[upbeat piano playing]
♪ Ow!♪
[music ends]
Interviewer: Little Richard, it's now 16 years
since you had your first hits.
Oh, yes.
Uh, do you realize that...
Well, you must realize that at your performances,
now there are people who weren't even alive
when you first began?
Yes, but I have woke them up now.
Everybody that wasn't alive when I started and was gone,
I have brought the spirit and put it on them. [chuckles]
Were you always so shy?
No, I'm not. [chuckles]
A lot of people say I'm shy,
but I let it all hang out,
every bit.
The love, the gentleness,
the tenderness, the kindness.
You ain't supposed to hide them.
You got it, God gave it, show it to the world.
Audience: [cheering]
Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, if you will,
a man who's become a legend in his own time,
Little Richard!
Crowd: [cheering]
[upbeat piano playing]
Audience: [cheering]
♪ Good golly, Miss Molly ♪
♪ Sure like to ball ♪
Jagger: That music,
that beat, his voice.
The... [sings] ♪ Oooh! ♪
"My God, who is that?"
"Who is that?"
♪ Can't hear your mama call ♪
♪ Oooh ♪
♪ Good golly, Miss Molly ♪
I'd never seen any of it before.
♪ Sure like to ball ♪
♪ Oooh Good golly, Miss Molly ♪
Jagger: Just, like, taking your clothes off.[chuckles]
♪ And when you're rockin'... ♪
Jagger: If there's a piano, get on it.
He was everything.
♪ Ow ♪
He spit on every rule there was in music.
[music fades]
[gentle music playing]
King: He created the template
for the rock 'n' roll icon.
Porter: Sorry, y'all.
It wasn't Elvis.
Crowd: [cheering]
Jones: He was like a meteor arriving.
Woman: A comet.
Man: A quasar.
King: His DNA is everywhere.
It's like, how do you refer to the air?
How do you refer to the sky?
Crowd: [cheering]
Little Richard: I'm the emancipator.
I'm the architect.
I'm the one that started it all.
Crowd: [cheering, applauding]
[inspirational music playing]
[music fades out]
- Let it all hang out! - Audience: [laughing]
With the beautiful Little Richard
from down in Macon, Georgia.
I want you all to know that I am the bronze Liberace.
- Shut up. - Audience: [laughing]
[delicate music playing]
Crawley: Typically we speak of legacy in the laudatory.
The legacy of Little Richard is complex.
- Please, please. - Audience: [cheering]
I'd rather do it myself. [laughs]
Watching his interviews over the decades,
you can see the various different versions.
I'm not conceited.
Audience: [shouts indistinctly]
- I'm convinced. [laughs] - Audience: [laughing]
You could see him crafting his legacy,
presenting his story
over and over again in different ways.
I was gay all my life.
I believe I was one of the first gay people to come out.
But God let me know that he made Adam to be with Eve, not Steve.
[dramatic music playing]
Crawley: What was his life
that he experienced such delight...
Little Richard: [vocalizing]
♪ He's coming ♪
Crawley: ...and such terror at the same time?
Little Richard: You know, I would get up off an orgy
and go pick up my Bible.
Newman: It's almost like having a split personality.
King: He's too much.
He's too much for everyone.
Glenn: People want it to be a thing.
Richard really didn't have a thing.
As the progeny...
Audience: [cheering]
...we must understand
what kind of spirit he was
and how this thing tore him asunder sometimes.
Whoo!
- King: He opened up a way. - [hooting]
King: The opening that says something like,
"We can get to this place,
but I may not get there with you."
[bell dinging]
Little Richard: I'm from a little country town.
[train whistle blows]
Little Richard: Macon, Georgia.
- [bell dinging] - [train whistle blowing]
Everybody was wondering what was I,
who was I, and where was I going?
But I knew all the time. [laughs]
I wanted to be a star.
- [tapping rhythmically] - Little Richard: [scatting]
When I was a little boy, there wasn't any rock 'n' roll.
[Rooster crowing]
♪ Save my soul ♪
You know, everybody, you know, that was that old thing.
And I thought that was the best thing
I ever heard in my life.
My mother would be in the backyard washing our clothes
on what you call a rubboard.
[water splashing]
♪ ["Step It Up and Go" by Blind Boy Fuller plays] ♪
- [rooster crows] - [laughter]
Little Richard: There was a lot of blues.
Walking down the streets,
you would see Black singers playing the guitar.
♪ See my woman, tell her hurry home ♪
♪ Ain't had no lovin' since she been gone ♪
♪ Got to step it up and go ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah ♪
[bubbling]
[song fades]
Little Richard: My mother had 12 children.
We had to sleep on pallets on the floor. And...
And my mother had to cook beans every day.
We couldn't get enough. You know, 'cause it's 12 kids.
A big old pot of rice and collard greens.
My mother was so... she was so sweet to me.
[chuckles]
[piano playing]
Little Richard: My granddad had a old piano,
but I couldn't play.
I just hit every key,
and everybody'd be about to say, "Oh!"
He was always banging on the piano
- every time you see him. - [grunts]
We would always sneak down there
and be looking in the kitchen window.
- [piano playing] - Little Richard: Everybody
wanted to help me to play,
but I just didn't know how to memorize those keys.
[upbeat tune playing]
I used to hang out with his brothers,
the younger ones, and sisters.
His daddy, Charles "Bud" Penniman,
was very strict on him,
very strict.
He was a minister who owned a small nightclub
and had a bootleg house at the same time.
Little Richard: He sold stump whiskey.
And, you know, the White people called it Black Thunder.
The Black people called it White Lightning,
- you know? - Interviewer: [laughing]
Little Richard: That's the way we had our food
and paid the rent.
He didn't want Richard shouting out loud
some of the gospel stuff.
He wanted him to sing soft.
♪ Yeah! ♪
Little Richard: I wanted to be a minister
when I was a little boy.
Do you want to go to heaven?
But you got to be holy.
Jackson: Macon is known for its churches.
It's the conservative religious town.
Choir: [singing]
Jackson: Sundays, his mother would get him up
and he'd attend the Baptist church with her at New Hope.
Collier: If you sat in the Baptist church,
you don't move at all.
Jackson: And then it would be time for him
to go to the A.M.E. Church with his father.
[upbeat music playing]
Collier: You sit in the holy roller,
you don't sit down at all.
♪ Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord ♪
Little Richard: All the children would go to this church.
♪ Oh, Jesus ♪
- Choir: [sings] - ♪ Oh ♪
Little Richard: I would get there and I would sing.
But they wouldn't let me sing that much
'cause I wouldn't stop.
And then people started hearing little turns
and things in my voice and started requesting me.
People used to come to me when I was a little boy
for me to pray for them.
And my mother used to say that you're crazy.
Robinson: I will say this
a hundred thousand times,
the South is the home of all things queer,
of the different, of the non-normative,
of the other side, of the Gothic, of the grotesque.
Note that queerness is not...
just about sexuality,
but about a presence in a space
that is different from what we require
or expect,
different from the norm.
Little Richard: And, you know, back in that day,
you have Sunday clothes.
So I would take my mother's Sunday pins,
her little brooches and things,
and put them on my Monday jacket.
[laughs] And my Tuesday shirt.
I wore my mother's curtains,
the sheets, put on some makeup on my face.
My daddy'd like to kill me.
They called him a sissy, a punk, a faggot.
Jackson: When he came to town
and whites were exposed to him, it was kind of a shock.
♪ I am tired ♪
Little Richard: My dad didn't like my actions and my ways.
I was born deformed from a child.
One of my legs was long and one of them's small.
And this is my long arm and this is my short arm.
From... I... He...
[sobs] It was just...
I never could do nothing good.
He told me to get out of the house,
that he didn't...he didn't want me there no more,
that he hated me.
He says that "I wanted seven boys,
and you are messing it up."
Because I was gay,
he put me out.
Porter: I can only imagine.
I've lived through my versions of that.
It's debilitating. It's soul crushing.
And it can be deadly.
[song fades]
[engine starts]
Collier: Ann and her husband actually took Richard in,
let him stay upstairs.
A white club in my hometown called Ann's Tic Toc.
Jackson: You know, what we would think of as quote,
"a gay club."
It was kind of like a speakeasy.
You had to know where to go and how to get in.
Little Richard: I used to play there,
and I was singing blues
and I was singing gospel.
♪ All in my room ♪
♪ Music everywhere ♪
My favorite singer was Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
This Black woman could play.
The mother of rock 'n' roll.
There is no other mother.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe shifted
a lot of what we thought was possible for Black sound
outside of the church.
