Reflections on ... Little Richard: I am Everything (2023)

 

I finally watched the 2023 documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything. (It's streaming on Amazon Prime). Director Lisa Cortés succeeds in making it feel cinematic, and the archival performance footage of Richard in his prime alone is worthwhile. The best “talking head” contributors are Richard’s late exotic dancer girlfriend Lee Angel and pioneering transgender nightclub entertainer Sir Lady Java - and John Waters, of course! (Waters recalls he used to shoplift Richard’s records as a kid, and that his signature pencil-line mustache is a direct “twisted tribute”). By comparison, big name guests like Mick Jagger and Tom Jones mostly offer show biz platitudes (and Billy Porter is self-aggrandizing). 

One thing it accomplishes nicely: so often hidebound rock critics and filmmakers get hung up on "who influenced who" which descends into "who ripped off who" as if it’s always a negative thing. It's common knowledge that when “the Georgia Peach” was just starting out as a performer without his persona cemented, two flaming queer Black male rhythm and blues musicians - Billy Wright and Esquerita - inspired his musical approach and appearance (the towering, processed conk, thick make-up and mustache). As one of the talking heads savvily argues, Richard didn’t “steal” from them: rather, they provided a mirror for Richard to see his true self. 

Similarly, Cortés gives Ike Turner his due. A musical expert notes that Richard's piano playing was beholden to Turner’s, something Richard admitted (he raved about the impact of hearing "Rocket 88", the 1951 Kings of Rhythm track widely considered the first-ever rock'n'roll single). Yes, Ike was a monster to Tina, but his trailblazing musical genius must be acknowledged. 

Also: I am Everything zeroes in on Richard’s commercial eclipse. Various theories are offered: all the acclaim went to Elvis. Richard was simply so black and queer that he threatened the musical establishment. And, of course, he kept jettisoning rock’n’roll to record gospel music instead. But ultimately, as someone clarifies, in the fifties, Richard’s primary audience was teenagers – the ficklest audience of all! By the early sixties, they’d simply moved on to the next big thing. 

The finale where Cortés demonstrates Richard’s effect on modern pop culture with a montage presumably meant to represent his spiritual descendants (Cher! Harry Styles! Lady GaGa! Lizzo!) is misbegotten. Are we meant to think anyone who ever wore sequins owes Little Richard a debt? (At least the inclusion of Lil Nas X - a modern flamboyant Black male performer - is apt). Richard was instilled with a sense of shame and guilt as a child, and throughout his life alternated between extreme hedonism and extreme fundamentalist Christianity. Sadly, as one commentator argues, Richard set a great liberating example for other people but rarely truly enjoyed that liberation himself.

Reflections on ... Little Richard: King and Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll (2023)

Just before the new documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything hit UK cinemas, the BBC swooped in with its own feature length effort, Little Richard: King and Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll by James House. (Apparently many of the same talking heads appear in both. Nile Rodgers reportedly recycles the same anecdotes!). The film is streaming on iPlayer now. I watched it last weekend. My thoughts! 

With hideous inevitability, Keith Richards and Ringo Starr are featured, so we get too much emphasis on how the Beatles and the Stones couldn't have existed without Richard. Then Rodgers recalls how when they recorded the awful Let's Dance album together, David Bowie declared he wanted to “sound like Little Richard looked”. I always cringe when boomer cultural gatekeepers imply a Black artist’s greatest contribution is “inspiring” white musicians. (See also: “Tina Turner taught Mick Jagger how to dance!”). 

More happily, one of the more eloquent and knowledgeable talking heads is New Orleans’ fierce Big Freedia - truly a flamboyant androgynous Black performer in Richard's lineage. Then there’s the regal and fascinating pioneering transgender showgirl / comedian Sir Lady Java, who acknowledges an awkward fact: it’s correct and understandable that Richard is being embraced as a queer icon, but as far as we know the great love of his life was a woman - the spectacular stripper Angel Lee, who resembled an escapee from a Russ Meyer movie!   

