Rock and roll's pioneer is a queer, Southern Black man
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BRITTANY LUSE, HOST:
Hey, y'all, you're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Brittany Luse.
In stan (ph) discussions, there's a lot of talk about icons and legends, but there's no higher praise than your favorite artist's favorite artist. There are only a few names in a category like this - Michael Jackson, Madonna, James Brown, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones. But there's one artist - a rock star, in fact - who inspired all of those artists and, in turn, the artists after them.
LISA CORTES: His name is Little Richard, but his impact is anything but little.
LUSE: That's Lisa Cortes, director of "Little Richard: I Am Everything." The documentary recounts Little Richard's life in his own words, and he was never shy about letting people know who he was.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING")
LITTLE RICHARD: I'm not conceited.
(CROSSTALK)
LITTLE RICHARD: I'm convinced.
(LAUGHTER)
LUSE: But as proud as he was, he was also in deep conflict with the conventional post-war culture he found success in and himself. As a queer black man who encouraged young fans to break the norms, he often struggled with his own identity.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING")
LITTLE RICHARD: Oh, God, how can you save me? I'm homosexual. Oh, God, I'm not just a dope addict. I'm unnatural. I like men.
LUSE: The idea of a flamboyant, Southern Black man as a rock 'n' roll pioneer may seem at odds with the now-stereotypical idea of the white guy rock star. But when Little Richard passed away in 2020, artists like Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and more named him as an inspiration.
CORTES: We would not have a Lil Nas X or a Harry Styles if there wasn't the Little Richard DNA - the stardust that he kind of spread on everyone.
LUSE: The costumes, the performance, the sound of Little Richard echoes from Elvis Presley to Saucy Santana. Today on the show, Lisa Cortes walks us through Little Richard's queer influence on rock 'n' roll and cements his rightful place as the architect for so much we've come to know about modern music.
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LUSE: Lisa, welcome to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE.
CORTES: Hi, Brittany. Thank you for having me.
LUSE: Oh, my gosh. It's our pleasure. It's absolutely our pleasure. So you directed the film "Little Richard: I Am Everything." Sometimes when you see a documentary about a person who's very well known, you can end up going over a lot of the points that everybody's heard before. But I had a completely different experience watching your doc. It was drawing connections and sharing history that was so new to me. I wonder, in making this documentary and examining Little Richard's life legacy, music legacy so closely, what historical record were you trying to correct?
CORTES: You know, when we think of rock 'n' roll as this American cultural product, we don't see a Black face, and we certainly don't see a queer face associated with the origin story of rock 'n' roll. And Little Richard, you know, throughout his life, said, I'm the innovator. I'm the architect. I've started it all. But I always like to say, who influenced that artist, who also then has an effect on other people who follow Richard? So you take a little baby step backwards, and you're there with Sister Rosetta Tharpe. You're there with Esquerita. You're there with these artists who were queer - who were singing these songs that - you know, with Billy Wright that have explicit double-entendres, which is a part of the rhythm and the swagger of rock 'n' roll.
LUSE: You made a reference to these explicit lyrics or lyrics with real heavy double-entendres. For the listeners at home or driving in their cars (laughter) or listening to us, you know, elsewhere - can you give us some examples for listeners so they can get an idea of what you mean when you're talking about these lyrics?
CORTES: If anything, I want to maybe talk about a song that people know - "Tutti Frutti."
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LITTLE RICHARD: (Singing) Wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bom-bom. Tutti frutti, oh, rootie (ph). Tutti frutti, oh, rootie.
CORTES: We all sing along to it, not knowing that the original lyrics...
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING")
CORY HENRY: (Singing) Wop-bop-a-loo-mop a'good hot damn. Tutti frutti, good booty. Tutti frutti, good booty.
CORTES: If it don't fit, don't force it. You can grease it. Make it easy. It was a song about anal sex.
LUSE: Right.
CORTES: And then they brought in a co-writer to help clean up the lyrics. Don't you love us? I love us.
LUSE: (Laughter) You paint a picture, though. In sharing those lyrics, you really paint a picture of the world and the tradition that Little Richard came from - the way that he talked about sexuality, whether baldly or through entendre in the way - in his music. He was coming out of a scene. He was coming out of a tradition of other artists.
