concert in the mid-1950s changing American culture significantly. 

Tutti Frutti was included in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2010, which stated that his unique vocalizing over the irresistible beat announced a new era in music.

Richard Wayne Penniman aka Little Richard

Richard Wayne Penniman was born in Macon, Georgia, on December 5, 1932, the third of 12 children of Leva Mae and Charles Bud Penniman. His father was a church deacon and a brick mason, who sold bootlegged moonshine on the side and owned a nightclub called the Tip In Inn. His mother was a member of Macon's New Hope Baptist Church. 

Initially, his first name was supposed to have been Ricardo, but an error resulted in Richard instead.

The Penniman children were raised in a neighbourhood of Macon called Pleasant Hill. In childhood, he was nicknamed Lil' Richard by his family because of his small and skinny frame. A mischievous child who played pranks on neighbours, Penniman began singing in church at a young age.

Possibly as a result of complications at birth, he had a slight deformity that left one of his legs shorter than the other. This produced an unusual gait, and he was mocked for his allegedly effeminate appearance.

Penniman's family was very religious and joined various A.M.E., Baptist, and Pentecostal churches, with some family members becoming ministers. He enjoyed the Pentecostal churches the most, because of their charismatic worship and live music. He later recalled that people in his neighbourhood sang gospel songs throughout the day during segregation to keep a positive outlook, because there was so much poverty, so much prejudice in those days.

More information: The Guardian

He had observed that people sang to feel their connection with God and to wash their trials and burdens away. Gifted with a loud singing voice, Penniman recalled that he was always changing the key upwards and that they once stopped him from singing in church for screaming and hollering so loud, earning him the nickname War Hawk.

As a child, he would beat on the steps of the house, and on tin cans and pots and pans, or whatever while singing, which annoyed neighbours.

Penniman's initial musical influences were gospel performers such as Brother Joe May, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mahalia Jackson, and Marion Williams. May, a singing evangelist who was known as the Thunderbolt of the Middle West because of his phenomenal range and vocal power, inspired Penniman to become a preacher.

Richard Wayne Penniman aka Little Richard

Penniman attended Macon's Hudson High School, where he was a below-average student. He eventually learned to play alto saxophone, joining his school's marching band while in fifth grade.

While in high school, he got a part-time job at Macon City Auditorium for local secular and gospel concert promoter Clint Brantley.

He sold Coca-Cola to crowds during concerts of star performers of the day such as Cab Calloway, Lucky Millinder, and his favorite singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

In October 1947, Sister Rosetta Tharpe overheard 14-year-old Penniman singing her songs before a performance at the Macon City Auditorium. She invited him to open her show. After the show, Tharpe paid him, inspiring him to become a professional performer.

Tutti Frutti became an instant hit, reaching No. 2 on Billboard magazine's Rhythm and Blues Best-Sellers chart and crossing over to the pop charts in both the United States and overseas in the United Kingdom. It reached No. 21 on the Billboard Top 100 in America and No. 29 on the British singles chart, eventually selling a million copies.

Penniman's performances, like most early rock and roll shows, resulted in integrated audience reaction during an era where public places were divided into white and coloured domains.

More information: NBC News

In 1962, concert promoter Don Arden persuaded Little Richard to tour Europe after telling him his records were still selling well there. With fellow rock singer Sam Cooke as an opening act, Penniman, who featured a teenage Billy Preston in his gospel band, figured it was a gospel tour and, after Cooke's delayed arrival forced him to cancel his show on the opening date, performed only gospel material on the show, leading to boos from the audience expecting Penniman to sing his rock and roll hits.

Responding to his reputation as a successful concert performer, Reprise Records signed Penniman in 1970 where he released the album, The Rill Thing, with the philosophical single, Freedom Blues, becoming his biggest charted single in years.

Richard Wayne Penniman aka Little Richard

By 1977, worn out from years of abuse and wild partying as well as a string of personal tragedies, Penniman quit rock and roll again and returned to evangelism, releasing one gospel album, God's Beautiful City, in 1979.

Reconciling his roles as evangelist and rock and roll musician for the first time, Penniman stated that the genre could be used for good or evil. After accepting a role in the film Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Penniman and Billy Preston penned the faith-based rock and roll song Great Gosh A'Mighty for its soundtrack.

In 2000, Penniman's life was dramatized for the biographical film Little Richard, which focused on his early years, including his heyday, his religious conversion and his return to secular music in the early 1960s. Penniman was played by Leon, who earned an NAACP Image Award nomination for his performance in this role.

Penniman was nicknamed The Innovator, The Originator, and The Architect of Rock and Roll.

His music and performance style had a pivotal effect on the shape of the sound and style of popular music genres of the 20th century.

More information: Rolling Stone

As a rock and roll pioneer, Penniman embodied its spirit more flamboyantly than any other performer. Penniman's raspy shouting style gave the genre one of its most identifiable and influential vocal sounds, and his fusion of boogie-woogie, New Orleans R&B and gospel music blazed its rhythmic trail.

Combining elements of boogie, gospel, and blues, Penniman introduced several of rock music's most characteristic musical features, including its loud volume and vocal style emphasizing power, and its distinctive beat and rhythm.

He departed from boogie-woogie's shuffle rhythm and introduced a new, distinctive rock beat, where the beat division is even at all tempos.

He reinforced the new rock rhythm with a two-handed approach, playing patterns with his right hand, with the rhythm typically popping out in the piano's high register. His new rhythm, which he introduced with Tutti Frutti (1955), became the basis for the standard rock beat, which was later consolidated by Chuck Berry.

More information: The New York Times 

But I was singing loud,

and most singers weren't singing loud.

Little Richard