BEFORE: Well, I was at work all day yesterday, didn't get a chance to watch the news. Did I miss anything?
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards carry over from "The Stones and Brian Jones".
THE PLOT: The meteoric rise and legacy of Little Richard - this portrait explores his far-reaching influence, still felt in pop culture today and his advocacy for the rights of Black artists in the music industry.
AFTER: Nothing changes overnight, not attitudes or trends or opinions - sure, there are key moments in history, like the first airplane flight or the invention of the light bulb, that we can point to, but getting to those moments took years, and then getting people to accept electric lights in their homes or taking the 3:00 pm flight to Minneapolis took a few more years. But if you were to interview Little Richard, he'd happily take credit for inventing rock and roll, but even then, there couldn't have been one specific moment, not even the release of "Tutti Frutti", it just doesn't work that way. He spent years as a struggling musician on the Southern "chitlin'" club circuit, developing his piano playing and his fashion sense, and then it took for that to be deemed "acceptable" in the mainstream. People maybe loved that record, and a few that came after it, but how many more people bought the Pat Boone cover of that song? Yeah, sure, racism might have been involved, and maybe homophobia, too, but people still liked the song, even if they didn't know what it was really about.
With hindsight, and the opinions of people in the LGBT+ community, we get more insight into that song - tell me you're gay without telling me you're gay, in other words. In Italian the words would me "all the fruits" or "very fruity", and you can learn even more by looking up the original lyrics to the song - oh, if only Pat Boone knew those lyrics, or maybe took five minutes to figure out what the song was referring to, he probably would have declined. Rock's tongue-in-cheek definition as "black music sung by white people" doesn't really tell the whole story, part of it is also "gay music sung by straight people", and really think about the lyrics of "Jailhouse Rock", another very homo-erotic song. "You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see?" Umm, you know there's only men in that jail, right? The very word "rock" started as a euphemism for another four-letter word, and you can make any song like "Rock Around the Clock" dirty by thinking about that.
"Good Golly, Miss Molly, you sure like to ball." It was right there, all the time, though for a couple decades people said, "Oh, that's not what the word ball means". Umm, yes it is. "With your rockin and your rollin, Can't hear your mama call." Miss Molly is having sex so loudly, she can't hear her own mother calling her. What's up that, and is Miss Molly really a girl, because girls don't usually need to put "Miss" in their names, so it could be a drag thing. This documentary points out that in some of the places Little Richard played on the circuit, like the Dew Drop Inn in New Orleans, really, anybody and everybody was there - pimps, prostitutes, politicians - and there was often a drag queen hostess, and this was way back before drag shows were popular everywhere. But there's a bit of a contradiction here, did Little Richard pave the way for drag culture and gay culture, or was it always prevalent before, just better hidden? Discuss.
It's clear that Little Richard (and Chuck Berry and Howlin' Wolf and Bo Diddley) inspired the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, and there apparently was a concert where Little Richard visited London, just before those two groups went from popular to mega-popular, and Keith Richards admits that he and Mick went up to the rafters in the theater, so they could watch how Little Richard moved on stage. But the story Little Richard told later about teaching McCartney to go "Whooo!" like him was obviously exaggerated. Hell, if you asked Little Richard in an interview about the moon landing, he'd say he taught Neil Armstrong how to get by in a tiny space capsule or how to walk in zero gravity. It's a lot like a certain former President taking credit for things he didn't do at all, like saying "I got America through COVID" or "I fixed immigration" or "I eliminated government red tape". Umm, no you didn't, you just played golf every day for four years.
There are signs of the former Richard Penniman's internal struggle as well - it took years for him to talk about being gay, he avoided the word "homosexual" for years in interviews, and then he spent years working as a preacher, like, sure, yeah, that'll fix it. Just find religion and sweep everything else under the rug - it doesn't work that way. Even the conversion therapy pushed onto teens by organized religion does more harm than good, by making gay people feel like shameful sinners. So then years later, after the pendulum swung back the other way, and we had George Michael and Freddie Mercury and Elton John and it was "cool" to be gay, then Little Richard mounts a comeback and says he invented the whole thing.