CORTES: Brittany. He knew long, tall Sally sneaking in the alley. You know, when I went to Macon, Ga., where Little Richard was born, and was able to interview and spend time in that community and talk to the elders who knew him, I was talking to one person. And he said, well, actually, that character is based on my cousin. And he called her up...
LUSE: Whoa.
CORTES: ...And he got her on the phone, and I was like...
LUSE: Whoa.
CORTES: ...Oh, it's lovely to meet you. I said, could we interview you? And she said no, and she hung up. And then he said...
LUSE: Oh.
CORTES: ...Oh, I'm really sorry. She's very religious now, and she doesn't want any connection made...
LUSE: (Laughter).
CORTES: ...Between her and the very vivid character in that particular song.
LUSE: Oh, my gosh (laughter). That just goes to show, though - Little Richard was somebody who was writing about his surroundings, absorbing his surroundings in community with other people who were not just people who were, like, sexually adventurous, let's say, and people who were, in many ways, I think, open or at least open to enjoying or celebrating their sexuality, but he also was in community with other queer people. I mean, Little Richard was not only queer - he was immersed in queer scenes and queer communities as a young performer. Can you lay that out for us? Because I felt like that was one of the most pivotal understandings that I came away with from the documentary.
CORTES: Well, I think the more we excavate LGBTQ history, we discover that there's a long tradition of gatherings with drag queens, drag kings and other nonconforming figures. So when Richard is thrown out of his home as a teenager for being queer, he's actually taken in by the owners of a club called Ann's Tic Toc in downtown Macon. And as told to us by the Macon historian, this was a gay bar. White and Black queer people came together there. And so there are these spaces that Richard inhabited not only in finding shelter, but then also when he went on the road in the Chitlin' Circuit and performed in drag as Princess Lavonne. And so there is lots of space that we would, from our historical perspective, question - was there safety for anyone who was gender-nonconforming? But history shows us that people found community.
LUSE: In addition to the community that Little Richard found, though, there also was so much mentorship that he received.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I think when people talk about Billy Wright or Esquerita's influence, they're like, oh, well, Little Richard just stole his whole swag. I think that's not exactly what's happening. They are kind of like the mirrors that come into your life to show you who you really are.
LUSE: Well, it's so evident in his music. But also, you know, there's a real flamboyance and energy to his performance style. His queerness showed up in the way he played, in the way he performed, in the way he even approached playing the piano - you know, something that he also was taught by his queer mentors. How were the sights and the sounds of Little Richard's music queer?
CORTES: What I learned about Richard in making this film is, you know, you sometimes look for comparisons. Like, who else is doing this? And he is singular and unique in what he is synthesizing, I believe, through a specific queer lens - a lens that allows for openness, unapologetic attack on the piano, of humping the piano - like, you know, don't give him a piano that he can't, you know, put one leg up on and start to hump.
LUSE: (Laughter).
CORTES: Who else is doing that in "The Girl Can't Help it," the classic rock 'n' roll film? - nobody else but Richard. Nobody else owns that. There's the call and response with - an engagement with his audience. He is inviting everyone to the bacchanal. He is normalizing this joyous engagement with life and a different way of possibility.
LUSE: Hmm. When you set it up like that - when you describe his performance style like that and I think about the postwar period - when, you know, he really became this huge national star in, like, the mid '50s - I mean, so much of it was pointing toward a very conventional, almost asexual way of thinking about relationships or adulthood or even being a young person. So much of what Little Richard brought to the stage and brought to his music and brought to his live performances really did stand in opposition to that very conventional 1950s way, at least in the United States, of thinking about what life was like or could be like.
CORTES: 1955, when "Tutti Frutti" comes out and Little Richard is unleashed on the world, you know, he brings a sense of danger. He brings a sense of anarchy in both his performance style when he's jumping off balconies onto the stage, when he is exciting kids, Black and white, to the point that segregated shows no longer are segregated because the kids just are partying together.
And so Richard, in a time of great aspiration for so many people because of the post-World War II opportunities - he's taking it even further, and he's taking it further fueled by sex.
