“My means of expression, my music, was a way in which a lot of people wished they could express themselves and couldn’t.” “They saw me as something like a deliverer, a way out,” he once said. He was amazing,” Jagger said, according to White’s book. I couldn’t believe the power of Little Richard on stage. “There’s no single phrase to describe his hold on the audience. Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, no onstage slouch, was an admirer as well. And most times before the end of the night, they would all be mixed together.” With Richard, although they still had the audiences segregated in the building, they were there TOGETHER. “When I first went on the road, there were many segregated audiences. Barnum in Charles White’s 1984 biography “The Life and Times of Little Richard.” He brought the races together,” said arranger H.B. Little Richard, though … well, he may have come from a big Southern family himself, but he represented something else. But in the 1950s, when Little Richard came to prominence, he was like no other: a flamboyant, makeup-wearing, piano-playing black man who personified the “devil’s music” to establishment guardians.Įlvis Presley was one thing, but for all his pelvic thrusts and slicked-back, juvenile-delinquent hair, he was at heart a polite Southern boy who loved his daddy. The pioneer would have stood out in any era. PHOTO GALLERY: Images from Little Richard’s life Siegfried Loch/K & K/Redferns/Getty Images