Sister Rosetta: Come on now!
♪ Everywhere that I go ♪
♪ Everywhere that I be ♪
Robinson: The purpose is to drum
on the piano or on the guitar
until you get to the mountaintop,
until you reach the ecstatic space.
♪ Whoa ♪
Robinson: When the spirit comes...
♪ Sing in the morning, sing in the evening ♪
♪ Sing in the middle of the day ♪
Robinson: ...that is the rockin' and the rollin'.
♪ Jesus is born ♪
Audience: [cheering, applauding]
Little Richard: One night,
Sister Rosetta Tharpe came through.
[suspenseful music playing]
Stewart: The Macon City Auditorium is a venue
that many people played in the height of their careers.
[gentle music playing]
Richard worked there as a teenager.
Little Richard: And I went backstage.
And I was singing a Sister Rosetta Tharpe song
called "Strange Things Happening Every Day."
And Sister Tharpe said, "I have a little boy,
and he said he could beat me singing."
And she brought me out there.
My mother said, "Go on, boy."
♪ Jesus is the holy life ♪
♪ Turning darkness into light ♪
♪ There are strange things happening every day ♪
♪ Na, na, na, na, mm ♪
♪ And every day ♪
Little Richard: That's the first time I ever was on stage.
And I was up there just screaming and singing.
♪ Happening every day ♪
♪ There are strange things Happening every day ♪
Little Richard: That was the greatest thing
ever happened to me.
And so I had to get out of Macon.
Plus I was ready to shine.
Crowd: [shouting indistinctly]
Little Richard: I went with Dr. Hudson's Medicine Show.
He was selling snake oil.
I would play the piano and sing.
Jordan: ♪ Caldonia, Caldonia ♪
♪ What makes your big head so hard? ♪
Little Richard: I sung the Louis Jordan "Caldonia"
every night 'cause I didn't know no other song.
And I went from there to Belle Glade, Florida,
with B. Brown and his orchestra.
Then changed my name to Little Richard.
And then I went with Sugar Foot Sam from Alabam.
Hadley: There is this touring circuit in place.
We call it very often the Chitlin' Circuit,
where you have various queer Black women
traveling with gold-plated teeth,
singing dirty blues or gutbucket blues.
♪ I got nipples on my titties ♪
♪ Big as the end of my thumb ♪
♪ I got something between my legs'll make a dead man... ♪
Her stuff can make a listener blush today.
- [laughter] - [cheering]
Hadley: So we should not be surprised
that Little Richard as Princess LaVonne is possible
and happened at that point in time.
King: I mean, this is something that is a fact,
but it's often not remembered.
At that time, there would be drag acts.
And Little Richard not only sang and performed in the shows,
he also performed in drag.
Little Richard: Sugar Foot Sam from Alabam,
they had me dressed all kind of ways.
He had a stage persona called Princess LaVonne.
Is it LaVonné or is it... I don't know.
I've never heard it said out loud.
Princess LaVonne.
King: And so he would put on makeup, wear a dress,
and he would perform as a woman.
Homosexuality is illegal.
Cross-dressing is illegal.
It was seen as acceptable only because of the context.
Hadley: You know, this is happening late at night.
People are drinking, and it allows for the lines
of reality to become soft
and for people to imagine and to conjure.
Nyong'o: So this traveling world was crucial,
particularly for any gender-nonconforming,
queer performer
who maybe didn't really feel welcome
in their home or home community.
Little Richard: I was working in Atlanta, Georgia,
at the Royal Peacock,
and I met a singer named Billy Wright.
[upbeat piano playing]
He wore green suits and green and gold shoes.
I'd never seen a man dressed like that.
♪ Yes, I remember ♪
♪ All the things that we used to do ♪
Little Richard: I idolized him.
It wasn't his voice that got me.
I liked the way he looked.
Billy Wright.
He had the high pompadour.
The pancake makeup.
Anthony: The mascara and the little pencil mustache.
He was also openly gay.
Little Richard: I had already started wearing the hair,
but when I saw him, I started sweeping it back on the side.
Anthony: And then Billy helped Richard
get his first record deal.
Little Richard: They recorded me
in the lobby of the radio station.
Wasn't no studio.
♪ Taxi, taxi Take me anywhere ♪
It was popular in Macon and in Atlanta.
♪ Taxi, taxi... ♪
King: Richard becomes more famous in Macon,
and his father starts playing these songs
around the clock at the club.
Richard said for the first time in his life,
his father was proud of him.
And Bud Penniman actually welcomes
Richard back into the family home.
One night, I would sit there all night
and watch people get off the bus, you know?
You know, you understand.
And he got off. I said, "Oh, boy."
He said, "I play piano." I said, "I sing."
So we got together.
King: He had a flamboyant, wild-child style.
He would stand up while playing piano.
Hadley: Esquerita, who is also queer,
taught him how to play piano.
He's a hard guy to get along with,
but he taught me how to play. Thank you, Esquerita,
wherever you are.
Robinson: I think when people talk about Billy Wright
or Esquerita's influence, they're like,
"Oh, well, Little Richard just stole his whole swag."
I think that's not exactly what's happening.
It is another case of witness.
They are kind of like the mirrors
that come into your life to show you who you really are.
[piano plays]
Sounds so sad.
Isn't that sad?
Whoo-whee, it make you cry.
That was my daddy's favorite song.
It was called "Chain of Love."
King: Richard told his father he could help take care
of the family financially,
but he didn't have a way to get around.
So he told me he was gonna help me get a car.
But he died that Friday night.
When I came from the club, he was dead.
[somber music playing]
King: Richard's best friend shot him.
In order to help support his family,
he's a dishwasher at a Greyhound bus station.
[dishes clattering]
Little Richard: I was making $15 a week.
And couldn't eat in the restaurant
where I was fixing the stuff.
Interviewer: They wouldn't let you eat?
No, you couldn't eat there.
You couldn't go to the bathroom either.
I loved my mother so much,
and I was determined to be something,
to make something out of myself to help her.
Hadley: He's still working the touring circuit.
And he's part of groups that are touring all over the South.
Connor:
[laughs]
♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪
♪ Hey, hey ♪
Price: I was in Augusta, Georgia,
and Richard came over with all this makeup and this loud suit.
I'd never seen anybody like Richard.
He had run into Lloyd Price,
a big hit record with "Lawdy Miss Clawdy."
♪ ...feels so good today ♪
Price: I had this white and red Cadillac.
He said, "I want a car just like that."
"I want to get out of Georgia. You got to help me."
And he says, "Make a demo
and send it to Art Rupe at Specialty Records."
Of course, the rest of it is history.
[applause]
Little Richard: Ladies and gentlemen, good evening.
♪ Baby ♪
♪ Don't you wish your man had long hair like mine? ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
Vera: Art Rupe and his A&R man, "Bumps" Blackwell,
listened to Little Richard's demo.
Didn't think much of him.
But Richard was constantly pestering the secretaries.
And the persistence paid off.
Rupe said, okay, meet him down in New Orleans.
He's playing down there.
Do a session at Cosimo's with him.
The back of a furniture store
on Rampart Street.
That's where we were recording.
Tyler: Very small place.
It looked like a hot dog stand.
Interviewer: When you first saw and heard Little Richard,
what your impressions of him were?
- Wow. - Wow.
Both: [laugh]
I was beautiful.
And they wasn't used to being around no young,
good-looking guy like me.
I'm not conceited, either.
Little Richard came in flitty, running,
and he was a very...
well, he was very beautiful.
Little Richard: When I went in,
they wanted me to sound like Ray Charles and B.B. King.
♪ I'm all alone ♪
♪ Alone in this world ♪
♪ I'm all alone ♪
They wouldn't let me sing like Little Richard.
They had me imitating these people.
But blues was not what I really felt.
I wanted to sound different.
Me and young kids, we was tired of all that slow music.
Blackwell: I just stopped the session
because we just were not getting anywhere.
So they take a lunch break
and they go over to the Dew Drop Inn.
[cheering]
Blackwell: All of the boosters, rounders, pimps, whores
just hanging around,
and there was a piano.
And that was when I began to know and understand Richard.
[cheering]
Little Richard: They didn't know that I play piano.
So I started singing "Tutti Frutti" loud as I can.
♪ A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop a-good-hot-damn ♪
♪ Tutti frutti, good booty ♪
♪ If it don't fit, don't force it ♪
♪ You can grease it, make it easy ♪
[piano playing]
King: But the lyrics to "Tutti Frutti"
are about anal sex.
That's what they're about. They're about penetration.
