A stirring addition to such revisionist rock and roll-related documentaries as “Summer of Soul (Or… When The Revolution Could Not be Televised)", “The Velvet Underground” and “Moonage Daydream,” Lisa Cortes’ “Little Richard: I Am Everything” takes perhaps the original rock music pioneer and argues that he was marginalized because of his sexual orientation and never given the acclaim and riches he deserved.
Before James Brown, before Otis Redding, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson and Prince, there was Little Richard aka Richard Wayne Penniman, one of 12 children of hard-pressed parents from Macon, Georgia. His father was a preacher who ran a nightclub and moonshine. Richard’s granddaddy had a piano. The boy played. The family attended the Baptist Church in New Hope and the local AME Church. His peers called him “sissy,” “punk” and other slurs. He loved to wear make-up and his mother’s clothes and even the curtains. He was also disabled with limbs of different lengths. As a boy, his father “put him out.” “I been through that,” chimes in gay activist Billy Porter, one of many musicians, gay and straight, interviewed for the film.
Among them are Mick Jagger, who toured with Little Richard in mid-'60s, Paul McCartney, who confesses that the Beatles trademark “scream” was borrowed from Little Richard, and Sir Tom Jones, who also toured with Richard. Influenced by the likes of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, young Richard hit the Chitlin’ Circuit with such acts as Sugar Foot Sam from Alabam, where Richard heard “dirty blues” and found that sexual lines blurred at night. Little Richard even dared to headline a drag show band dressed as Princess Levonne. Inspired by cross-dressing piano player Esquerita and gay Atlanta singer Billy Wright, who helped Little Richard get a recording contract and whose pompadours Little Richard copied, Little Richard recorded a bowdlerized version of the gay sex ditty “Tutti Frutti” in 1955.
The song is considered by British publication Mojo to be the No. 1 “Top 100 Records That Changed the World” and the tune that “gave birth to rock and roll.” Reviled as “n-word music” by white-owned radio stations, the recording was played by independent DJs across the country and became a smash hit. Believe it or not, a recording of "Tutti Frutti" by Pat Boone, who was enlisted to “tone down the Blackness,” sold more than Little Richard’s version. Little Richard soon followed “Tutti Frutti” with hits such as “Lucille,“ ”Long Tall Sally,” “Good Golly, Miss Molly” and “Keep A-Knockin.”
We see clips of Little Richard performing and being interviewed on “American Bandstand,” The Merv Griffin Show” and “The Mike Douglas Show.” In 1964, Jimi Hendrix joined Little Richards’ Upsetters band as a full-time member. Filmmaker, gay culture observer and Little Richard fan John Waters admits to stealing the Little Richard mustache. Another commentator, a gay music scholar, notes that Little Richard played “boogie” with his left hand and a more percussive, innovative sound with his right.
Little Richard’s act was so popular, it broke down the walls of segregation in the South, where white teenagers sneaked into “colored” performances. In spite of his outrageous openness, Little Richard was torn all his life between being loud and proud about his sexuality and, because of his early religious training and beliefs, being deeply ashamed of it and trying to suppress it. It was a war being fought by a musician from Macon and by the entire United States, if not the world. Featuring a vast wealth of relevant and never-seen archival material from a very deep well, “Little Richard: I Am Everything” is a riveting, rollicking and anguished tale for this turbulent moment in our times.
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'LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING'
Grade: A-
Not Rated (contains mature themes and profanity)
Running time: 1:41
How to watch: Now in theaters; on VOD April 21
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