Featured In
ALBUMTry to Help Your Brother (feat. The Little Richard Band) - SingleLittle Richard
Albums by Little Richard
ALBUMLifetime FriendLittle Richard
ALBUMLittle Richard: The Georgia PeachLittle Richard
ALBUMRight Now!Little Richard
ALBUMThe Second ComingLittle Richard
ALBUMKing of Rock and RollLittle Richard
ALBUMThe Rill ThingLittle Richard
ALBUMThe Explosive Little RichardLittle Richard
ALBUMLittle Richard Is Back (And There's a Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On!)Little Richard
ALBUMThe King Of The Gospel SingersLittle Richard
ALBUMThe Fabulous Little RichardLittle Richard
Little Richard's Popular Music Videos
Good Golly Miss Molly (Live from Toronto Peace Festival)
Little Richard
Artist Playlists
Little Richard Essentials
The original wild man of rock 'n' roll.
Inspired by Little Richard
A guiding light for early rock 'n' roll's howling excitement.
Artist Biography
Many rock 'n' roll hits of the '50s might now sound almost tame. But even decades after they were first pounded out, Little Richard's singles have lost none of their shrieking-and-shouting intensity. And if they still feel like two-minutes-and-change jolts of pure joy today, they were blasts of liberation for teenagers in a decidedly more buttoned-up era. Macon, Georgia’s Richard Wayne Penniman, who died on May 9, 2020, brought the ecstatic belting of Baptist gospel into pop, blending it with the foot-stomping beat of the electrified blues. His gender-bending flamboyance shocked moralists while giving a voice to outsiders, scorching a path toward David Bowie's glam androgyny and Prince's gleefully pansexual revolution; the rip-it-up force of songs like "Lucille" and "Tutti Frutti" carried an unmistakable sexual charge. Those glorious torrents of wop-bop-a-loo-bop were barely concealed code for everything you didn't talk about in polite society, while also hitting you as pure ecstatic pop release. Meanwhile, his cross-cultural popularity was a battering ram against music's ruthlessly enforced racial barriers. Attacking his piano with an infectious sense of mayhem, Little Richard blurred the sacred and the profane into a scandalously beautiful roar.
Hometown
Macon, GA, United States
Genre
Rock