LITTLE BIG MAN : Richard Penniman Wasn’t Just Born to Rock, He Was Born to Rock <i> Large</i>
There are celebrities, and then there are celebrities , the ones whose personas are writ so large, so distinctive and so fully in-character at all times that you have to wonder, “Do they ever let it drop and act like the rest of us?”
Did Jimmy Durante continue to declare “I got a million of ‘em!” when he was among friends? Did Mae West drop the sultry act when she was talking to her mom? Does Barney the Dinosaur hunker down with a copy of “Busty Brontos” when no one’s looking? Don’t you wish you could have a microphone in their homes to see what they’re really like? And wouldn’t you especially want one in Little Richard’s home?
In the flashy, flamboyant world of rock music, there has possibly never been anyone quite so flashy and flamboyant as Little Richard, the self-proclaimed King and Queen of rock ‘n’ roll, the Bronze Liberace, “the liberator , the originator , the prime mover , the emancipator of rock and roll” if he may say so himself. Little Richard talks as if italics are his birthright.
On one now-legendary occasion in the early ‘70s, Richard was a guest on Dick Cavett’s ABC-TV program. He’d already done his bit, and the show moved on to a heated argument between caustic critic John Simon and “Love Story” author Erich Segal, while Richard sat there at the edge of the screen growing more and more peeved.
“Shuddup, shuddup, shuddup!!!” he finally interrupted, proceeding to chastise the two for having, in their literary criticisms, neglected to mention him , Little Richard, the architect of rock, the liberator, the . . .
Anyone who has had the exhausting pleasure of interviewing Richard can’t help but note that his self-promotion switch seems to be permanently hard-wired to the “on” position. Why, did you know that he gave the Beatles and the Rolling Stones their start? That Mick Jagger would curl up and sleep at his feet, and Paul McCartney would beg just to touch his shirt? That Jimi Hendrix, the man who used to be called Prince, David Bowie, et al., ad infinitum, existed only as a result of his glorious example?
His claims aren’t without elements of truth. Moreover, the debt that rock music owes to Little Richard Penniman couldn’t be repaid even if a gold mountain were built in his image. Along with starting to rock before most folks got the notion to, from the get-go Richard was the one who showed how far rock could go, how wild, how emotional, how abandoned, how volatile the music could be.
Rather than singing some laborious tome about freedom, as more recent rockers have done, Richard--in exultantly shouting “AWOP-BOP-A-LOO-MOP ALOP-BAM-BOOM!”-- embodied freedom and release. As those who saw him tear through “Good Golly Miss Molly” last week on the “Tonight Show” can attest, even at age 61 he is a rocking, screaming sensation.
Particularly considering the amount of prose given to subsequent performers who merely stepped lightly in his high-heeled footprints, there could never be enough said about Little Richard. Still, one does wish for that open microphone in his home, to find out if Little Richard ever, ever wearies of proclaiming the good news about his resplendent self.
And then, while speaking to Richard over the phone last Thursday, that electronic conduit suddenly was there: Before the interview got underway, he excused himself, and for something like five minutes apparently forgot the receiver was there as he busied himself with other things.
Barely coming over the phone line, his voice could be heard saying:
Put that up under that box there. . . . Take that, too. Just put it on the floor right there . . . . No-no-no-no-no, just leave them right there.
Is Richard ordering a cadre of followers to build his own gold mountain?
How many more out there? Come back. Take that one more here. . . . Now, put that in there, whatever that is.
Now, Richard’s renounced his wayward ways, so surely he’s not directing one of his once-notorious orgies.
Now, all these footlockers go into storage . . . and put that across the hall . . . .
Then he picked up the receiver.
“Sorry, we’re moving stuff to paint things here, and the people that work for you, they’re busy doing nothing if you don’t watch them,” he explained.
Painting? Griping about the hired help? Next he’ll expect us to believe that he sleeps, eats and pays taxes, as mortals do.
Perhaps time has mellowed him a bit. But just a bit. In the ensuing 10-minute conversation, he only plugged his Sunday Coach House gig three times. At one point, he even maintained, “I’m just a regular, ordinary old guy.”
That’s what they must have thought in his hometown of Macon, Ga., when in his youth, he was going around in drag with half-foot-high marcelled hair. It’s what white parents must have thought in the ‘50s when their daughters applauded this sweat-drenched black man’s uninhibited performances by throwing their panties at him.
