Tutti Frutti's shout cracked the color line in mid-1950s pop
Richard Wayne Penniman—Little Richard—lived 5 December 1932 to 9 May 2020 and earned the nickname Architect of Rock and Roll. Tutti Frutti (1955) crossed to pop charts; Long Tall Sally (1956) hit number one on Billboard's R&B Best-Sellers. Black and white crowds mixed at his shows despite segregation.
Born third of twelve in Macon, Georgia, to a deacon-mason who also bootlegged, he soaked in A. M. E., Baptist, and especially Pentecostal music. Elvis, Buddy Holly, and peers borrowed his piano-driven screams. First Rock Hall class (1986), Songwriters Hall, and lifetime awards followed seven decades of cultural impact.
Crossover success made him one of the earliest Black stars to own multiracial teen audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.
Gospel heat plus showmanship rewired popular music's voltage; later rockers kept tapping the circuit he soldered in the mid-1950s.
His earliest heroes were gospel singers such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mahalia Jackson, Marion Williams and Brother Joe May, an evangelist nicknamed the Thunderbolt of the Middle West. In October 1947 Tharpe heard the fourteen-year-old singing her songs before a show at the Macon City Auditorium, invited him to open for her and paid him afterwards, which convinced him to perform for a living. In 1949 he left home to tour with Hudson's Medicine Show, and he also appeared in drag as Princess LaVonne. Bandleader Buster Brown gave him the name Little Richard in 1950. A local DJ, Zenas Sears, recorded him, leading to eight sides for RCA Victor, yet by 1954 he was back in Macon washing dishes for Greyhound, where the flamboyant pianist Esquerita reshaped his style. A demo sent to Specialty Records in February 1955 on Lloyd Price's advice finally paid off when, during a break at the Dew Drop Inn nightclub, he launched into a bawdy number called Tutti Frutti.
Source: Little Richard