[piano music continues]
Vera: Bumps' ears prick up, and he says
"That sounds like it could be a hit."
♪ Tutti frutti ♪
Vera: But the lyrics were too lewd
to ever get airplay on the radio.
So he spots Dorothy across the room.
Dorothy says, "You think you could clean up this lyric?"
Interviewer: Pretty nasty lyric?
Yes, nasty. Nasty, nasty.
Dorothy said it was dirty. Never nothing dirty.
Dorothy, they was not that dirty.
They were just as clean as you were.
They say I needed her,
so I accepted the fact that I did
'cause I didn't know the record business.
[music ends]
Vera: So they go back for the session in the afternoon,
put Richard on the piano.
Palmer: Knew right off the bat it was different
when he said, "Wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom."
I said, "What the hell is that?"
Both: [laughing]
Vera: And they did a couple of takes,
and he sends it back to Rupe.
And Rupe said "Yeah, this is different, man."
Wasn't nothing out like it.
And I was scared because didn't nobody sound like that.
I said, "Man, they gonna laugh at me."
Put it out and it... boom.
♪ Wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom ♪
♪ Tutti frutti, oh rootie ♪
♪ Tutti frutti, oh rootie Whoa ♪
♪ Tutti frutti, oh rootie ♪
♪ A wop bop a loo bop a lop ba ba ♪
Little Richard: One night I was sitting at the house
in Macon, Georgia, my mama and them.
WLAC from Nashville, Tennessee. Gene Nobles.
He said, "We got a new record by a guy called Little Richard,
and it's taken this country by storm."
He said "It's the most requested record we ever had."
I said, "Ma, that's me."
They didn't know I was Little Richard.
[laughs]
I said, "That's me, Ma." I said I'm a star.
She said, "Shut your mouth, boy."
I said "Mama, I'm a star."
♪ A wop bop a loo bop a lop, whoo! ♪
- [upbeat piano playing] - [explosion]
Little Richard: This Black music was so intense,
it was so full of power and rhythm.
It was so full of a fervency and having fun.
[upbeat piano continues]
♪ Oh, tutti frutti ♪
King: Sort of like the Big Bang.
A shot out of a cannon.
So explosive. It's so ferocious.
♪ Oh, rootie ♪
King: It just sounds like nothing else.
♪ A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boo ♪
[mellow music playing]
Porter: Little Richard's music is so infectious.
Infused with so much joy.
King: All of this post-war aching, yearning
teenage horniness and desire to be erotically free.
Put it into a musical form that people could feel.
Ooh-whee!
When I came out with "Tutti Frutti,"
it was considered race music
only played on Black stations.
Black records was played for Black people only.
There is music and then there's Black music.
When Black people make music, it's pejoratively characterized
and classified as race music.
Black records wasn't getting played
on white stations even at that period.
Yeah, but you know what, the kids found it.
We're going to hit you with
one of the top vocal groups in the nation.
King: Part of that change has to do with
the rise of independent deejays,
of transistor radios, which are in cars.
And so you have white kids driving in cars
with new transistor radios,
listening to deejays who are playing Black music,
which had previously been a kind of underground music,
especially R&B.
Freed: This is Alan Freed, kids, rolling right along,
and they're really rockin' and rollin' tonight.
Hadley: People like Alan Freed would go on to popularize,
he didn't invent, but popularized
the term rock 'n' roll.
Waters: All white kids in Baltimore grew up
listening to the three Black stations,
WEBB, WSID, WWIN.
Even racists listened and loved
all Black music in teenage Baltimore.
We haven't always had teenagers,
strange as it sounds.
The concept of the teenager really didn't exist, per se,
in the way that we know it now.
This music is teens.
[rock music playing]
Robinson: There's a freedom being a teenager.
You should experiment.
You should be different.
And then you're supposed to grow up
and get back into the normative box.
But Little Richard is the icon
for that next generation of teens who's like,
"Oh, we're not getting in the box."
♪ A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom ♪
King: By now, record labels are looking to sign artists
who can speak to this underground Black music
that is becoming popular with white kids.
Little Richard: They didn't want that Black image
- over their kids. - [cash register chiming]
Little Richard: They didn't want the white kids looking up
at this big old greasy Black guy
singing and screaming and beaming and steaming.
They said "No, no, no."
♪ A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom ♪
♪ I got a girl named Daisy ♪
Little Richard: And so what they did was they said,
"We're gonna put the white butts on it."
♪ She almost drives me crazy ♪
♪ A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom ♪
When Elvis couldn't stop me, they put Pat Boone on me.
♪ I got a gal named Sue ♪
♪ She knows just what to do ♪
♪ I got a gal named Sue ♪
♪ Wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom ♪
Audience: [laughing]
It's hard to keep a straight face
when I talk about the Pat Boone covers.
I mean, it's no contest there,
no matter what race you are.
Hadley: This was a common practice,
and it says something profound about American culture
that I think is still true,
that Black music
is the wellspring of American popular music.
But at the same time,
these are industries and societies
that very often do not value Black creators.
♪ Wop bop a loo bop... ♪
Hadley: Or want the Blackness toned down.
I was very disgusted because I was just coming on the scene
and all the white girls were screaming over me,
and the system didn't like it.
I was not supposed to be the hero for their kids.
Host: And here to sing it in person
- is the man who made it a hit. - [applause]
Did you know that Elvis Presley and Pat Boone
sold more of "Tutti Frutti" than I did?
Don't forget, Bumps and Richard
were going to sell a million or a million and a half records
if Pat Boone recorded that song.
For which they would be paid as songwriters.
I was getting a half a cent a record, which was very low.
King: There were lots of shenanigans at that time
with royalty payments.
Little Richard: I didn't understand the contract.
All I wanted to see was "Little Richard."
When I saw that, I said, "I got a contract."
I didn't even read that little part.
[mellow music playing]
That's my house right there on the left where I used to live.
That's the first house I ever bought, right there.
Specialty Records gave me an advance.
I moved my mother and my brothers and sisters
to Riverside, California.
It was just beautiful
to have an opportunity to live in a home like this.
It was a joy to give them something
that I never had before.
That's where I met Richard.
He looked at me and he said, "Oh, we're gonna terrorize."
[laughs]
Java: I look like a girl.
And he was just...
so out there.
I couldn't explain Richard.
He came to my show.
I came out in a big cape,
and I would drop the cape to the floor.
I was shaped a certain way.
And they had never seen it before.
He said, "Oh, if I knew you would turn out like that,
me and you would have kicked it a long time ago."
[laughs]
I went to his house and I met his mother,
and that delighted me.
She was such a beautiful person.
She knew who he was and what he was,
and she loved him in spite of it.
[car honking]
Vera: Richard was back in New Orleans
for a recording session.
And he insisted upon using his road band
instead of these
crème de la crème musicians in New Orleans.
♪ Well, long, tall Sally ♪
♪ She's built for speed, she got ♪
♪ Everything that Uncle John need, oh, baby ♪
♪ I saw Uncle John with long, tall Sally ♪
♪ He saw Aunt Mary comin' and he went down the alley ♪
♪ Oh, baby, yeah ♪
We upped the tempo
and we got the words going so fast
that Pat Boone couldn't get his mouth together to do it.
He couldn't get that rhythm right.
- Snyder: So nobody could do it? - They couldn't... [laughs]
Vera: "Long Tall Sally" became an even bigger hit.
And it actually became a gold record.
Sold a million copies.
♪ Well, I saw Uncle John with bald-head Sally ♪
♪ He saw Aunt Mary comin' and he ducked back in the alley ♪
♪ Oh, baby ♪
♪ Yes, baby ♪
♪ Ooh ♪
[piano plays]
King: Little Richard has an incredible string of hits.
Little Richard: "Tutti Frutti," "Good Golly, Miss Molly,"
"Long Tall Sally," "Slippin' and Slidin',"
"Jenny, Jenny," "Rip It Up," "Ready Teddy."
[piano playing]
♪ Lucille ♪
♪ Won't you do your sister's will ♪
♪ Lucille ♪
♪ Won't you do your sister's will ♪
♪ You ran off and married, but I love you still ♪
The first songs that you love that your parents hate
is the beginning of the soundtrack of your life.
And in my case, it was most definitely "Lucille."
♪ I asked my friends about her, but all their lips were tight ♪
♪ Lucille ♪
Little Richard gave me the fuel to rebel really, really early.
I definitely stole some Little Richard records.
I can't remember which,
because I stole lots of records.
King: Just on the level of piano alone,
Little Richard is doing something
that's really innovative and really fascinating.
He's doing boogie-woogie on the left hand.
[vocalizes] Right?
