May 9, 2020
by Carla Hay
Little Richard, who is considered one of the leading pioneers of rock and roll from the 1950s, died of bone cancer at a family home in Tullahoma, Tennessee, on May 9, 2020. He was 87.
Little Richard’s longtime attorney Bill Sobel told the Associated Press: “He was not only an iconic and legendary musician, but he was also a kind, empathetic and insightful human being.”
Little Richard was born Richard Penniman in Macon, Georgia, on December 5, 1932. He was the third of 12 children in a Baptist family led by his parents Charles “Bud” Penniman (who was a brick mason and church deacon) and Leva Mae Penniman. His father’s charismatic style of preaching later influenced Richard’s performance style.
In the early 1950s, a new genre of music called rock and roll was causing controversy in the United States because of its sexually suggestive lyrics. In its earliest years, rock was a music genre mostly performed by African American artists, so it was frequently called “race music.” Little Richard (who became famous for his pompadour hairdo, heavy makeup and foot-stomping piano playing) was one of the first stars of rock and roll. His best-known hits included “Tutti Frutti,” “Lucille,” “Good Golly Miss Molly” and “Long Tall Sally.”
Fats Domino and Chuck Berry were also among the first rock stars, but as the music became more popular, white artists such as Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis started to perform rock music and took over the segregated pop charts, whereas black artists performing the same music were usually relegated to charts and radio stations for black artists. White artists eventually began to dominate rock music and got preferential treatment for radio airplay and other media attention, while the African American pioneers of rock could no longer get big hits and had to rely on their early breakthrough hits to keep their careers going as nostalgia acts.
For decades afterward, Little Richard complained about how rock music was “stolen” from the African Americans who invented the genre. In 1988, Little Richard (who also called himself the Architect of Rock and Roll) was among the first group of artists inducted in the inaugural Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony. He received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1993, which is a non-competitive Grammy Award.
He also branched out into acting, by doing commercials, TV shows and movies, usually by portraying himself or characters that were versions of himself. His most notable movies included 1986’s “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” and 1993’s “The Last Action Hero.”
Little Richard was married to Ernestine Harvin from 1957 to 1964, with the marriage ending in divorce. When they were married, the couple adopted their son Danny Jones, who is Little Richard’s only child.
Little Richard also led a life of extreme contrasts. At various times in his life, Little Richard publicly identified his sexuality as either bisexual or gay. He was open about his penchant for sexual voyeurism and exhibitionism, and he was arrested a few times in his life for lewd public conduct. Sometimes he publicly condemned homosexuality, while at other times, he publicly embraced it. In 1957, he became a born-again Christian and left show business, but then he returned to being a being an entertainer in the 1960s.
According to his 1985 official biography (“The Life and Times of Little Richard”) and interviews that he gave over the years, Little Richard also went from someone who abstained from drugs and alcohol early in his career to becoming a drug addict hooked on heroin, cocaine and PCP in the 1960s and 1970s. He became a preacher in the 1970s and later went back to being a full-time entertainer. His last concert was on August 25, 2014, in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.