The concert in front of the Beatles and the Stones was presented here as something of a turning point - Little Richard hadn't performed or had a hit record in a while, would he play something proper and religious, or something loud and boisterous to get the whole room dancing? A long pause, and then he broke into "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" - and the whole place went crazy, people dancing out of control, they just had to move. The devil on the shoulder won out, because that music was what gave the singer the most applause, the most appreciation from the crowd. Makes sense, with all the drugs available to musicians, the applause is perhaps the most addictive one.
There's a clip from the Grammys one year where Little Richard was a presenter, and he couldn't help but take credit for Buster Poindexter's big hair. Yes, we know, you used to have big teased hair too, but that doesn't mean you invented haircuts. Poor Jody Watley, she had to wait to get her Grammy award as Little Richard pulled the "the award goes to ME!" trick, not once but maybe five times. To be fair, it got a little funnier each time, and after three times it was hilarious. Little Richard also pointed out that he never won a Grammy, and naturally he felt he should have, having invented rock and roll and all that. Well, he was part of the first group of acts inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, isn't that something? And he got a Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Recording Academy (which puts out the Grammys).
But I remember that Elvis didn't get his Grammys for rock, he got them for his gospel albums. Why couldn't Little Richard do the same thing, put out gospel records? Well, according to Wikipedia, he did, during that five-year period where he quit rock and roll and became a born-again Christian, 1959-1964. I can only assume that either the market wasn't there, or the albums were terrible, worse than hearing the early Beach Boys play in concert. I will try to investigate this further if the tracks are on YouTube. But I can predict that Little Richard probably didn't bring the same spirit to his Gospel music that he brought to "Good Golly Miss Molly" or "Tutti Frutti", I'm guessing it was all or nothing, either listen to the angel on one shoulder or the devil on the other. More on this topic tomorrow.
But suggesting that we might not have Prince or Lizzo or Harry Styles without Little Richard, that seems like a little bit of a stretch. I think society still would have gotten there, it just might have taken a little bit longer. I still maintain that a certain percentage of the kids today are coming out as pansexual or non-binary just because it's trendy to do that. Sure, it's a bold personal move, and it probably feels very liberating, just bear in mind that when the pendulum swings back the other way and the Christian Nation takes over in the next insurrection, now they're going to know where to find you - and they'll be checking your status on the socials.
Also starring Lee Angel, H.B. Barnum, Pat Boone (last seen in "Mr. Warmth - the Don Rickles Project"), Big Freedia, Ron Jones, Rev. Bill Minson, Charles Moore, Deacon John Moore, Nile Rodgers (last seen in "If These Walls Could Sing"), Bobby Rush, Sir Lady Java, Ringo Starr (also carrying over from "The Stones and Brian Jones"), Tyina L. Steptoe, Charles “Dr. Rock” White,
with archive footage of Little Richard (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Chuck Berry (last seen in "The Beach Boys"), Robert Blackwell, Bill Boggs (last seen in "Night Falls on Manhattan"), David Bowie (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Billy Crystal (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), José Diaz-Balart, Celine Dion (last seen in "Pavarotti"), Alan Freed, Leeza Gibbons, Merv Griffin (last seen in "Love to Love You, Donna Summer"), Arsenio Hall (ditto), Elton John (ditto), George Harrison (also last seen in "The Stones and Brian Jones"), Brian Jones (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Charlie Watts (ditto), Bill Wyman (ditto), Michael Jackson (last seen in "Elton John: Becoming Rocketman"), Elvis Presley (ditto), Rick James (last seen in "Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James"), David Johansen (last seen in "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie"), Martin Luther King (last seen in "Elvis"), David Letterman (last seen in "You've Been Trumped"), Lizzo (last seen in "Hustlers"), Liza Minnelli (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Janelle Monae (last seen in "The Beach Boys"), Prince (last seen in "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"), Arthur Rupe, Harry Styles (last seen in "Don't Worry Darling"), Big Mama Thornton (last seen in "Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away"), Mike Wallace (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), Jody Watley
RATING: 6 out of 10 messages from God
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