On his right hand,
he was influenced by hearing the piano playing of Ike Turner.
[piano plays]
King: Ike Turner played on one of the most defining tracks
of early rock 'n' roll music,
Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88."
Ike Turner's right hand, it's really percussive.
Little Richard was really inspired and said,
"I want to do that."
But he's doing it in this, like, raucous tempo.
The percussion actually had to try
to keep up with his right hand.
Connor:
[train chugging, whistle blowing]
Of course, on top of all of this
is Little Richard's incredible voice, right?
That sort of preacher,
gravelly, hardcore sound.
- ♪ You work it, you work it ♪ - Choir: [sings]
- ♪ You can talk about me ♪ - Choir: [sings]
King: You can hear Brother Joe May,
who Little Richard was deeply influenced by.
♪ And she shouted hallelujah ♪
Hadley: You can hear Clara Ward
as well as Marion Williams.
♪ Ooh, yeah ♪
Hadley: But he isn't only
the amalgam of these different references.
He isn't just a collection of things.
There is something that he does
that makes this gumbo of musical experiences
uniquely his own.
Little Richard: I remember when I played my first date,
they had me on this tour called the Top Ten Show.
Ruth Brown, Fats Domino, LaVern Baker.
But I was at the bottom as an added attraction.
And when the tour was over,
I was the one headlining.
♪ Come on, shake it up ♪
Vera: Nobody could follow him,
so he had to close the shows everywhere he played.
Little Richard: Everybody was afraid of me
because I was unpredictable.
They didn't know what I was going to do.
I would go up in the balcony of the auditorium
and I would hide,
and when they said "Little Richard,"
I would jump out the back, and the promoter would go,
"Oh, Lord."
And everybody'd be hollering and screaming.
♪ Ready, set, go, man, go ♪
♪ I got a gal that I love ♪
Connor:
Remember, in the 1950s, there's legal segregation.
Black kids are not able to listen to music
in the same spaces as white kids.
Black and white musicians weren't allowed
- to play together. - True.
Connor:
Little Richard: The white people start leaping over the balcony,
and they got down with the Blacks.
My music broke down the walls of segregation.
[cheering, clapping rhythmically]
Vera: There's something about this music
that made Black and white kids want to be together.
[cheering]
There are artists before Little Richard
who are able to cross over.
Fats Domino, somebody who was also
very much responsible for the early rock 'n' roll,
who was not threatening
to a lot of young white kids.
But Little Richard was danger.
[upbeat music playing]
King: Little Richard is somebody who represented
a complete upheaval
of the existing social system.
He was singing about sex,
and he was singing about graphic sex.
At the time, you weren't allowed
to talk about graphic sex
in the way that we are today in popular music.
And so you had to code it.
♪ And ball tonight, ow! ♪
I mean, "Good Golly Miss Molly, you sure like to ball."
I mean, I don't know what anybody else thinks it means,
but I knew what it meant.
He could project sex
without being threatening.
All my band boys had a makeup kit.
Connor:
Everybody was looking beautiful.
Everybody was glamorous and looking good.
The early 20th century word was shake.
If you were shake, you had, like, really good hair,
good skin, good makeup, you know, eyelashes, whatever.
Like, the girls went crazy for that, right?[chuckles]
He had panties thrown at him while he was performing.
Connor:
[music ends]
Snyder: Here you came on Black...
- Yes. Yes. - ...and gay...
- ...and talented... - Little Richard: Yeah.
...and loud.
But the one thing they wrote about you when you came on,
you were absolutely 100% sure of yourself.
Little Richard: That's right.
Where did your confidence come from?
Well, see, it wasn't just a gay thing.
What it was is to be Black
and to work for white girls,
I had to look that way.
If I didn't wear makeup and look effeminate,
I couldn't work the white clubs.
They wouldn't let me be with the white girls.
- Snyder: You weren't a threat. - Yes. I wore it all.
From wah-wah to whoo-whoo, I had it all on me.
- Snyder: [laughs] - Sometimes boo-boo.
That's the old Richard.
- Ain't nothing to him. - Both: [laughing]
Ain't a thing to him.
Snyder: [laughs]
Intuitively, it doesn't really quite make sense that the way
that you would, like, make yourself more safe
in America of that era is by
exaggerating your queerness, right?
I said, "Richard, aren't you afraid of, uh...
people thinking that you're different?"
And he said, "No. I don't give a damn what they think."
I know of the evil feeling that you feel when you sing it
and the beat.
Man: That two-beat pattern
is the music brought to the United States of America
by the Communist conspiracy to corrupt teenagers.
A means by which the white man and his children
can be driven to the level with a Negro.
It is obviously Negro music.
"That red boy gonna come to town singing that Black music
and gonna run our children crazy."
Little Richard: I'd be afraid for a white girl to look at me.
This is a radical, radical time.
This is the same moment as Emmett Till.
[pensive music playing]
Little Richard: Bunch of white guys will follow you
and hang you in a tree.
Nyong'o: So what's revolutionary
about this Black exuberance
is this capacity to own the right
to be in the world
that gets Emmett Till murdered.
Hendryx: I remember doing shows
where people would throw things at us on stage.
You were driving a lot at night
from one town to the next,
and you wanted to stop for gas,
but you were not welcome.
Being run out of restaurants at gunpoint
because you walked in the wrong door.
Nyong'o: You could get thrown in jail for having long hair.
It happened to Little Richard in Texas.
King: Richard was arrested many times.
Little Richard: I had the police take me off stage
in Augusta, Georgia, a few miles from my hometown,
and beat me with blackjacks.
They said, "You're singing nigger music to white kids."
Porter: In the face of insurmountable challenges,
sometimes simply existing is a revolutionary act.
We built a hell of a highway.
And people are still driving on it.
That's right.
- And they ain't paying no toll. - No.
[laughs] Whoo!
This is before the height of the civil rights movement
in the 1960s.
They are concerned that the old order of the day,
the relationships between Black and white teenagers,
is going to become something that they can no longer contain.
♪ If she walks by the men folks get engrossed ♪
Waters: I used to go see all the rock 'n' roll movies.
The Girl Can't Help It was the very first time
I actually saw him live, singing.
♪ Ready, set, go, man, go ♪
♪ I've got a gal that I love so ♪
♪ I'm ready ♪
♪ Ready, ready, Teddy I'm ready ♪
It made the music even a thousand times better
than it already was for me.
He was gay, but I didn't really know that then.
I knew something was different.
He just became part of my identity.
And Little Richard's mustache I wear to this day
for over 50 years in a twisted tribute to him.
And soThe Girl Can't Help It spread the word
of rock 'n' roll to places
that it hadn't quite gotten to yet.
Jones: The film came to Britain.
And it was so different from anything that I'd heard or seen.
He was giving me more confidence
that that's what I wanted to do.
Because of the rock 'n' roll films,
Little Richard became one of the main characters
in rock 'n' roll.
You know, there was Fats Domino,
Chuck Berry,
Elvis Presley
and Jerry Lee Lewis,
and then, of course, Little Richard.
You know, it's like the big five.
But Richard was...
was the strongest.
Was there a lot of sex going on?
- Oh, yes. Oh, night and day. - [laughs]
All night.
I had all these orgies going on.
Everybody liked to jack... masturbate. Everybody loves to.
Everybody liked to go to orgies. Everybody.
Some people wish they never had to leave.
You know, I don't know why everybody said... [gasps] Oh.
I just loved whatever came.
You know, I didn't refuse nothing.
If you knocked on my door, and I wanted more, for sure.
Little Richard: Oh, she is a whupper.
They should just keep Lee and take Angel off.
[laughs]
Richard's fantasies are the greatest on Earth.
I believe that if he'd have been a screenwriter,
he would have at least 9,988 films
that would be extreme hits now.
He said, "I want you to meet Lee Angel."
I said, "Do you really like her, Richard?"
He said, "Yeah. She got some good stuff."
Little Richard: She's a wonderful girl.
You know, she's beautiful.
She's loving. She's kind.
But Angel is the girl. She just enjoys sex.
And everybody does.
I said, "Oh."
"When'd you start screwing women?"
Well, he slept with me.
And I guarantee I'm all woman.
Interviewer: How old were you when you met Richard?
Sixteen.
I'm walking down West Broad Street in Savannah,
and someone came over to me and told me,
"Little Richard wants to meet you."
My response was, "Does he know I'm a girl?"
He always introduced me on the stage
just as I was his lady,
and I would have to stand up.
He asked me to marry him.
I couldn't do it.
Seventeen.
First time I was on my own.
