Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

I'm older than rock and roll so I didn't grow up on it. My first introduction to it was with Little Richard's contemporaries, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and The Everly Brothers. My younger brother (by three years) knew who all the early rock and roll performers were and still has most of their records. I can't recall when I first heard of Little Richard or saw him perform. He may have been great, but he was never on my radar any more than Jerry Lee Lewis whose name always seemed to pop up with his.

My parents were huge fans of Bing Crosby, Perry Como and Nat King Cole, my father of Vaughn Monroe as well, my mother of Rosemary Clooney and The Andrews Sisters and my grandmother, who sang antiwar songs during World War I, of Gene Autry and Kate Smith. Her favorite songs were "You Are My Sunshine" and "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier" which she sang all the time. That's the kind of music, along with whatever was playing on the radio, that I heard while growing up. My own branching out into other types of music was with the folk songs and singers of the late 1950s and early 1960s and the folk and modern rock singers and bands of the mid 1960s and early 1970s.

I think of him as slightly before my time -- certainly before my culture-cognizant time -- but of course I've spent all the years since catching up with him. Indispensable.

And, yeah, the idea that the guy who did an ersatz Tutti Frutti outlived the real McCoy is insulting...but true to our times.

It's unjust that we now live in a world where Little Richard is dead and Pat Boone is alive. Even so, for all the evils rock and roll was supposed to bestow upon us, the vituperative moralizers apparently didn't realize that "the devil's music" was good for the lifespan. Little Richard was 87, Fats Domino was 89, and Chuck Berry was 90. I'm still waiting for that rock musician to reach 100 years old and I though Little Richard was going to be the one.

Untethered, lewd, a howler when he wasn't screaming, and the first gay icon of rock and roll, even if your (white) parents tolerated rock and roll they hated Little Richard. Mine did, and for me that amounted to a seal of approval. He was the only rock musician from the 1950s that I saw live, back when he was a mere stripling of 65, and it was amazing to see him grab hold of an outdoor crowd of thousands (most who were probably there out of interest or respect). At this point he was more campy showman than sexy rock pioneer, but exhilarating all the same. And Magilla, after reading your comment, I swear I thought I heard a distant voice from the heavens saying "Shut up!"

Good golly, Miss Molly! I thought he had died a long time ago.

Story.

Another major one. RIP.