
Little Richard has died - coloneltcb
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/may/09/little-richard-dies-aged-83-rock-n-roll-pioneer
======
talentedcoin
Little Richard was a true legend — there will never be another like him. I
always can’t help thinking of this hilariously bonkers piece by John Waters
about interviewing him:

[https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/nov/28/john-waters-
me...](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/nov/28/john-waters-met-little-
richard)

“I was in this hotel and I had a Chrysler my mother had mortgaged her home to
get me. I went into the studio anyway, and they had me singing like Ray
Charles, BB King. They wanted me to sing the blues and that was not me. I got
on the piano and started singing: 'Woooooo!' They said: 'Oh boy, where did you
get that voice?' 'A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-wop-bam-boom!' and they said: 'That's
a hit'… and the rest is history.”

~~~
papeda
Bonkers indeed. An interesting point of comparison is this "interview" with
Prince, written over the course of months by the writer tapped to write his
memoirs [1]. It seems that Prince and Little Richard both had an extravagant
overflowing creative instinct that just...dazzled people. As someone whose
personality tacks way more toward clear and consistent structured logic, it's
interesting to see.

[1] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/09/the-book-of-
pr...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/09/the-book-of-prince)

~~~
agumonkey
Having watched a few videos of tutti frutti I can smell that Prince loved
Little Richard to bits.. there's an subtle yet uncanny similarity in stance
and rawness.

------
at_a_remove
Perhaps my favorite Little Richard song is "Troubles of the World." It isn't
your basic gospel, it has real passion and a kind of horror of the physical
realm to it. The organ lurches around like a carousel horse as he sings of
both wanting to escape the anguish of earthly life even as he looks forward to
being reunited with his parents with all of the feel of revelation in a
drunken moment. It was off of his second gospel album, a little break from the
rock'n'roll, often attributed to some difficulties he had with a plane being a
very sharp sign from God. It borders on the sacrilegious with the sound, but
the hope to escape misery in his voice turns the sound into a repudiation of
the world.

I'm not religious myself but I can feel what it must be like from the track, a
sense that the man wanted to escape this swampy carnival with leering pitchmen
even as you sense just how comfortable he is with the environment as a whole,
how well he fits in. Salvation must have seemed as out of reach, like any
brass ring, to a man lured by the money that came rolling in, flattered by the
adulation, pampered by the lifestyle, and at ease with casual accommodation of
his apparently voracious (and omnivorous) sexuality. Being a lot further to
one side of the Kinsey scale than the other must have been another layer on
the leaden robe, however gilt, as he struggled to heed the call.

He would of course go back to rock'n'roll. Like Willie Sutton said, that's
where the money is. And it's hard to argue with a paycheck, even as unsteady
as they are when they're royalties from the record business.

------
pfarrell
Little Richard’s induction of Otis Redding into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
is one of the best inductions ever.

It’s a mess, in a good way. It’s unorganized. Richard talks more about
himself, but it works and it’s pure Rock and Roll. RIP. He was a pioneer.

Seriously, watch the first minute. It’s beautiful.
[https://youtu.be/YUvHBirr1PI](https://youtu.be/YUvHBirr1PI)

~~~
derriz
Another wonderful tiny slice of LR is when he's interviewed about Jimi Hendrix
(search for "Little Richard on Jim Hendrix" on youtube - it's a very short
video). I must have seen it 20 or 30 times as I was a Hendrix fan and it was
on some VHS copy of a documentary on Hendrix I had at the time. In theory it's
an incoherent mix of religiosity, homosexuality, flamboyance and almost
narcissistic self-regard but for some reason on some level, it all seems to
make perfect sense. I've just watched it again - having not seen it for 20+
years and I'm still smiling as I'm typing this.

~~~
DonHopkins
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHlRa-
RPjWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHlRa-RPjWE)

"That time that he used to make my big toe shoot up into my boot!"

Wow.

His freaky look gave Jimmy Hendrix confidence.

~~~
pfarrell
Wow. I love both Jimi and LR and had never seen that! He was something else.
Thanks for mentioning it derriz and for posting the link DonHopkins.

------
yowlingcat
"...he was fond of saying in later years that if Elvis was the king of rock
'n' roll, he was the queen"

Absolute legend. The world has lost a singular titan connecting multiple
generations of flamboyant pop music excellence.

------
dorkwood
I think I'm reaching that age where more and more celebrities I'm actually
familiar with start to pass away.

I first heard Little Richard in the opening chopper sequence from the original
Predator. What a great scene!

------
ArtWomb
RIP. The Architect of Rock'n'Roll. He laid down the perfect track for all the
mothers out there keeping everything going this Mother's Day Weekend ;)

Little Richard - Thinkin' About My Mother (Take A)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13ZlB63K8Dw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13ZlB63K8Dw)

------
kingkawn
I saw little Richard live in the mid 90s when I was a teenager and he is to
this day one of the best live performances I’ve seen. He said at some point
that he had an opportunity to invest in the Beatles in the late 50s but
declined because he thought they were too closely copying him to succeed.

------
alrs
You can get an idea of how scandalous Little Richard was if you look up the
original lyrics to Tutti Frutti, "Loose Booty."

~~~
lostlogin
This is discussed in the article.