He knew
that he had something inside of him
that was hard to bring out.
It was not going to come out now.
It would come out eventually.
Little Richard: I had been a...
a flash of lightning for two years.
- [thunder rumbling] - Little Richard: In fact,
you could just call me the living flame.
I was at the height to make the big money.
We headed on this tour going to Sydney, Australia.
The engines of the plane had turned red, really red.
To me, I thought the plane was on fire.
[melancholic music playing]
Robinson: He feels and sees that
angels are holding the plane up.
He's overcome by this vision,
and he's overcome by fear.
Little Richard: Then, after arriving in Sydney,
I was appearing there in a stadium,
and this ball of fire came over the stadium.
[bell tolling]
Little Richard: I've always heard from a little boy
that the world was going to end
and it was frightening, you know?
I just felt that God was speaking to me.
Robinson: Later, they say this is Sputnik.
But it doesn't matter.
Little Richard said he saw a fireball
after angels were holding up the plane, period.
He's like, "I got to cut this tour short."
"I need to get out of here."
Little Richard: I said "After these dates,
I'm going to stop singing."
"I'm going with the Lord."
One of the band boys said,
"If you're serious, throw your rings in the water."
We got on the ferry, and I threw them in the ocean.
Williams: We knew he was a rock 'n' roll star.
Why would he be coming to Oakwood?
Word spread he's not coming to give a concert.
He's coming as a student.
Winslow: Oakwood was the premiere
Black Seventh-day Adventist school.
Very conservative.
I was a little boy.
My mother was a teacher.
I was old enough to know who he was.
But we didn't have rock 'n' roll on campus.
It was a sin to listen to Richard's music.
Williams: Shortly after he got there,
he gave his testimony.
He said he saw himself in hell.
He said he knew he wasn't ready to see the Lord
with what he was singing and how he was behaving.
He called it devil music.
Little Richard: The Lord is coming soon,
and I want to dedicate my life to God.
And I want to study, so I can help other people
that are doing wrong where they can be saved too.
Williams: He actually said if you have any of his records,
he would buy them back.
And he was going to have a bonfire.
He burned the records.
Cut his hair.
We just accepted him as a normal student.
Little Richard lived in the dorm.
He always had on a suit jacket.
And he had a big Bible that he carried with him.
And if you saw him coming,
you knew you might get stopped to be prayed with.
I liked him.
He had a real burden
for the salvation of souls.
And he liked to tell his story.
"As I have repent, you must repent."
Robinson: This is kind of the beginning
of his period with gospel music.
♪ Precious Lord ♪
♪ Take my hand ♪
Robinson: His vocal performance is so dramatically different.
I want to say restrained.
I'm like, "You ain't even bring the rock 'n' roll to the gospel
like Sister Rosetta Tharpe was doing."
Maybe that was him trying to be still.
♪ I'm so weak ♪
Java: He said that the Bible would be his only love.
He was a caring, loving person,
and I was very proud of that.
Robinson: Even in the sphere of sacred music,
he names an album "The King of Gospel Singers,"
staking his claim for where his voice fits
in the pantheon of gospel singers.
Winslow: Richard met Ernestine,
and they got to be close as friends.
And she wanted to marry him, and he married her.
[song ends]
We were married at Richard's home in Los Angeles.
It was a very quiet, private service.
I didn't know anything about Richard before I met him.
I sneaked away and listened to some of his songs.
Richard was the kind of husband that
most women would want for a husband,
always positive, loving, and caring.
Williams: I think Little Richard wanted to do God's will,
but he lived a high lifestyle.
He had a nice home that he bought
for his mother and his family,
and church wasn't paying him.
He wasn't an ordained minister.
He needed money.
Newman: I was in a band called Sounds Incorporated.
We're told that we're going on the road
and we're backing Little Richard.
We're all saying "This is just...
this is beyond belief."
We all figured that he'd retired
and we wouldn't hear of him again.
All I can assume is
Don Arden told Richard it was a gospel tour.
[laughs]
There's a rehearsal called.
He had a sweater on him. I don't recognize him.
So we're not quite sure what to expect the first night.
So the band's riffing.
You know, "Now, from America, ladies and gentlemen,
we have Little Richard,"
and he's not on stage.
He's not there.
From the balcony, we hear,
"I am an atom bomb,"
with eyes wide open and a cape,
and he jumps off the balcony,
ran up to the stage, and...
♪ A whole lot of shakin' ♪
♪ A whole lot of shakin' goin' on ♪
♪ Whoo ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪
♪ A whole lot of shakin' goin' on ♪
Newman: I was rocketed into the fifth dimension.
I wasn't of this earth anymore.
All of a sudden, Richard jumped off the piano,
lying on the floor as if he was dead.
"Is there a doctor in the house?"
Richard would wake up all of a sudden
and play "Good Golly, Miss Molly."
♪ Good golly, Miss Molly ♪
♪ Sure like to ball ♪
Newman: Nearly every night, it escalated
into a full-blown riot in the theater.
[indistinct clamoring]
Newman: People have wrecked the seats.
- [dogs barking] - [cheering]
The police dogs are called.
♪ Whoo! Sure like to ball ♪
[cheering]
Newman: I remember coming off of that and thinking,
"Now, this is rock 'n' roll."
[music ends]
Crowd: [cheering, applauding]
[pensive music playing]
Little Richard: Brian Epstein brought me to Liverpool.
And when I walked in, he said, "Richard, I got four guys."
"Would you mind taking a picture with my group?"
[camera shutter clicks]
Little Richard: And they was nervous.
He said they never met no one famous before.
McCartney: Last day of school, we used to bring our guitars,
and I used to stand on a desk and do Little Richard.
Lennon: It's hard for people to imagine
how thrilled the four of us were.
We were just almost paralyzed with adoration.
They had never made a record.
Didn't nobody know them but their mothers.
I took them with me to Hamburg, Germany, to the Star Club.
Newman: That place was magical.
Wildness, debauchery, if you wanted it.
Richard just absolutely makes out.
Leather pants,
male stripper gear he had.
McCartney: Little Richard's organist was Billy Preston.
One night, George said, "Well, come on out here
and play the organ with us, you know?"
I said no, 'cause Little Richard would get mad, you know,
because he's the star.
McCartney: Hamburg, that was the real time
we got to know Little Richard.
We used to say, "Is it true you threw
all your rings off the bridge?"
[imitates Little Richard] "Well, of course it's true, child."
And we'd just sit there for hours,
like, kind of disciples in the dressing room.
Newman: I'd see Paul on the side of the stage
more than the rest of the band.
All my screaming numbers were to do with him.
Little Richard: Paul was the one that wanted to do the hollers.
I said, "Whoo," he would say, "Ooh, ooh."
[higher octave] "Whoo, ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh."
Then next thing you know... [high pitched] "Whoo!"
[gentle music playing]
Jagger: It was one of my first tours,
and we were opening for Little Richard.
We were basically a cover band.
You know, we hadn't written much.
I would be by the side of the stage,
like, every night to watch him.
English bands, they were very static.
Watching Richard, see,
you don't have to stand there.
You use the whole stage.
Richard would work that audience,
get them up out of their seats,
swaying, shouting, waving their arms.
- Well, all right! - Audience: All right.
Jagger: Calling and responding stuff.
Audience: All right!
Thirty dates, so I saw Little Richard 30 times,
you know what I mean?
Later on, I realized he was, like, doing church
in a theater in northern England, basically.
[chuckles]
Crowd: [cheering, whistling]
We'd like to finish up with Little Richard's
"Long Tall Sally."
Crowd: [cheering, applauding]
♪ Gonna tell Aunt Mary ♪
♪ 'Bout Uncle John ♪
♪ He claim he has the misery, but he's havin' a lot of fun ♪
♪ Oh, baby, yeah, my baby ♪
♪ Whoo ♪
♪ Baby ♪
♪ Some fun tonight, yeah ♪
Crowd: [cheering, applauding]
[upbeat music playing]
King: Suddenly you had Black artists
who were displaced from the charts.
The innovations that they have brought have been stylized
and adopted by others who...
♪ Well, long, tall Sally ♪
♪ She's built for speed, she got everything ♪
King: ...generate way more success than they are able to.
♪ Yeah ♪
King: In America, Little Richard is
nowhere near where he was in the mid-1950s.
Hadley: This happens to a lot of Black artists,
going back to teenagers as fickle consumers.
We want fresh deliverers
of the innovation.
Hey, Richard. Welcome.
Audience: [cheering, applauding]
- [conversing indistinctly] - [applause continues]
You and Chuck have kind of taken England by storm.