Prepare to be enraged that Specialty (Richard’s record label) withheld royalties, and that the ultra-square Pat Boone’s white bread cover versions vastly outsold Richard’s originals. (Boone appears and I don’t know whether to admire his guts or marvel at his lack of self-awareness!). At the 1988 Grammy Awards, while presenting Best Newcomer with Buster Poindexter, Richard went gloriously rogue. “And the winner is … me! The winner is – still me!” Then he accurately points out, “Y’all ain’t never given me no Grammy, and I’ve been singing for years!” He plays it mock aggrieved, and the audience laughs, but behind the scenes, a friend reveals this lack of acclaim caused Richard genuine tears. I will never stop being fascinated by this man. 

Further reading: my reflections on Little Richard's obituaries in 2020. 

Reflections on ... Little Richard's Obituaries

Some random reflections on Bronze Liberace and all-round Flaming Creature Little Richard (born Richard Penniman, 1932 - 2020) after a week of sifting through the deluge of online tributes and obituaries. Some trends I noticed: a fixation with trying to pinpoint who the majestic Georgia Peach influenced rather than evaluating him as an artist in his own right.  The stale pale male hetero baby boomer guardians of hidebound rock history consistently gave the weird back-handed compliment that “without Little Richard, there would be no Beatles and / or Bob Dylan”, as if Richard’s greatest contribution or achievement was to beget those honkies. Younger writers (I try to never use the expression “millennials”, especially not as an insult) get similarly befuddled when trying to contextualize Richard’s legacy. For them, he’s primarily notable for influencing modern singers like Lizzo, Janelle Monáe, Lady GaGa … and Bjork?!

I haven’t seen a single reference to the late, great pioneering transsexual soul diva Jackie Shayne (1940 – 2019), who I’d argue is one of Richard’s spiritual heirs. (The outrageous and regal Shayne looked and sounded like a hybrid of Little Richard and Eartha Kitt). Or, for that matter, bold soul sister Tina Turner. The relationship between Richard and the turbulent Turners is under-documented. Richard freely admitted that hearing “Rocket 88” by Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm in 1951 “made my big toe shoot up in my boot” and profoundly fired his own musical imagination.  (He “borrowed” the piano intro to “Rocket 88” for his own “Good Golly, Miss Molly”). Ike Turner and Richard were life-long friends (Richard wrote the introduction to Ike’s 1999 memoirs Takin’ Back My Name and delivered a eulogy at Ike’s funeral in 2007). And – let’s face it – the two men shared a cocaine habit in the seventies. The details are vague, but intriguingly, Richard claimed that when young unknown Anna Mae Bullock first joined Ike’s band, Ike begged him to instruct the novice how to sing. “Ike came and asked me to teach her. He asked me, “How would you sing this song?” And when I sang, he would tell Tina, “Now that’s what I want you to do.” But when she [Tina] talks today, she never mentions my name.”” (Having read both of Tina’s autobiographies, he’s right. Tina mentions the personal significance of LaVern Baker, Sister Rosetta Rosetta Tharpe, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Otis Redding and James Brown on her singing - but entirely snubs Richard). So, in theory, it could be argued, without Little Richard, there would be no Tina Turner (or at least not the raw, unabashedly sensual lioness Tina Turner we now know and love).  

/ The tempestuous Ike and Tina Turner in the early days /

In fact, for mainstream white straight writers there’s been little attempt to analyze Richard’s musical output or persona outside of the prism of white rock’n’roll or to understand the flamboyant black urban “chitlin’ circuit” rhythm and blues milieu of strippers, drag queens and minstrel shows he emerged from. Tavia Nyong’o’s piece in The Guardian is exemplary for locating him in this context. Richard didn’t invent the wheel or emerge from nowhere. As Nyong’o argues, by the forties – when the teenaged drag queen Richard was performing in travelling minstrel revues under the name Princess Lavonne - there was already a vibrant “black sexual underground” of “freakish men” (this, Nyong’o notes, was how “the black speech of the period named gender-non-conforming males” and not necessarily a pejorative). Richard had no shortage of positive role models to emulate here. There was Richard’s complicated relationship with wild man mentor, friend and lookalike Esquerita (aka Eskew Reeder Jr, 1935 - 1986).  There was "Hip Shakin' Mama" Patsy Vidalia (1921 - 1982), the “femme impersonator” entertainer and emcee of New Orleans night club The Dew Drop Inn, where Richard performed. There was queer R&B singer Billy Wright (1932 - 1991), who encouraged Richard to adopt his own signature dandified style of thick pancake make-up, pencil-line mustache and processed pompadour “conk” hairstyle. In these circles, no one would have batted an eye over Richard’s songs “Lucille” (about a drag queen) and “Tutti Frutti” (a paean to the joys of anal sex). Maybe Richard’s gift to the world was to introduce aspects of this debauched queen-y subculture above ground into white popular culture, thus loosening it up? Provocatively, Nyong’o asserts that white rock critics have consistently dismissed and misunderstood Richard’s gospel records as “inferior” to his rock’n’roll work. Maybe it’s time for those to be reappraised?