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LUSE: Coming up, Lisa Cortes walks us through the industry's efforts to sanitize Little Richard's music while some of the most influential artists across the pond turn to him for guidance. And later on, we reassess what it means to consider the queer influence on rock 'n' roll.
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LUSE: One of the things that was really interesting in the documentary was a sequence where you all laid out how "Tutti Frutti" became a huge hit, but also how, even though that song was as good and as popular as it was at that time in 1955, many white radio stations or mainstream radio stations did not want to play Little Richard singing a song like that. And so they had some other recordings that they decided were more acceptable. There was a Pat Boone version that was so, to me, sanitized and stripped of its original context.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING")
LITTLE RICHARD: When the others couldn't stop me, they put Pat Boone on me.
PAT BOONE: (Singing) I got a gal named Sue - knows just what to do. I got a gal...
LUSE: When I was watching the documentary, I was laughing out loud 'cause I was just, like, oh, my gosh. It got at this theme of, like, sanitization - like, sanitizing - needing to sanitize Little Richard, needing to sanitize rock 'n' roll. How do you see that dynamic that played out in Little Richard's career where there would be popular white artists covering his hits that were releasing them at the same time?
CORTES: One of the things that I really wanted to explore in this film is what happens when artists like Elvis and even Pat Boone have greater success with Richard's songs. It happened several times with Pat Boone. The common denominator is race.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING")
LITTLE RICHARD: I was very disgusted because I was just coming on the scene. And all the white girls were screaming over me, and the system didn't like it. I was not supposed to be the hero for their kids.
CORTES: And whereas white artists might enjoy a performance by a queer Black man, the music industry had no interest in enriching or empowering him, you know? And the same was true for other Black performers who were cheated and had their music stolen. And the impact on Richard was devastating.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING")
LITTLE RICHARD: Did you know that Elvis Presley and Pat Boone sold more of "Tutti Frutti" than I did?
CORTES: I think it was important for people to understand what happened to Richard in the beginning of his career - for them to understand how the music industry operated and why he was so adamant about telling people as much as he could that he started all of this.
LUSE: Hmm. We talked about where you see Little Richard's influence today. But even back then - back in the '50s and the '60s, he essentially taught acts like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles how to rock. How much did Little Richard shape the biggest names in rock at that time?
CORTES: Well, in my film, you're going to hear Mick Jagger talking about how Little Richard taught him how to take his shirt off, work the crowd.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING")
MICK JAGGER: Watching Richard, you see, oh, you don't have to stand there. Use the whole stage. Richard would work that audience, get them up out of their seats, swaying, shouting, waving their arms.
LITTLE RICHARD: Well, all right.
CORTES: I love his telling of meeting The Beatles. You know, he has some really shady things that he could say. And when he talks about The Beatles and Brian Epstein introducing him to them in Liverpool, he goes...
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LITTLE RICHARD: They had never made a record.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: That's right. They were the support act.
LITTLE RICHARD: Didn't nobody know them but their mothers.
CORTES: You know, 'cause he really wants everyone to know that, before there was The Beatles, they idolized him, and nobody knew about them when he met them.
I think Prince is always such a great example because Prince, in his own way, put on the vestment, but he also gave you the spirit.
LUSE: Mmm. That is such a good point. If we reconsider Little Richard's legacy as a queer man, how should we reconsider the queer influence on rock 'n' roll?
CORTES: I don't think we need to reconsider. I think we need to consider and embrace - that from the beginning of rock 'n' roll, that queer people and the stylization and performance that they brought was intrinsic to the art form.
LUSE: Something you said earlier in this conversation where you were saying that, like, you know, when we think about rock 'n' roll - especially American rock 'n' roll - when we think about that, the face of that genre in many people's minds is not a Black face, as you said, or the face of a queer Black man. The shorthand is, like, somebody who looks like Keith Richards. But what does it look like to embrace rock 'n' roll's queer roots and queer legacy?