How do you feel about other people borrowing your material?
Well, Dick, I must be truthful.
I am very grateful to know
that my material is the type of material
that the entertainers today would like to use.
Vera: He had a good body of work.
He had graduated to the level of show business where
you don't need a hit record
to continue to work.
Little Richard: Want everybody to sing back with me...
♪ Wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom ♪
Crowd: [cheering, applauding]
King: He and Ernestine are divorced,
and he was back to his old lifestyle.
He called up Bumps and says,
"I want to change my image."
"I want to come out loud and gaudy
as the living flame."
Winslow: We had a steamer trunk full of these outfits.
Tassels and flamboyant, pretty material.
Crowd: [cheering]
Winslow: And we played with everybody.
Crowd: [cheering]
But no matter where we went, Richard stole the show.
One time in Atlantic City,
Janis Joplin was killing the audience.
She had gotten about seven standing ovations,
and she literally passed out.
And I'm standing there saying, "Man, Richard's in trouble."
Richard told me, "Get back in the limousine."
"Go back to the hotel and bring me my mirror suit."
They cut off all the lights,
they put the spotlight on him,
and he spun around like a glass ball.
And those lights went everywhere.
[cheering]
[psychedelic music plays]
Winslow: And Janis Joplin, I can still see her face.
And she said, "Oh, my God."
Richard told all of them.
Little Richard: Let it all hang out...
Crowd: [cheering]
with the beautiful Little Richard
from down in Macon, Georgia.
I want you all to know
that I am the king of rock 'n' roll.
[electric guitar playing]
♪ Lucille ♪
♪ Baby, satisfy my heart ♪
♪ Lucille ♪
♪ Baby, satisfy my heart ♪
♪ I played for it, baby ♪
♪ And gave you such a wonderful start ♪
♪ Aaah! ♪
Jagger: Little Richard was the first thing I remember,
as far as rock 'n' roll was concerned.
[vocalizing]
Winslow: One time, Elvis came backstage,
and Elvis said "Little Richard,
don't you ever worry about anything."
♪ Please don't leave it alone, yeah ♪
Winslow: "You will always be
the true king of rock 'n' roll."
Crowd: [cheering]
Why is it, Richard, after 26 years in the business,
you're as big if not bigger than ever?
What's the secret to success?
I think it's because I've been really doing it.
You know, the Bible says you shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free.
I've been free.
[applause]
I get beautiful and beautiful every day. [chuckles]
Audience: [laughs]
- Shut up. - Audience: [laughs]
Look at the beauty. How you doing?
- Shut up. - Audience: [laughs]
Little Richard popularized the phrase "Shut up."
The first time I said that, I was in Las Vegas.
They didn't like the way I look.
You know, they said, "We don't want this man on our stage."
I didn't have on no suit, no tie.
And all this beauty was just shining forth.
Audience: [laughs]
- Shut up. - Audience: [laughs]
People accept it from me for some reason.
You know, I travel all over the world,
and I think they can look at me and see that I'm a love child.
Audience: [laughs quietly]
Host: You went into the ministry, didn't...
[laughing]
Nyong'o: I don't think you could imagine
almost any other rock star
being able to get away with "Shut up."
King: Anybody looking at Little Richard
in the throes of his career
could tell you that this man was definitely not straight.
He was certainly queer in all of the senses
of what that term means.
But he rarely spoke about it openly.
And that was where the complication came.
Winslow: I'll be honest with you,
there were times I went and slept in the bathtub
'cause the rest of the suite was full of naked people.
He'd be sitting there with the Bible
right there beside him.
And every now and then, he'd quote us.
We had prayer every day.
Jagger: If you have that drummed into you
since you were a child,
secular music, that's the devil's music,
it can't be much fun for the people involved in it
like Richard, like Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
Winslow: Everybody was into the excess.
[cheering]
Little Richard: It got so hectic during concerts
and television and every other thing.
[cheering, applauding]
Little Richard: One day, I was getting ready
to go on the stage, and I was so tired.
And a friend of mine introduced me to cocaine.
[suspenseful music playing]
'73 and '74, they were coming to my room
asking for money that I couldn't account for.
[indistinct shouting]
Blackwell: And I knew where it was going.
I didn't stick around much after that.
Little Richard: I was just doing everything.
PCP, cocaine, heroin.
He just wasn't the person I knew anymore.
[music fades]
Little Richard: One night I was appearing at Magic Mountains,
and a friend of mine called to come to see me.
He was 21 years old. He never did arrive.
He had gotten shot. Later on that night, he died.
I had another friend of mine that I went to his house
to get some cocaine. He fell dead.
Another friend of mine, some fellows
put in a trunk and cut him up with a butcher knife.
My brother Tony said, "Richard, I want to borrow some money."
And I had an engagement in Miami, Florida.
I said, "Tony, when I get back, I'll let you have it."
When I got back,
instead of going with Tony, I met a man.
We were at the hotel to have a party.
The next morning, somebody pushed a note up under my door
saying, "Your brother's dead."
[somber music playing]
Little Richard: I tell you, you talk about rock bottom,
I've been below the rocks where it was no bottom.
God is talking to me through my brother's death
and all of my friends that died right in a row.
Oh, God.
Lord, please help me. Please save me.
[piano playing]
♪ Uh-huh, it's me ♪
♪ It's me, oh, Lord ♪
♪ I am standing... ♪
Little Richard: It started me to thinking more seriously
about my life than I've ever thought.
♪ Oh, I'm standing in the need of prayer ♪
♪ Not my mother... ♪
Little Richard: I opened my Bible to Mark 8:36-37,
said, "For what shall it profit a man,
if he should gain the whole world,
and lose his own soul?"
♪ But it's me ♪
♪ Oh, oh, Lord, yeah ♪
♪ I am standing in the need of prayer ♪
Little Richard: The only rock I've got now is the rock,
Christ Jesus.
I just let it all go.
[applause]
♪ Oh, that beautiful city ♪
♪ Where Jesus is waiting ♪
I said, "Well, Lord, can I sing rock 'n' roll
and do both of them?"
God says, "You've got to be all for me, or let me go."
When Tony died, it really affected Richard.
He didn't want to be one of those
who would die and burn in hell.
That's the way we were taught.
Little Richard: I'm just so glad that God was able
to clean me up and wash me up.
And thank you, Lord.
I'm not gay now. But, you know, I was gay all my life.
I believe I was one of the first gay people to come out.
But God let me know that he made Adam to be with Eve, not Steve.
[somber music playing]
Oh, God, how can you save me? I'm homosexual.
Oh, God. I'm not just a dope addict.
I'm unnatural. I like men.
Not only did he take me from dope...
King: Richard continued his tour,
and he's renouncing his queerness
even more fervently than before.
Little Richard: He changed me from homosexuality.
There's harm to communities
to have somebody speaking on a public stage in that way.
I feel he betrayed gay people by saying he's not.
But I do understand.
You're not strong enough to take it.
I understand that.
Especially a person like Little Richard,
who had so much to hold.
♪ As I look around ♪
♪ I can see ♪
♪ So many people ♪
King: When I hear his passionate singing at this time,
especially at the MDA telethon,
it's hard to tell how much is running towards God
versus running away from himself.
♪ But I realize ♪
♪ That I ♪
♪ Should be grateful ♪
♪ Oh, so grateful ♪
King: I think of how Little Richard fared
as a young person.
As a kid who came from a church family
who was Black and queer and femme and disabled,
who'd been bullied by not only other kids,
but also his father.
There's a lot of violence that attends
trying to live a queer life.
Here's the one and only Little Richard.
[cheering and applause]
Newman: I guess he held himself responsible for
the type of guys that he figured that he brought
to the world, and yet,
what he brought us was freedom.
You ain't supposed to hide nothing.
You got it, God gave it, show it to the world.
No, I don't want to hide. I love...
He was very, very good at liberating other people
through his example.
He was not good at liberating himself.
♪ I thank God ♪
♪ For all... For all that He gave ♪
♪ That my God gave to me ♪
♪ There is someone ♪
♪ Worse off than I am ♪
Thank you, Jesus.
Audience: [applauds]
This Holy Bible is something that they can treasure
and keep throughout the years.
This is a beautiful Bible
and a wonderful Bible, and it is yours.
Interviewer: At that time, you were selling Bibles.
That's right, and making $150 a week.
Winslow: He was doing big church events.
And he was doing gospel shows.
Little Richard: I'm through with rock 'n' roll
as far as me being a performer.
But it wasn't paying him very well.
Little Richard: I looked around and didn't have any money.
The record companies paid me nothing, you know.