It must have been with Richard in mind that one particularly ugly leaflet of the time warned: “Notice! Stop! Help save the youth of America. Don’t buy negro records. . . . The screaming idiotic words and savage music of these records are undermining the morals of our white youth in America.”
In one of the finer turnarounds in our cultural history, in which parents once tried to keep Richard from influencing their teen-age children, parents today are buying his music specifically for their toddlers. His version of “Itsy Bitsy Spider” on the Disney “For Our Children” benefit album led to the hit 1992 album “Shake It All About,” on which he applies himself to rockin’ little numbers like “On Top of Spaghetti” and “Here We Go Loopty-Loo.”
“Parents used to be scared of me because I was something different, something new on the scene, you know what I mean? It was something they’d never heard about. They’d never seen no man with his hair as high as mine. Mine was higher than a top hat, and they didn’t know what to do.
“Some of it was my race, and some the type of music I was doing. Everyone else was doing rhythm and blues, and I was rockin’ , you understand me? Of course, we know that rock and roll is really rhythm and blues up-tempo, and I had the piano talking and screaming till the top of my voice and had on all of these loud colors, and this hair high up in the air, and they said, ‘Whay-o, who is this? What is this? Whay-re is it coming from? And now they find out that I’m just a regular, ordinary old guy that loves everybody and that just makes good music and entertains the public. And it’s accepted now, thank the Lord for that.”
He says he’s mulling offers to make another, more adult rock album and, in the meantime, has made his presence felt on the country chart-topping current “Rhythm, Country and Blues” album, on which he duets with Tanya Tucker on “Somethin’ Else.”
He said, “I do a lot of country music as well as rock and roll. You know today’s country music is really the 1956 rock and roll to me. . . . The country people come out to hear me a lot.”
Others do as well, he said, noting there was an audience of 80,000 for a recent festival he headlined in Jackson, Miss. He’ll be playing for several stadium-loads of people in August, since the Rolling Stones have chosen him to open shows on a leg of their tour.
“Oh, I love it!” he shouted. “You know Mick Jagger is my buddy. He started with me. It’s just like going home, going back with the guys that worked with me years ago. I know it’s only rock and roll, and you know I like it. I’m going to get some satisfaction this time.”
After years of feeling neglected and ripped off by the music business, he believes he’s finally getting his due.
“Oh, that’s without any doubt. I feel good about the whole thing. It’s so great. That’s the reason why I want everybody down around the Coach House in Orange County to come to the Coach House, because I call this, once in a lifetime . We don’t come down that way for appearances that much.” In fact, Richard hasn’t performed here at all in recent memory.
“Here’s a chance to see the originator , the emancipator , the architect of rock and roll. To come and hear the piano talk ! You know, let me make it talk for them, you know? And let me scream and sing this (Richard seemed to start channeling Bob Seger at this point) good old time rock and roll, the kind of music that will sooth your soul, and we can reminisce from the days of old!”
Not everything in the old days was that wondrous. Like most artists of his day, particularly African Americans, he saw little recompense for his talents. On most of the millions of records he sold, Richard was lucky if he saw a half-cent per-disc royalty. He says that has now been corrected.
“Oh, yes, now we’re getting paid instead of getting (cheated),” he declared. “We’ve been getting paid for a few years now.”
Though he had threatened lawsuits, he said, “some of the people just came forth and started paying us. It was overdue, and it came in due time. Better late than never. And we thank God that we didn’t have to wait forever, and we’re just glad that we’re in our health and strength so that we can enjoy some of the benefits.”
Richard did a tremendous amount of reminiscing in the garishly candid 1984 authorized biography “The Life and Times of Little Richard, the Quasar of Rock.” At the time the book came out, he was appearing more in churches than in concert halls, and like a preacher who shows the measure of his salvation by revealing the depth of his sins, his narrative revels in the excesses and extremes of his life. He talks of backstage parties where he indulged every possible combination of drugs and sexual partners.
Like a debauched Paul Bunyan, his excesses, as he related them, were nearly mythic in proportion. In describing the effects of his cocaine abuse in a 1984 interview, he had related, “I would blow my nose and all you’d see on my handkerchief would be flesh and blood. My membranes was coming out fantastically.”
