Little Richard Totally Explained

Everything about Richard Wayne Penniman totally explained

Rev. Richard Wayne Penniman (born December 5 1932), better known by the stage name Little Richard, is an American singer, songwriter and pianist, who began performing in the 1940s and was a key figure in the transition from rhythm & blues to rock and roll in the 1950s.
   Penniman's reputation rests on a string of groundbreaking hit singles from 1955 through 1957, such as "Tutti Frutti", "Lucille" and "Long Tall Sally", which helped lay the foundation for rock and roll music, and influenced generations of rhythm and blues, rock and soul music artists. Little Richard's injection of funk during this period, via his saxophone-studded mid-1950s road band, The Upsetters, also influenced the development of that genre of music. He was subsequently honored by being one of seven of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 and was one of only four of these honorees (along with Ray Charles, James Brown, and Fats Domino) to also receive the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award.
   Little Richard's early work was a mix of boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues and gospel music, but with a heavily accentuated back-beat, funky saxophone 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 became a born-again Christian, enrolled in and attended Bible college, and withdrew from recording and performing secular music. Claiming he was called to be an evangelist, he's since devoted large segments of his life to this calling.
   Little Richard has earned wide praise from many other performers. James Brown called Little Richard his idol and credited him with "first putting the funk in the rock and roll beat." Smokey Robinson said Penniman's music was "the start of that driving, funky, never let up rock 'n' roll;", while Dick Clark described his music as "the model for almost every rock and roll performer of the '50s and years thereafter." Ray Charles asserted that Little Richard was "the man that started a kind of music that set the pace for a lot of what's happening today." In his high school year book, Bob Dylan declared that his ambition was "to follow Little Richard." In 1969, Elvis Presley told Little Richard, "Your music has inspired me - you're the greatest.". Otis Redding, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Mick Jagger, John Fogerty, Dick Dale, Bob Seger, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, and numerous other rock n roll icons have also cited Little Richard as being their first major influence. He was chosen as the 8th greatest artist of all time by Rolling Stone, although at least six of the seven artists that preceded him on the list were heavily influenced by his music, and, he was the person who cited himself as the 8th best artist of all time.

Biography

Penniman was born in Macon, Georgia, the son of Leva Mae (née Stewart) and Charles "Bud" Penniman, who was a bootlegger. He grew up in a religious family, amid poverty and racism, 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 maternal grandmother 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'd 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. It was in and through the church where Richard's life in music all began.
   Nearly all of Richard Penniman's dramatic phrasing and swift vocal turns are derived from Black Gospel artists of the 1930s and 1940s. 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 applauded and cheered and she paid him more money than he'd ever seen after the show. He was also heavily influenced by Marion Williams, from whom he got the trademark "whoooo" in his vocal, Mahalia Jackson, and Brother Joe May. He was heavily influenced in appearance (hair, clothing, shoes, makeup, etc.) and sound by late 1940s gospel-style, jump blues shouter Billy Wright, who was known as the 'Prince of the Blues'. It is reported that he got one of the inflections ("Lucille-uh") in his vocal from Ruth Brown.
   One of Penniman's main influences on his piano-playing was Esquerita (Eskew Reeder Jr.), who demonstrated to Penniman how to play high notes without compromising bass. Penniman met Esquerita when he traveled through Macon with a preacher named Sister Rosa. Another influence was Brother Joe May. Penniman explained, "I used to get in a room and try to make my piano sound just like him. He had so much energy." May generated energy by moving from a subtle whisper to a thunderous tenor and back in a four-bar phrase.
   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.
   In 1951, Penniman won a talent show in Atlanta, which resulted in a recording contract with RCA. In 1952, Penniman's father was murdered. After this, he returned to Macon and performed blues and boogie-woogie music at the "Tick Tock Club" in the evenings. He went on to record for Peacock Records in Houston from 1951 to 1954. Modeled after jump blues recording artist Billy Wright, he recorded songs 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, purchased Richard's contract from Peacock and placed Richard's career in the hands of A&R man Robert "Bumps" Blackwell. The song was released on Specialty in late 1955, and became the first of Richard's many hits.
   In the 1990s, World Championship Wrestling (WCW) catapulted Macon, Georgia wrestler Marc Mero, under the ring name Johnny B. Badd, to stardom with the gimmick of a Little Richard look-alike., due to Mero's resemblance to the singer.
   He made played himself in the 1999 film, Mystery, Alaska, singing the Star-Spangled Banner and O Canada (slowly) before a pond hockey game between the local team and the New York Rangers.
   In 2006 Penniman was a judge on Celebrity Duets. In 2006/2007 he was featured in a Geico advertisement, wherein he uses his signature "whoop" to denote the joy he'd receive while consuming "mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry sauce" at a Thanksgiving dinner. In 2007 his song "All Around The World" was featured on a Cravendale Advertisement for an animation by PicPic which features a cow, a pirate, and a cyclist. In 2007, he also performed at the Capitol Fourth - a July 4th celebration (televised live on PBS) in front of the White House in Washington D.C. In 2001, he performed at the July 4th music event in Dublin, Ohio.
   On July 25th, 2007, he made an appearance on the ABC show The Next Best Thing.
   On November 22, 2007, he headlined the halftime show for the Thanksgiving football game of Arizona State University vs. the University of Southern California at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. It was broadcast on ESPN. On February 10, 2008, he made an appearance at the 50th Grammy Awards, performing "Good Golly, Miss Molly" with Jerry Lee Lewis and John Fogerty.

Awards/honors

In 1956, Cashbox awarded Little Richard the Cashbox Triple Crown Award for his second hit single "Long Tall Sally".
In 1986, Little Richard was one of the first group of recording artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In 1990, Little Richard was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 1993, he then received a Honorary Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
In 1994, Little Richard was the fourth recording artist (the others being Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and James Brown) to be recognized with the Lifetime Achievement Pioneer Award by the Rhythm and Blues Foundation.
In 1995, he received two Keys to the City of Providence, Rhode Island; one was awarded spontaneously, on stage, by Mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci
In 1997, he received the American Music Award of Merit.
In 2002, BMI, during the 50th Annual BMI Pop Awards celebration, Little Richard, along with Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, were awarded the first BMI Icon Awards in recognition of their “unique and indelible influence on generations of music makers.” The same year, he was inducted into the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Hall of Fame for having "distinguished himself as not only an unparalleled musical genius, but also as a unique and innovative performing artist—fusing pure vocal talent with exhilarating showmanship."
In 2003, Little Richard was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Little Richard #8 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. At least six of the seven artists which preceded him on the list were heavily influenced by Little Richard and his music (which he pointed out in the article).
In 2006, Little Richard was inducted into the Apollo Theater Legends Hall of Fame, at the same time as Ella Fitzgerald (who was one of the first winners of 'Amateur Night at the Apollo' in 1934) and Gladys Knight & the Pips.
In 2007, Little Richard's 1955 original hit "Tutti Frutti" topped Mojo's poll of The Top 100 Records That Changed The World.

Discography

See Little Richard discographyFurther Information

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