/ Below: the enigmatic Esquerita /

/  File Under Sacred Listening: The King of the Gospel Singers (1962) /

In his New York Times opinion piece “Little Richard’s Queer Triumph”, Myles E Johnson vividly evokes Richard in concert in Paris in 1966. At a climactic moment he strips-off his sweat-drenched shirt and hurls it into the crowd. Regardless of gender, everyone there would have fought each other for this sacred artifact, “For those in the audience, it must have been fantastical to see, and a deeply erotic thing to witness. To think, in 1966, a black queer man - over the course of his life he would identify himself as gay, bisexual and “omnisexual” - could be a sex god. He was a symbol of brazen sensuality, three years before Jimi Hendrix would use his tongue and guitar to catapult a nation beyond their prudish sensibilities at Woodstock.”

I also loved David Remnick’s testimonial in The New Yorker. Summarizing Richard’s frenzied musical attack in the fifties, Remnick concludes “he is a human thrill ride.” How succinct is that? He’s also eloquent on Richard’s lifelong, agonizingly painful conflict between his sexuality and his fundamentalist Christianity. Some gay fans find it impossible to forgive the ailing Richard’s disillusioningly homophobic 2017 interview in which he disparages his past and his homosexuality. But walk a mile in Little Richard’s shoes. This was, Remnick reminds us, the kid whose father kicked him out of the family home aged 13 for his effeminacy and who grew up marginalized and bullied (“The kids would call me faggot, sissy, freak.”). “It seemed evident that Little Richard both thrived on his sexuality but suffered terribly from the time that he had been cast out of his own home as a boy. Despite the flamboyance of his performances and his carriage, he never quite settled, publicly, on a sexual identity. Sometimes, he would say he was gay, sometimes bisexual, sometimes “omnisexual”; there were moments, feeling the weight of his religious background, when he even denounced homosexuality.”

Unsurprisingly perhaps, it’s cult filmmaker and The People’s Pervert John Waters - always voluble about his worship for Little Richard - who says it best. “He was the first punk,” he exclaimed to Rolling Stone. “He was the first everything … to me, he was always a great figure of rebellion and sexual confusion. People didn’t talk about him being gay or anything. I don’t know if he was beyond that because he was so scary. They didn’t even know what he was. He was a Martian more than being gay. It was like he was from another planet.” Maybe that’s Little Richard’s crowning accomplishment. In real terms, his musical heyday was brief. But he defiantly let his freak flag fly and gave others the freedom to follow his example. All hail the queen! We'll never see his like again.

/ Little Richard looked exceptionally beautiful on this day /

/ Below: my boyfriend Pal's tribute to Little Richard. T-shirt via Printers Unknown / 

Further reading:

My account of seeing Little Richard give one of his final public performances at Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekender in 2013. 

The Next LOBOTOMY ROOM ... Saturday 27 December 2014 at Paper Dress Vintage!

Escape the boredom that imprisons us all – at LOBOTOMY ROOM!

Frug, twist, watusi and monkey away your post-Christmas / pre-New Year’s Eve ennui - with the throbbing excitement of Lobotomy Room at East London boîte de nuit Paper Dress Vintage! 

