[ad_1]
With a single incomprehensible scream, Little Richard catapulted the music world to rock’n’roll 65 years ago: “A wop bop a loo lop a lop bam boo”, the musician called in 1955 when he recorded his legendary song “Tutti Frutti “into a microphone in a recording studio in New Orleans. The idea of the exclamation had hit him on the scene shortly before, and a drum beat had inspired him. “Tutti Frutti” rose on the charts and the previously unknown musician became a superstar. The song “ushered in a new era of music,” the National Library of the United States is said to have recorded the song.
“God was good to me”
Little Richard invented rock and roll and laid the foundation for funk and soul. More recently, however, the musician was in poor health and lived in seclusion in the American state of Tennessee.
The church played the leading role in his life, as he said in an interview. God was good to me. I go to church every Saturday, every Saturday, I never miss that. And on Fridays I open the Sabbath. Little Richard died Saturday at the age of 87, according to “Rolling Stone” magazine and the US news agency AP, citing close family and friends.
I grew up in the slums
Richard Wayne Penniman was born in 1932 in extremely poor conditions to an African-American family in the southern state of Georgia, right in the midst of brutal black and white separation.
“I come from the slums, you will never forget it,” said the musician, who was very young when he was a child and was therefore called “Little Richard”. His father was a smuggler and was killed when Little Richard, the third child among twelve brothers, was 19 years old. “Everything in me fell apart then.” But the experience also gave him strength, “and the conviction and persistence of knowing that one day he would succeed.”
Back then, blacks in Georgia only lived in the excruciatingly noisy areas right next to the train tracks, as the award-winning artist recalled. “The trains shook their houses at night. When I was a kid, I heard that and thought, ‘At some point I will make a song that sounds exactly the same.’ ”
From gospel appearances to the first record deal
Little Richard struggles with odd jobs, starts with gospel, sings from performance to performance, and finally lands his first record deal. In addition to “Tutti Frutti”, he released songs like “Good Golly, Miss Molly” and “Lucille” in the following years, which were covered and developed by stars like Elvis Presley: rock and roll was born.
Little Richard’s song “Tutti Frutti” was a great success and is still well known today. (Video: Youtube / Little Richard)
Little Richard has been swimming on the wave of success for almost three years, touring the United States and openly celebrating wild bisexual parties with men, women, and alcohol. His concerts, in which the musician, often celebrated as the “god of rock’n’roll,” with a thin mustache, high hair, shiny makeup, false eyelashes, and wild costumes, brought together blacks and whites in the midst of the racial segregation, to radical horror. Conservative politicians and associations.
But suddenly it’s over. On a concert tour to Australia in 1957, Little Richard spontaneously decided to give up music and become a priest. Since then, the strident artist has lived between two worlds: church and music.
Touring the Rolling Stones
He begins attempts to return again and again, fights against the growing interest in rock and roll, helps young Jimi Hendrix start his career, travels Europe with the Rolling Stones, still unknown at the time, tries to act and publishes radio and Basic radio Albums of the soul. But he always withdraws to his religious world and to the gospel.
Stars from Elvis Presley to Otis Redding, Jerry Lee Lewis, Tina Turner, Prince, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, David Bowie, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan and Freddie Mercury to Bruno Mars cite Little Richard as their musical idol. But after laying the foundation stone for rock and roll, others came to light. None of Little Richard’s songs could follow the worldwide success of “Tutti Frutti”, but perhaps it wasn’t necessary. “I always thought,” Bob Dylan once wrote, “that ‘Wop bop a loo lop a lop bam boo’ said it all.”
