The Big Life of Little Richard

An expert, nuanced celebration of the late singer/songwriter’s life and music contextualized within the history of American music—in gospel, soul, and rock—and exploring both his influences as well as those he influenced as one of the Founding Fathers of rock ‘n’ roll, complete with an array of amazing photos “Tutti Frutti” “Good Golly Miss Molly” “Long Tall Sally” Little Richard. The pianist-singer set the template that a generation of musicians would follow—The Beatles, the Everly Brothers, Elton John, James Brown, the Kinks, and even Prince. He died on May 9, 2020, and The Big Life of Little Richard—nearly completed when the news broke, and then immediately updated¬¬—is the first life-to-death, serious, analytical, and contextual telling of the surrealistically unlikely ascension of Macon, Georgia’s Richard Wayne Penniman, who was, until his passing, the last rock god standing. Author Mark Ribowsky, acclaimed biographer of musical icons—Phil Spector, the Supremes, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding, Hank Williams, James Taylor, and Lynyrd Skynyrd—here chronicles the stage persona and the life under the makeup and pomade, the neon-lit duds and piano pyrotechnics, and his full-body dive into the waters of sexual fluidity. More than anyone, Little Richard embodied rock—more than Chuck Berry, more than Fats Domino, more than Buddy Holly. By the year 2020, Little Richard was bound to a wheelchair, his wild mane of hair gone, yet at age eighty-seven his electrifying smile still intact. He knew his bona fides as the rock era’s last man standing: the ’50s defined his reign at the top, and he extending his elder statesman status ever since. His biggest smash, “Tutti Frutti,” is one of the most covered songs in history—a staple of the pre-Invasion Beatles, and “She’s a Woman” Paul McCartney’s homage to him. Elvis pivoted from country to blues rock after Richard picked up on the inherent sexual overtures of R&B singers predating him, and made it a fundament of the new musical order. In The Big Life of Little Richard, readers travel from venue to venue, gig to gig, studio to studio, feeling the sweaty energy of a music session during a time when technology was limited to one or two tracks on an Ampex tape machine, vocals sung along with a live band, almost no overdubbing possible or necessary. They come to understand the artist’s music; his family life; his battles against racism; his musicianship; his interactions with other musicians, the media, and other celebrities; his lifelong inner conflict between his religion and his sexuality; and that whenever someone pushes rock to its outer borders, one should turn to Little Richard for assurance that anything is possible.