Lobotomy Room – a punkabilly beer blast! A spectacle of decadence for the permissive Continentally-minded sin set! A Mondo Trasho evening of Beat, Beat Beatsville Beatnik Rock’n’Roll! Rockabilly Psychosis! Wailing Rhythm and Blues! Twisted Tittyshakers! Punk Cretin Hops! Kitsch! Exotica! Curiosities and other Weird Shit! Think John Waters soundtracks, or Songs The Cramps Taught Us, hosted by Graham Russell (of Dr Sketchy and Cockabilly notoriety). Expect desperate stabs from the jukebox jungle! Savage rhythms to make you writhe and rock!

Musical guest is JANE RUBY - the bluesy chantoosie who purrs and belts in a voice of pure pink cashmere. Perhaps best-known as the hour glass-contoured frontwoman of South London’s now-defunct voodoobilly band Naked Ruby throughout the 2000s, Ruby then sang and played guitar in all-girl surf punk outfit The Deptford Beach Babes – and now she’s seducing audiences with her new one-woman solo act. Ruby’s songs evoke visions of Ann-Margret in her Kitten with a Whip prime twisting frantically to Link Wray and are informed by her chequered past. Hailing from the wastelands of Adelaide, Australia has left the devilish red-haired singer a life-long glamour junkie, something Ruby indulged via her stints as a former nudie cutie artist’s model, dancer (Can-Can, flamenco and belly) and cocktail lounge jazz diva covering Billie Holiday and Nina Simone standards (an apprenticeship that still lingers in her femme fatale vocal antics). Ruby’s lyrics are sometimes spun from her real-life debauched alcohol-fuelled Janis Joplin-esque misadventures and sometimes are Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!-style revenge fantasies (assuming her songs about killing men are not based on firsthand experience). Blues, flamenco-tinged rock’n’roll and dirty stories are assured. If we’re lucky Ruby might even throw in a spot of belly-dancing!

All this and admission is gratuit. (That’s French for FREE!)

Lobotomy Room – a tawdry good time guaranteed!

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Lobotomy Room is kindly sponsored by Vivien of Holloway - for all your faux vintage glamour needs!

Flyer by Ego Rodriguez. The “cover girl” this time is cult movie actress / burlesk strip-tease artist / convicted felon / naive outsider painter / gangster’s moll / authoress of books including My Face for the World to See and How to Attract Men ... the fabulous Liz Renay (1926 - 2007). You inevitably know Renay best for her portrayal of the vicious Muffy St Jacques in the 1977 John Waters classick Desperate Living. She is the embodiment of Lobotomy Room!

Read about all the Lobotomy Rooms so far here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Las Vegas Grind 2012! Viva Las Vegas ... Followed by a Few Days in San Francisco

I’m only now finally getting around to blogging about my trip to Las Vegas (for Viva Las Vegas, the annual rockabilly weekender at The Orleans Hotel and Casino) and San Francisco while it’s all still vaguely fresh-ish in my mind. I returned to rain-lashed London on Saturday 14 April, went straight back to work and DJ’ing, been wiped out with jetlag (and then a cold) pretty much ever since. So these are just rough, random musings. (Because you know, otherwise I’m usually so eloquent and articulate. Right? Right?).

Anyway, Viva Las Vegas 2012 was an absolute blast, mainly because I got to hook up with loads of American friends (some of whom I haven’t seen since 2006!) and make lots of new ones.


"The gang" in 2006: me, Asher, David and Mitch. Everyone in this photo but Asher made it this year


The same group in 2006, this time including Rusty


Pretty much the same group of people, six years later! Thursday 5 April 2012. Left to right: Patrick, Mitch, David, Rusty, Jim and I at Ellis Island Restaurant. Compare the 2006 photo to chart our ageing processes!


Black T-Shirt Convention: Sharon, Natelle, Gary and I


Sweetpea from Seattle in Mexican Wrestler's Mask


Me, fabulous babe (and go-go dancer/burlesque artiste) Miss Kitty Baby (the Queen of Las Vegas!) and Rusty


Gary and Sweetpea

This VLV, therefore, was more about reunions with people and just hanging out – I saw shamefully few bands this year. One particularly noteworthy exception, though, was the mighty Royal Rhythmaires from Texas. They boasted a young female singer whose powerful blues shouter voice evoked great mid-century R&B female divas like Ruth Brown and LaVerne Baker.