In interviewing him, one sometimes notices that a few of his stories contradict one another. Ask him further questions and you’ll only get a third story that does nothing to reconcile the other two.
There were periods in his life when he gave up rock music. He stunned his fans in 1957 by quitting stardom to attend Bible school, his religious thought having been prodded by fears that a plane he was in would crash, and by having seen the Soviet satellite Sputnik in the sky. Though he made gospel albums, it was seven years before he returned to rock ‘n’ roll. Then in the late ‘70s, he renounced rock again, instead selling Bibles and preaching.
In the ’84 biography, of which he swore every word was true, he is quoted: “My true belief about rock and roll--and there have been lots of phrases attributed to me over the years--is this: I believe this kind of music is demonic.”
Asked last week, though, if he hadn’t at times considered rock to be sinful and quit performing it, he insisted, “No, but a lot of people said it was like that. I’m still an old rock and roll singer, an old country boy from down in Macon, Georgia, a milk-drinking, syrup-sopping Little Richard, you know. I haven’t changed at all.
“Everybody had it out that I became an ordained minister. I never became ordained in my life. I (quit performing in the ‘50s) to go to school. You know I was very uneducated. I didn’t even know how to count the money that was being brought to me, how to figure different accounts and bills. So I went back to educate myself a little more so I’d be more qualified. That’s what I went back to do. You know, I got through, you know I know what to do. I’m trying to be true.”
In any event, he doesn’t see such a sharp division between religious and secular work these days.
“I think people have more understanding now. I don’t think people are as self-righteous. I think now they understand that people have got to live, they’ve got to work, and there ain’t nothing that’s given to you in this life. The only thing that’s given is God gave us a body, a brain and he gave us love , praise his name. I think we’ve got to work . You know, God put the birds here, and he put the worms in the grass, but the bird has to go and find them, you understand me? So God wanted us to know that there’s gold and silver there, but we’ve got to dig . When I say dig, we’ve got to work. Some people sit back and wait for things to be given, but there ain’t nothing like doing a good day’s work and getting paid for your job.”
He thinks the job he does in concert halls and nightclubs is beneficial.
“The music uplifts their spirit. It uplifts their soul. And I think it gives them joy. When they feel discouraged and depressed and down, I think I give them a lift. And that’s with all races, creeds and colors. They say Little Richard has still got it.
“Rock and roll is a fun music, more of a good-time music. I think with some of the stuff people hear on the radio today, they welcome rock and roll. Rock and roll did not carry violence with it. You see so much happening today that you didn’t back then. Then you could go see a show and know that you’d make it back home. Now you may not.”
It’s a dangerous world out there, but one worth braving for some things, he says.
“I encourage everybody , everywhere, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing to lay it aside and come to the Coach House to hear the originator. And you’re going to enjoy it. You’ll hear me scream ‘Tutti Frutti,’ ‘Long Tall Sally,’ ‘Good Golly Miss Molly,’ ‘ Rip It Up,’ and ‘Ready Teddy .’ Yeah. We’re going to give our all and let all the people come out of Orange County to hear some good ol’ rock and roll.
“It’s so remarkable. It’s a great feeling to be alive at this time, at the age of 61, to still be able to do it, and to still have the people--young, old, black, white, red, brown and yellow, the rich and the poor--come to see me . That’s so beautiful.”
Who: Little Richard.
When: Sunday, June 19, at 7 and 9:30 p.m.
Where: The Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano.
Whereabouts: Take Interstate 5 to the San Juan Creek Road exit and turn left onto Camino Capistrano. The Coach House is in the Esplanade Plaza.
Wherewithal: $29.50.
Where to call: (714) 496-8930.
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This veteran pop-rock band’s latest release rocks assuredly and demonstrates both its way with a melodic hook and singer Pat DiNizio’s ongoing fixation with relationships gone rotten. The Smithereens play Tuesday, June 21, at the Coach House, with openers the Grays. (714) 496-8930.
IN SANTA ANA: CHRIS LeDOUX
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IN LONG BEACH: JOHN DELAFOCE
John Delafoce & the Eunice Playboys are one of the most reliably rhythmic (i.e., irresistibly danceable) Louisiana Zydeco bands on the national circuit. Their show Wednesday, June 22, at the Long Beach Museum of Art launches a strong summer concert series at the museum. (310) 439-2119.