CORTES: Let's just look at rock 'n' roll. Rock 'n' roll is not about skipping through the meadows. A'rocking and a'rolling (ph) is how you work your s*** out - with a partner, right? Like, you know, rock 'n' roll, to me, is about that communion with the carnal. To not encompass the contributions of that carnality, I think you are forgetting about the spectra that exists with sexuality.
LUSE: Hmm. Hmm. Like, sexuality is so elemental to rock 'n' roll that to not look at the fullness of sexual expression is to kind of only be looking at a portion of the picture - of the history.
CORTES: A portion of it - yes. Oh, my God. Thank you. You did it. You said it for me.
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LUSE: I'm here to help (laughter).
CORTES: Yeah. But you know what, Brittany? Think of rocking and rolling. What else is rocking and rolling, you know, inherently connected to?
LUSE: I mean, I hadn't thought about it like this.
CORTES: Think of, you know, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley - all of the wonderful peers of Richard. When you listen to that music, there is a churn. And the churn is, I think, not only about a dance with sexuality but, in the case of Richard, a dance with spirituality. And how does the ecstatic...
LUSE: That is such a good word for it - ecstatic - because the ecstatic gives you the carnal and the spiritual. You can look at it both ways.
CORTES: Yeah.
LUSE: And sometimes, for some people, it's one in the same.
CORTES: And for some people, like Richard, it is an intense struggle.
LUSE: Yes. Little Richard, at times, was open about sleeping with men, but he also felt called by the church. And this internal struggle played out very publicly. He openly identified in interviews and on talk shows as ex-gay.
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LITTLE RICHARD: I'm not gay now, but, you know, I was gay all my life. I believe I was one of the first gay people to come out. But God let me know that he made Adam be with Eve and not Steve.
LUSE: He had, like, a couple, like, notable public relationships with women, one of whom was a teenage girl who he proposed to, but she declined. And another was a young woman that he met at a Bible college is how I - I think that's how I wrote it in my notes. Oh, my God. OK - but at a very conservative, you know, university.
CORTES: Yes. He met her within his faith, and they actually were married for a period.
LUSE: And she's - you know, she described him as an excellent husband, and he was described by these women as, you know, wonderful partners. Still, like, you know, there's all of this identity struggle that's playing out in front of the world, basically. What does it mean that one of the earliest pioneers of rock was both eminently queer and also, at times, rejected that part of himself in the public eye?
CORTES: I think that he becomes a character in a greater story. Richard's not the only one who is queer and conflicted because he feels that his God cannot love him. And this is an old story that's not limited to Richard. It's not limited to the - someone who was born in 1932. I think it goes back a long time in American history.
LUSE: It feels like - at least to me, as a viewer - that we're only just now really deeply discussing the fullness of Little Richard's personhood as a queer man after his death. What have we as music lovers and also - you know, what have the people who are walking in Little Richard's footsteps lost out on because of the delay in this full, deep examination of Little Richard's legacy and the fullness of his personhood as a queer man?
CORTES: Well, I do think that sometimes when you don't know your history, there can be a loss of not knowing how the road has been paved for you and what your responsibility is to continue opening up space for others to follow you.
LUSE: Hmm. We lose out on a lineage that reminds us to pay things forward. That's very interesting.
CORTES: Well, I think that's our responsibility, particularly in a culture that oftentimes is minimizing us.
LUSE: Hmm. Well, Lisa, thank you so much for coming on the show today. This was great.
CORTES: Great. Thank you, Brittany.
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LUSE: That was Lisa Cortes, director of "Little Richard: I Am Everything," which is available now on multiple streaming platforms.
This episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE was produced by...
LIAM MCBAIN, BYLINE: Liam McBain.
ALEXIS WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Alexis Williams.
LUSE: Our editor is...
JESSICA PLACZEK, BYLINE: Jessica Placzek.
BILAL QURESHI, BYLINE: Bilal Qureshi.
LUSE: Our executive producer is...
VERALYN WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Veralyn Williams.
LUSE: Our VP of programming is...
YOLANDA SANGWENI, BYLINE: Yolanda Sangweni.
LUSE: Our senior VP of programming is...
ANYA GRUNDMANN, BYLINE: Anya Grundmann.
LUSE: All right. That's all for this episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Brittany Luse - talk soon.
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