------
paul7986
Went to a music festival in Memphis (2006) on the water and while walking up
to our car a limo was driving by. The window rolled down and there he appeared
waving to us... make up to the max and all.

Fun memory as my friend sweetly and surprised said, "Oh, hi Little Richard."
Most of us didn't notice him until her greeting.

------
hnhg
The BBC just posted an interview with him from 1972 on Facebook:
[https://www.facebook.com/BBCArchive/videos/2691775331059950/](https://www.facebook.com/BBCArchive/videos/2691775331059950/)

------
lonelappde
A lot of people who came up in the 80s as 90s (when he returned after his
hiatus) saw him as a kooky famous for being famous musical celebrity, and had
no idea the amazing reason why he was so beloved and sought after by the
adults making movies and records.

------
tibbydudeza
Prince Version 1 has passed on :(.

------
8bitsrule
Richard didn't do wild stuff all of the time. I was blown away when I found
his soulful 'I Don't Know What You've Got' (1965, Don Covay song). Ay-yay.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMzX72GOOEQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMzX72GOOEQ)

It's said that's Hendrix on guitar.

------
cellularmitosis
Fans of Little Richard should look up Esquerita, who was a bit of a proto-
Little-Richard :)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esquerita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esquerita)

~~~
coldtea
He couldn't be "proto-" Little Richard since his "first solo studio recordings
came (...) around 1958".

Little Richard was already doing pop in 1952, and had Tutti Frutti become a
hit in 1955.

~~~
8bitsrule
Studio recording dates don't tell you much.

"With a six-inch pompadour, brocaded shirts, rhinestone shades, and a
rhythmic, belligerent style of piano playing, Esquerita was the original
Little Richard, years before Mr. Penniman tutti-frutti'd his way to stardom.
Working around the Dallas-New Orleans circuit in the early '50s...

[https://www.allmusic.com/artist/esquerita-
mn0000198922/biogr...](https://www.allmusic.com/artist/esquerita-
mn0000198922/biography)

Sample Esquerita;
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUF81FcZHMA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUF81FcZHMA)

~~~
dang
Off-topic (sorry) - would you mind emailing hn@ycombinator.com? I'd like to
invite a repost of a previous submission (a la
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20repost%20invite&sort=byDate&type=comment))

~~~
8bitsrule
1\. I have two email addies- one I _Never_ post online, one throwaway I check
once a month to keep it alive. 2\. Anything I post on HN is free (until the
ads show up) 3\. _Love_ that Schulz quote. (What a sad story that is.)

------
werber
Watch velvet goldmine

------
seizethecheese
I’m struggling to figure out how this is news that a hacker would find
interesting. I certainly don’t.

Celebrity death news is banal. If there has never been a front page article
about someone’s lived actions, we should not have one upon their death.

~~~
coldtea
> _I’m struggling to figure out how this is news that a hacker would find
> interesting. I certainly don’t._

I'm struggling to find how this type of comment is considered interesting. HN
is a social voting site for startup guys and hacker types. If enough users
upvote a story within some time frame (and nothing more involved happens with
the moderation), it goes to the front page. Simple as that, and has been
discussed at least a hundred times.

So whether someone can "figure" why hackers would find this news interesting
or not, hackers did find it interesting and upvoted it.

And why not? Hackers are not one-dimensional computer geeks. They have
curiosity, they care for music, they care for pop culture (not to mention
movies, comics, etc), they care for games, they care for science, they care
for a thousand things...

It's also not about the fact that some "celebrity died".

Little Richard for starters is hardly a current celebrity. Obvious as his
figure is to oldsters, most 20- 30-somethings today would't even know about
him, except in encyclopedical terms ("some old rock n' roll guy from the
fifties?") - if that.

He is celebrated by those who know about him not because of some contemporary
popularity, but for what he did 65-70 years ago. Which included significant
contributions to pop culture, rock music, gay representation, and other things
besides. Things hackers can, and apparently do, find interesting.

~~~
xoxoy
Kobe Bryant’s death submission was flagged immediately from this site, so OP
has a point. There’s nothing more hostile or controversial on this site than
who is allowed to have their obit stay on HN.

~~~
mercer
Is it hard to understand that people here apparently care much less about some
athlete who plays a rather US-centric game of sportsball than they do about a
Rock 'n Roll 'icon'?

Also, keep in mind that flagging a submission is often not meant as anything
more than a downvote. Whether that's appropriate or not, that's what happens.

IIRC I didn't downvote Kobe's death post(s) myself, but that was purely
because I was curious to read theories about what happened with the
helicopter. That's how little I care about that guy. At the same time, I know
very little about Litle John, uh, Richard, but I've just spent a good hour
watching videos and reading articles, because I _do_ care about Rock 'n Roll!
Your whining aside, this submission was well worth my upvote.

------
rp00
TIL Little Richard was alive yesterday

~~~
dang
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? We're
trying for a bit better than internet default here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
agumonkey
The cultural garden is getting dryer and dryer. More room for new flowers I
guess.

------
xoxoy
This is allowed but Kobe’s death wasn’t allowed. Funny.

~~~
apengwin
I don’t know why this got flagged This was very upsetting when hn refused to
acknowledged Kobe’s passing