- Nobody had paid me a dime. - Host: All those hits?
Little Richard: All those hits.
[somber music playing]
Winslow: Richard went down there on Hollywood Boulevard
and picketed.
Interviewer: Famous Little Richard did that?
Little Richard: Famous Little Richard
trying to get that famous money
that he made so many years ago that he's never seen.
Richard really wanted to make money,
so that he could help take care of his mother
and his brothers and sisters.
What were you doing wrong?
I didn't do nothing wrong. They were just crooks.
They thought I was a little Black fool from Macon, Georgia.
Vera: You have to remember that Richard left Specialty Records
eighteen months into a three-year contract.
Art Rupe said, "There's a price to be paid."
"You forego any and all future royalties."
So Richard never received a penny after a time
from either his songs or his recordings.
It was egregiously unfair.
Little Richard: I saw all my friends on the hill
and I was still in the valley.
And it bothered me.
Hervey: Thirty years after Little Richard breaks,
Black entertainers were still being marginalized.
[rock music playing]
Hervey: MTV in 1981,
twenty-four hours of music.
And there are no Blacks on it.
King: He didn't even get a Grammy
for his actual recordings or his performances.
Little Richard: I'm an innovator.
I'm the creator. I'm the king of rock 'n' roll.
When I came along, Elvis wasn't even out.
Elvis has never written a song in his life.
He was white. I was Black.
Winslow: That struggle's hard because,
you know, a lot of times he might have felt that
he had to prove himself.
There are many Black artists that helped build the building.
I'm just the architect.
Michael was inspired by me, Prince.
James Brown, I discovered him. He was my vocalist.
Jimi Hendrix was my guitar player.
The Beatles. I love you, Paul. Hello, Linda.
And David Bowie says that I was his inspiration.
Rodgers: David Bowie said to me,
"I want my new album to sound like this."
And it was a picture of Little Richard.
♪ Never gonna fall for ♪
Rodgers: He idolized Little Richard.
I never worked with an artist
that sort of let another artist
define what we were going to do.
As a Black man, I knew that there was only one lane
I could really drive down and get commercial success.
David could do anything he wanted to do.
[gentle music playing]
Hervey: Richard's struggle to me was always unrealistic.
Society was never going to accept him.
He was gay. He was Black.
He either wouldn't accept it or he was afraid to accept it,
or he thought that he could overcome it.
He asked me to manage him and I thought,
"God, you know, it'd be great to be responsible
for reviving his career."
♪ Didn't it rain, children ♪
♪ Talkin' about rain Oh, my Lord ♪
Hervey: He didn't do his hits.
He would do like a rock 'n' roll version
of some of his gospel records.
"The Life and Times of Little Richard."
"The Quasar of Rock."
Interviewer: What does that mean?
The brightest star in the universe.
I don't think it was Richard's idea to do the book.
I think he was approached to do the book.
Host: A thousand dollars a day on coke.
My nose is big enough to park diesel trucks.
...Diesel trucks. ...Diesel trucks in.
And God got me off of it. And he healed my body.
And now I am a man of God with a new book called
"The Life and Times of Little Richard."
Audience: [laughs]
He didn't exactly tell the truth all the time.
He states that I did things that
I didn't know I did until I read that book.
Oh, a close-up. Close-up.
Once he started to feel a buzz, it all came back.
When I first wrote "Tutti Frutti,"
it was "Tutti frutti, good booty."
Audience: [cheering]
People want it to be a thing, you know?
I mean, this night,
"Oh, he's got a thing. But wait a minute."
"This night, he's got another thing."
"If it don't fit,
don't force it."
Did you understand that one?
Yeah. That's carpentry.
[laughs]
- Yeah. - No.
Richard really didn't have a thing.
Richard was who he wanted to be when he wanted to be
how he wanted to be on what day he wanted to be it.
Well, I haven't been, uh, involved in sex in 14 years.
It's been 14 years now.
That's not my main thing in life, period, anymore.
My main thing in life now is to be a messenger.
Whether you're homosexual
or whatever walk of life a person may be,
God loves them.
He existed in contradiction.
He could be openly gay in some ways,
probably to his circles.
This happened for decades.
Nyong'o: As a queer person myself,
I think that queerness is often...
misunderstood as an individual identity, right?
The truth of one person, right?
As if we have a single truth that we can never change.
He was flamboyant
at all times.
But it was all in Jesus' name.
Everything was in Jesus' name.
Everything.
♪ Great God Almighty, been a long time coming ♪
Glenn: He's very, very generous.
Was really close to all of us in the band.
He would say to the crowd,
"I'd like y'all to meet my son."
And that's what I would always call him, my second dad.
He'd break me off $100, break Keith off $100,
just give everybody $100 or something, you know?
Just glad to see us.
He'd sent people to school and college and stuff.
Angel: He paid rent, including mine.
Never bragged about it.
Richard was the love of my life.
And I believe I was the love of his.
He calls us. He calls our moms.
I've never met someone that was so real.
Nyong'o: Queer communities know this well,
this idea of creating your own family.
Glenn: We all really loved him and cared about
him being great.
- [indistinct chatter] - [camera shutters clicking]
Reporter 1: Ten performers who helped give birth
to rock 'n' roll now have a permanent home.
Reporter 2: It is the newly formed
Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.
Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, the Everly Brothers,
Ray Charles, Little Richard, James Brown, Fats Domino.
Nyong'o: There was a ceremony, but Richard wasn't there.
[siren wailing]
Hervey: He had gotten in a car accident in Hollywood.
Little Richard: I was in my sports car.
I was really tired.
And I just blacked out.
Oh, oh! Oh, my God!
Reporter: It's believed that he fell asleep at the wheel.
Hervey: They found a bag with about $30,000 in it.
He had flown to London
and gotten a record offer.
[siren wailing]
Hervey: He didn't have a lawyer. He did all this on his own.
[suspenseful music playing]
Man: He is very lucky to have survived.
Nyong'o: I mean, for Richard to have missed
the Hall of Fame ceremony,
it's the first and only time he's been widely recognized.
That must have been heartbreaking.
Interviewer: What's the most important thing
in your life today?
Love.
That's what I want so much to have.
I... I don't have it exactly... exactly the way that I want to.
I don't have nobody but me,
and the great God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
[music fades]
Hadley: That first induction class in 1986
of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame
had this double-edged sword
to where it is recognition,
but in a weird way,
it can also be dismissal as a relic of the past.
Yes, you created it, you invented it,
you set the template for it.
But, you know, the people who really made it what it is
are these younger bands or these white artists.
Audience: [cheering, applauding]
What? [chuckles]
I used to wear my hair like that.
Audience: [laughing]
They take everything I get, they take it from me.
Whoo.
Hadley: Because of his flamboyance,
people made the mistake of not taking him seriously
always, as a musician, as a human, as a performer.
And the best new artist is...
Audience: [laughing]
Me.
Audience: [laughing]
I have never received nothing.
Y'all ain't never gave me no Grammy.
King: It's endearing. It's funny.
But as a Black man watching that,
I heard seething anger that underwrites what he's saying.
Shut up.
"You have never given me what is due to me."
"And since you don't know, I'm going to tell you."
♪ I can't turn you loose ♪
♪ If I do I'm going to lose my mind ♪
♪ I can't ever turn you loose ♪
♪ If I do I'm gonna lose my mind ♪
King: He was just going to do the induction speech
for Otis Redding, who's passed away,
but he comes on stage,
and they're playing "I Can't Turn You Loose"
by Otis.
♪ I'm gonna give you everything you want ♪
♪ Gotta, gotta ♪
King: And he wants you to know that he knows
that he's the root of all of this.
And nobody else can sing this song like he can.
♪ Everybody got to know, yeah ♪
♪ Whoo, ooh, ow, ow, ow, ow! ♪
Audience: [cheers, applauds]
[whistling]
Oh, my God.
See, you all should record me. I don't know why you're not.
Audience: [laughing]
I'm still here,
and I look decent.
Audience: [laughing, cheering]
Whoo-whee.
Shut up.
Make my picture.
Audience: [laughs]
[laughs] Oh, I feel so real. [clears throat]
I feel so unnecessary. [laughs]
On one hand, they might be laughing at him.
And I'll tell you, and when I first heard
Otis sing "Lucille," I thought it was me.
- Audience: [laughing] - [laughs]
King: They also might be laughing
because they're uncomfortable.
- He's speaking truth to power. - Whoo!
King: And he is basically telling them
what nobody really wants to say,
but everyone should say.
What would it do
to the American mythology of rock music
to say that its pioneers were Black, queer people?
