I never met Little Richard, but I did spend some time with Dewey Terry, who played in his band. We sat in front of Dewey’s bungalow on Johnny Otis’s estate in Pasadena, drinking Mickey’s Malt Liquor while Dewey played guitar and talked about studio sessions and orgies. At some point, he picked up the phone and said: ‘Let’s go see Richard!’ I was young – 26, 27 years old – but I knew who Little Richard was and what he meant to the world, and was relieved when no one answered the phone. Why would you want to meet Little Richard? What would you say?
‘He did it so good. He give it all to you, and that’s what you want. You want it all or none.’ That’s what Little Richard said about Jimi Hendrix – who toured and recorded with Richard before striking out on his own – but it’s also a perfect description of Little Richard’s appeal and aesthetic. ‘Don’t be ashamed to do whatever you feel,’ he told Hendrix. ‘The people can tell if you’re phony. They can feel it out in the audience. I don’t care if you’re wild. I don’t care if you’re quiet. They’ll know if you’re putting yourself into it, whatever it is.’
Hendrix wasn’t the only musician Little Richard took under his wing. Otis Redding, James Brown, Joe Tex, the Beatles, the Stones and others apprenticed with his band or opened for him. When Richard called himself ‘the originator, the emancipator, the architect of rock’n’roll’, he wasn’t exactly right but also not remotely wrong. ‘He was my shining star and guiding light back when I was only a little boy,’ Bob Dylan said the other day. ‘Little Richard came screaming into my life when I was a teenager,’ Paul McCartney said. ‘I owe a lot of what I do to Little Richard and his style; and he knew it. He would say: “I taught Paul everything he knows.”’
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