Little Richard (1932-2020)
- hearthesilence
- Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
- Location: NYC
Re: Passages
Impossible to imagine rock without his influence, he was a true innovator that had a big part in shaping the music's basic lexicon. The Beatles and Dylan cut their teeth on his songs, and I can't imagine Prince during his meteoric rise without him.
I saw Little Richard once. He wore the brightest, most sparkling shoes I've ever seen in my entire life. It was awesome.
- Blutarsky
- Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2017 10:09 pm
Re: Passages
This is such a massive loss. My grandmother has all of his original records and they still hold up as wild rockers that only Richard could create. His autobiography from the 1980s is a must read for the sheer amount of crazy stories Richard got into. John Waters also can relate some more.
I never saw him, but gosh I wish I did. He is an immense figure in both pop culture and music.
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- Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 9:46 pm
- Location: Columbus, OH
Re: Passages
And William Klein's oblique documentary on him, The Little Richard Story, is a wild and exhilarating portrait film that's a great match for the artist.
(Looked for it for years, someone plops it on Youtube a few years ago)
- colinr0380
- Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
- Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK
Re: Passages
Film-wise he also has a really show-stopping performance in 60s beach party movie Catalina Caper. Which is awkward because it happens near the beginning of the film, so there's nowhere for it to go but down after that!
It got riffed by MST3K, and I'll copy my write up from that thread here, since it also includes a link to the Little Richard performance in it:
It got riffed by MST3K, and I'll copy my write up from that thread here, since it also includes a link to the Little Richard performance in it:
He also turns up in the Danny Aiello-starring film satirising filmmaking, The Pickle, as The President of the Planet of Cleveland!Catalina Caper (the only colour film on this volume) is actually pretty fun for one of those seemingly endless Beach Party-styled films full of (30-something) teens dancing and loving whilst on summer breaks. Though the rather unnecessary artwork heist stuff made me long for the nail bitingly visceral and complex drama of a Swallows and Amazons plot rather than a 'Allo 'Allo-style 'fallen Madonna with the big boobies' real painting-fake painting tube switching plot. Its probably telling that the whole painting retrieval and bungling criminal plot disappears for about fifty minutes in the middle of the film for stuff about boys and girls having lovers tiffs before all grooving together on boats to the strains of the latest tunes (The Little Richard performance is the obvious high point of the whole film, though it happens ridiculously early on rather than being saved for the big climax). Its quite a (literally) colourful and vibrant film whilst simultaneously being rather listless and with no particular plot drive at all for large stretches!
And I know its ridiculous to morally critique a beach party film of all things, but I'm not entirely sure that the bungling criminals should have gotten away scot-free with their part in attempting to steal a painting. Just because they are the parents of one of the kids (who is suspicious of his mum and dad because they apparently get up to these kinds of antics all of the time!) and there are a bunch of more violent criminals who keep scuba diving over to dad's boat and beating him up for not having retrieved the painting yet, doesn't mean that the parents should have gotten away with it! But it allows for the happy ending I guess, so I'll let it slide just this once!
The MST3K gang seem a little subdued on this one. There are a few nice quips but I got the impression that the sheer length and relative lack of anything particularly noteworthy going on in the film itself made things hard going!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sat May 09, 2020 3:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
- soundchaser
- Leave Her to Beaver
- Joined: Sun Aug 28, 2016 12:32 am
Re: Passages
He’s also great in Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It — I’m pretty sure the title song has been stuck in my head since I first watched it.
- Feego
- Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2007 7:30 pm
- Location: Texas
Re: Passages
I'll never forget being introduced to Little Richard at age five in Shelley Duvall's bizarre Disney Channel special, Mother Goose Rock n Rhyme. Here's his big number (sorry for the poor quality).
- How rude!
- Joined: Wed Nov 14, 2012 1:36 am
Re: Little Richard (1932-2020)
Little Richard Inducts Otis Redding into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUvHBirr1PI
You need to watch this in full. Now that is charisma!
Also, from his neglected late sixties output, the blues!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLCFrPZKp9A
The last of the greats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUvHBirr1PI
You need to watch this in full. Now that is charisma!
Also, from his neglected late sixties output, the blues!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLCFrPZKp9A
The last of the greats.
- Rayon Vert
- Green is the Rayest Color
- Joined: Wed Jan 08, 2014 10:52 pm
- Location: Canada
- Contact:
Re: Little Richard (1932-2020)
That's a hell of an induction. Thanks for sharing!
- whaleallright
- Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 12:56 am
Re: Little Richard (1932-2020)
The legendary Dick Cavett episode with Mort Sahl, Rita Moreno, Alice Playten, Rosalyn Drexler, Erich Segal, Robert Kaufman, and... Little Richard (misdescribed by Greil Marcus in a oft-reprinted Creem magazine essay) is on YouTube here.
I know people often express nostalgia for this era of talk shows and "public intellectuals," but aside from Moreno and Little Richard (who interrupts the proceedings, hilariously, at several points), the conversation is insufferable and it's hard not to read Cavett's reactions to Little Richard as condescending.
In his very last years, Richard appears to have doubled down on his evangelical Christianity. His public statements on his own sexuality--documented in his quasi-autobiography, talk-show appearances, print interviews, documentaries, etc.--reflect a very deeply conflicted individual. Yet, even when denouncing homosexuality, he seldom denied his own sexual adventures. In fact, he was bracingly (if hardly completely) honest for a man of his time and place. And as people noted above, no matter what he was going on about, he did it with an almost superhuman level of charisma.
Got the sense that, like other rockers of his generation, he spent his last few decades being taken mostly for granted. Which I guess is to be expected when he was best known for music made in a brief period of time over 60 years ago.
I know people often express nostalgia for this era of talk shows and "public intellectuals," but aside from Moreno and Little Richard (who interrupts the proceedings, hilariously, at several points), the conversation is insufferable and it's hard not to read Cavett's reactions to Little Richard as condescending.
In his very last years, Richard appears to have doubled down on his evangelical Christianity. His public statements on his own sexuality--documented in his quasi-autobiography, talk-show appearances, print interviews, documentaries, etc.--reflect a very deeply conflicted individual. Yet, even when denouncing homosexuality, he seldom denied his own sexual adventures. In fact, he was bracingly (if hardly completely) honest for a man of his time and place. And as people noted above, no matter what he was going on about, he did it with an almost superhuman level of charisma.
Got the sense that, like other rockers of his generation, he spent his last few decades being taken mostly for granted. Which I guess is to be expected when he was best known for music made in a brief period of time over 60 years ago.
- hearthesilence
- Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
- Location: NYC
Re: Little Richard (1932-2020)
Bill Wyman wrote an extensive obituary for NYMag and it doesn't hold anything back - the direct quotes from Little Richard's authorized biography alone are pretty stunning.
- hearthesilence
- Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
- Location: NYC
Re: Passages
Actually just viewed a rip I downloaded from YouTube. GREAT film, and pretty hilarious that Little Richard walked out on the film. You never would've guessed it hampered Klein's film. It's just as well as it makes his appearance at the end even more startling, especially if you're unaware of this part of Little Richard's life. (I was because of a Letterman interview he did a few years later, but it's still a startling contrast to the archival footage used through most of the film.)
- L.A.
- Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 7:33 am
- Location: Helsinki, Finland