Speaking of great female singers, I’ve somehow never managed to catch a full set by Vicky Tafoya, but she intrigues the hell out of me. In 2011, Tafoya and her band performed in Brendan's Irish pub (one of the more intimate venues at The Orleans) but it was filled to capacity and the security guard wouldn’t let any more people in by the time I got there. This year, she joined the pool party band one day as a guest vocalist for just one song: a sultry rendition of “Misirlou.” She has a belting voice, but it's her whole persona I find fascinating: raven mane of hair teased into a high pompadour, heavy white almost Kabuki face powder, and false eyelashes so thick they’re like black tarantulas on her eyelids. I can’t begin to do her justice –Vicky Tafoya is like an escapee from a John Waters or early Pedro Almodovar film.


Vicky Tafoya: Didn't manage to get a single decent shot of her because of the positioning of the mic stand. Still, you get the idea


Found this clip on Youtube! Vicky Tafoya singing "Misirlou" at the pool party

In terms of sojourns away from The Orleans (the casino/hotel where Viva Las Vegas is held), I was saddened to learn one of my all-time favourite “Old Vegas” dive bars (the sublimely sleazy Atomic Liquor) has permanently shut its doors in the meantime. It had apparently been a fixture there since at least the 1950s. I miss being buzzed through their glass front doors (extra security to keep out the local crackheads) to drink Pabst Blue Ribbon in the gloom, eavesdropping on conversations from the tough-as-nails barfly regulars straight out of a Charles Bukowski novel.


Atomic Liquor and Cocktails looking derelict by daylight in 2006


Portrait of me drinking at Atomic Liquor in 2006


Photo of the neon Atomic Liquor sign looking far more beautiful at night, taken by me in 2007 (the last time I visited Atomic Liquor)

I feel a rant coming on: Every time I go back to Vegas, one more mid-century historical landmark has been torn down to make way for another monstrous, soulless modern “mega-casino” (other recent-ish casualties: the Elvis-o-Rama museum,the Liberace museum, The Stardust where I saw Ann-Margret perform in 2005). Vegas is ruthlessly unsentimental in a misguided/short-sighted way, indifferent to its own glittering history. For the most part, the decadent Sin City “Old Vegas” playground of the Rat Pack, Marlene Dietrich, Liberace, Elvis and the Mob simply doesn’t exist anymore. The first time I went to Vegas (in 2003) I stopped by The Algiers (at the time one of the oldest surviving casinos on The Strip, directly opposite Circus Circus) for a drink. My memory of it now has a shimmering dream-like quality. The ultra 1950s pink stucco Algiers could only be described as David Lynch-ian: everyone in the place seemed to be a shuffling geriatric, giving it a senior citizens home vibe. The bar and pool area were eerily quiet, the pace was dreamily slow and haunting, seemingly soaked in seedy history, and the drinks were strong. The following year, I yearned to go back, but in 2004 it was demolished!

OK, diatribe over. I still happily sampled plenty of old school / atomic-era Las Vegas: meeting the guys for breakfast in the cafe of the Ellis Island casino (there's a great online review of the place: someone's cab driver warning them not to go there, it's the hang-out of choice for prostitutes and drug dealers! To me, that's a recommendation); cocktails and steaks at The Golden Steer; I got a tantalisingly brief glimpse at the intoxicating Frankie’s Tiki cocktail lounge. We were running late for dinner reservation at the nearby Golden Steer so we couldn’t stay long. I need to return to Vegas in 2013 just so I can properly experience Frankie’s! (Apparently if you wear a Hawaiian shirt to Frankie’s, you instantly get a 50% discount on cocktails, so you can guess what I’ll be packing. I can taste those Mai Tais, Stingers and Blue Hawaiians already!).


Frankies Tiki Room: I'll be back ...


My Lemon Drop cocktail at The Golden Steer


With my two suave dining companions Mitch and David. Re Mitch: Yes, Rohypnol really does work!