One of the greatest singers ever lived,
one of the greatest composers ever lived.
- That's including me... - Audience: [laughing]
...and everybody else,
Jimi Hendrix and all of them that's been with me,
James Brown, The Beatles, and Mick Jagger.
He don't ever mention it, but he was with me, too.
You're waiting for your turn, you know?
You're waiting for, "What's he gonna say about me?"
Mick, you remember that.
He's here. He know. He was sleeping on the floor.
They didn't have no bed for him.
- Audience: [laughing] - I know he can't forget.
That carpet's hard, wasn't it, Mick? [laughing]
Jagger: Everyone was beholden to him
for influencing them to start playing rock 'n' roll.
Whoo-whoo!
- Whoo-whoo! - Crowd: [cheering]
♪ Send me some lovin' ♪
♪ Send it, I pray ♪
Hadley: By the '80s and into the '90s,
everything that Little Richard had put in motion
was now just the oxygen of American popular music.
♪ When you're so far away ♪
Hadley: When I started checking out in college, bands like...
♪ Should I stay or should I go now? ♪
Hadley: ...Living Colour,
Bad Brains,
Fishbone,
I heard, like, rock 'n' roll is Black.
That sounded heretical to me, which is terrible.
I was just blown away by how much I hadn't been told
about the truth of rock 'n' roll.
♪ Whee! Pretend you are here ♪
Robinson: We're using the wrong word
when we talk about appropriation.
Think about it as obliteration.
When you take and then erase,
you remove that entity's capacity
to be attached to this thing that they created,
to make money from this thing that they created.
♪ Don't you know, baby ♪
♪ I need you so much ♪
The infrastructure of the culture does that.
It still does it today.
Robinson: Little Richard cannot be erased
and has a loud mouth and has a fire.
So if you try to take his shit... [chuckles]
...he is going to battle you,
not just from a "This is my song" sort of way,
but "This is my sound, my rhythm, my being."
♪ I waited on you, yeah ♪
♪ Hey ♪
Crowd: [cheering, applauding]
[cheering]
Each year in presenting
the prestigious American Music Award of Merit,
we tell you about someone who has had an important
and ongoing impact on contemporary music.
Audience: [applauding]
Hi, this is Keith Richards.
We were a bar band.
And at first tour, I probably learned more
in that six weeks than I ever had before or since.
Congratulations, Little Richard. Give me a call, man.
Richard, you Georgia Peach. Congratulations.
Thank you for helping create rock music,
the greatest art form of the 20th century.
God bless you, Richard.
Ladies and gentlemen, give it up
for the incredible Little Richard!
♪ Tutti frutti, oh rootie ♪
♪ Wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom ♪
♪ I got a gal named Sue ♪
♪ She knows just what to do ♪
♪ I got a gal named Sue ♪
♪ She knows just what to do ♪
♪ She rocks to the east, she rocks to the west ♪
♪ But she's the gal that I love best ♪
♪ Tutti frutti, oh rootie ♪
I'm really glad to get this award.
It's been a long time coming,
- and I've been waiting. - Audience: [cheering]
And I'm just so grateful that Dick Clark,
which is an old friend of mine, he and his wife,
have seen fit to make this tribute to me
while I'm still alive in this world.
And... And I'm just glad that...
I'm glad that he saw
and he wants you to see that I am the originator.
- Audience: [cheering] - I am the emancipator.
I am the architect of rock 'n' roll.
Rhythm and blues had a baby...
[over device] ...and somebody named it rock 'n' roll.
[laughs]
Yes.
Oh. That was that night all over again. Wow.
Interviewer: Where did you go? What happened?
Uh...
I remember sitting back in the back watching him get that.
And... And when I saw him start to cry,
it... just like right now, it made me cry.
[sobs]
[sniffles]
[breathes deeply]
Because, you know, he had mentioned on the ride over,
you know, how...
uh, how he'd always felt like he didn't get what,
you know, he didn't get what he deserved and...
how he created all this music. [sobs]
And nobody... nobody gave him anything for it, you know?
And, uh...
Oh, man. [sighs] Sorry, y'all.
I think more of us should declare what we are.
Especially for people of color,
especially for queer people, right, in this culture.
Don't shrink.
In a sort of more religious, conservative religious space,
you don't declare who you are.
You don't declare what you did. You...
give the glory to God.
And when Little Richard is talking about
being the innovator,
and when he's talking about being the originator,
he's saying, "I am the god of this."
And that's one of those spaces where I know that he knows
that when he is fully himself, he's closest to God.
[upbeat piano playing]
Crowd: [clapping rhythmically]
♪ Good golly, Miss Molly ♪
♪ Sure like to ball ♪
♪ Oooh, Miss Molly ♪
♪ Sure like to ball ♪
♪ When you're rockin' and a-rollin' ♪
♪ I can't hear your mama call ♪
♪ Oooh, Miss Molly ♪
♪ Sure like to ball ♪
♪ Oooh, Miss Molly ♪
♪ Sure like to ball ♪
♪ When you're rockin' and a-rollin' ♪
♪ I can't hear your mama call ♪
Guitar! Whoo!
Whoohoo!
Clark: The architect of rock 'n' roll.
The one, the only, Little Richard.
Little Richard: I am the beautiful Little Richard,
and don't you ever forget it.
Whoo!
- Whoo! - [cheering and applause]
- You're Little Richard. - ♪ Whoo-ooh! ♪
Hey, it's Little Richard on ice.
Hi, Pee-wee!
Whoo!
Jones: Any true performer,
that thing doesn't ever leave you.
And I think he tried to hold on to it as long as he could.
Crawley: For me, architecture isn't about always answering
what will be done,
but what could be done?
And queerness is the openness
to the expansive imagination.
Life does not happen in opposites.
It happens in shades, in gradations,
in spectra.
Rock 'n' roll is not a part of Jesus.
Anything that is not of God is not from God.
And his last days were calling everybody he knew and saying,
"Get right with God because the end of the world
could be any moment, and you need to be ready."
Crawley: He was reflecting on his mortality.
He was reflecting on
is there a way that I could
live something of a joyful afterlife?
The last months of his life,
it was important for him to tell people
that God is love
and that he loved all mankind.
I don't see the end as
the only place where the meaning resides.
Java: I would never have taken a chance to go into the clubs
in a dress
if it wasn't for Little Richard.
He gave me peace
that I could go and do
and be who I wanted to be.
Interviewer: If you could leave just one legacy to the world,
would it rather be your music
or your preaching and your church work?
Little Richard: I think all that goes together.
I don't go to church and sing "Long Tall Sally"
or "Good Golly Miss Molly."
But all of it's music, and I love it.
[orchestral music playing]
He paved the way for everything that followed.
Nyong'o: He taught me that you could claim things
even when you weren't supposed to.
I am the king of rock 'n' roll.
Ow-ow-ow! My, my, my.
Anthony: Little Richard gave the world permission to be.
To be who you wanted to be, who you were.
Porter: The reason why I'm finally,
finally able, as a Black queer man,
to show up and do anything I want
is because of him.
Crawley: It's almost as if everyone
is defined by Little Richard.
I don't want anything from them.
All I want them to do is to spread what they got from me.
Just carry the good word over the world, that's all.
[music fades]
♪ Wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom ♪
♪ Tutti frutti, oh rootie ♪
♪ A wop bop a loo bop a lop ba boom ♪
♪ I got a girl named Sue ♪
♪ She knows just what to do ♪
♪ I got a girl named Sue ♪
♪ She knows just what to do ♪
♪ She rocks to the east, rocks to the west ♪
♪ She's the girl that I love best ♪
♪ Tutti frutti, oh rootie ♪
♪ Tutti frutti, oh rootie, ooh ♪
♪ Tutti frutti, oh rootie ♪
♪ A wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom ♪
♪ I got a girl named Daisy ♪
♪ She almost drives me crazy ♪
♪ I got a girl named Daisy ♪
♪ She almost drives me crazy ♪
♪ She knows how to love me Yes, indeed ♪
♪ Boy, you don't know what she do to me ♪
♪ Tutti frutti, oh rootie ♪
♪ Tutti frutti, oh rootie, ooh ♪
♪ Tutti frutti, oh rootie ♪
♪ Wop bop a loo bop a bop bop, ow! ♪
♪ Ah-ah-ah ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah ♪
♪ Oh, tutti frutti, oh rootie ♪
♪ Tutti frutti, oh rootie, ooh ♪
♪ Tutti frutti, oh rootie ♪
♪ A wop bop a loo bop a bop bang boom ♪
[soft music playing]
[music concludes]