Sleazy does it! This elegant portrait really captures the Viva Las Vegas 2012 vibe: Chris, Tami and Patrick


Gary and Miss Kitty Baby having an intimate moment


The gorgeous Marisol from Los Angeles. At this year's VLV each of the bars at The Orleans were selling limited-edition souvenir glasses shaped like bowling pins or cowboy boots, etc. Needless to say, we went straight for the skulls!


My official Viva Las Vegas 2012 portrait! My skull contained triple Jack Daniels and Coke, by the way

Living in London, we’re starved for sunshine so the sun-kissed pool parties are always the highlight. In fact, even if Viva Las was just four days of pool parties, it would still be worth crossing the Atlantic for! Drinking potent spicy Bloody Marys in the balmy sunshine (switching to icy cans of Pabst Blue Ribbons when I couldn’t afford Bloody Marys anymore), surrounded by friends, to a soundtrack of live rockabilly, was sublime.


Saturday 7 April 2012: in this photo, you can see Mitch and David (shielding their eyes from the sun), Sweetpea (in purple dress, sucking on a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon), me (desperately reaching into my pocket for something -- or, more likely, reaching for my camera) and Anne Marie in the foreground (brunette with yellow flower). I vividly remember the kid in front of me and his zoot suit


Lisa and Patrick: they entered the couples's vintage swimsuit competition -- and won!


Heather and I at the pool party (her rum cocktail was good)


Pool party refreshments


Sean Law (from Canada) and Anne Marie (from The Netherlands)


Beefcake shot of Rusty


Cheesecake shot of Miss Kitty Baby


Patrick (in one of his dazzling cabana suit combos) and I


Wifebeaters unite! Scott and Jorge. (When I say "wifebeaters", I mean the Stanley Kowalski / young Brando white vests they're wearing -- I'm not implying they beat their wives!).

Other high points I didn't necessarily document with photos: the car show, the jiving contest and the Charles Phoenix Slideshow. Once again this year, I somehow managed to miss seeing Big Elvis (see the photo of Big Elvis and I together at the top of this blog, from 2010) and going to the punk bar Double Down Saloon -- yet more incentive for returning next year.

I’m so glad I organised a few days in chilled-out, bohemian San Francisco after Viva Las Vegas instead of heading straight home. It’s one of my all-time favourite cities in the world, and I hadn’t been there since 2007. It was sadly obvious the city has been ravaged by the recession since my last visit five years earlier: even more crazies, winos and crackheads wandering the streets pushing grocery cars and muttering to themselves (and there were already a lot) and some of my favourite burrito places are gone (RIP, Mariachi's Taqueria on Valencia Street. I never got to tell you how much I loved you).


San Francisco in 2012!

Mercifully (and most importantly), most of my favorite bars were still intact: the punk dive Lucky 13 (just up the block the ultra-basic but affordable Twin Peaks hotel where I always stay, situated just between The Mission and The Castro); Esta Noches in The Mission; Trax in Haight-Ashbury, and the scary but reliably excellent The Hole in the Wall in Folsom. In fact, it was in atmospheric nasty biker bar / sleaze pit Hole in the Wall I hung out with (and got quickly plastered over beers and shots of Jägermeister with!) the wonderfully affable rockabilly musician Kacy French (You might know him better by his professional name Damon Dogg. Do yourself a favor: Please do not Google “Damon Dogg” on your work computer!).


Kacy and I at Hole in the Wall


Portrait of Kacy at Hole in the Wall

Other highlights: happy hour post-work drinks with Little E, dropping a bomb of money buying CDs and DVDs at Amobea Records in Haight (where I almost got to catch an intimate acoustic set by my punk idols John Doe and Exene of the punk band X -- but didn't!), eating cheap and authentic Mexican food every day, a nice reunion with my old pal AJ. I didn’t make it to North Beach at all this year (so no book shopping at City Lights) – I’ll rectify that in 2013.


Window display of vintage boutique in The Mission


Tiki-inspired window display of vintage boutique in Haight-Ashbury

See more of my photos of Vegas/San Francisco (there's loads more!) on my flickr page

Feeling nostalgic? You can re-read my reflections on Viva Las Vegas here and 2011 here