Macon Magazine

Lou Reed, whose work with the Velvet Underground influenced countless avant-garde musicians, said this about hearing Little Richard for the first time: "I wanted to go to wherever that sound was and make a life." And punk icon Patti Smith said that hearing "Tutti Frutti" "awakened a positive anarchy in a little girl's heart. Nothing was the same after hearing his exciting and excitable voice." In those years – in any years, really – nobody had ever seen anyone who looked like Little Richard. With his big hair, flashy clothes, penchant for pancake makeup and eyeliner, and that Cheshire-cat grin on his face, he was captivating – and he knew it. "ey don't like to dress like I do – I like to put it on," Richard, clad in a pink fringed blouse and sparkling headband, said smugly in a 1972 interview. "When I walked in the airport in London today a man dropped his cup of coffee." Alan Walden recalls being a teenager in Macon, sneaking out to check out the music scene downtown, then bam! ere was Little Richard, in the flesh. "Richard stepped out of a cab in a flaming red suit – I mean blood red, bright as could be," Walden said. "He had this parasol, which was red as well." Walden was stunned into shy silence, but his braver friend shouted out, "Tutti Frutti!" "And Richard turned around and shook his behind and struck a pose and said, 'Good booty!'" Walden laughed. "at's etched in my mind for life." BISEXUAL, OMNISEXUAL AND GAY Little Richard's sexuality is something he grappled with in a public, vulnerable way throughout his career. ough he often presented as thrillingly confident in his queerness, he doesn't seem to have been granted much internal peace on the topic. But the fact that he talked openly about his preferences at times when other public figures wouldn't dare was revolutionary. He would often switch up the label he gave himself – bisexual, omnisexual, gay, ex-gay, even once during an interview with Joan Rivers cracking himself up by saying, "I am gay, yes – I'm the originator! I think I was the first one of them, too!" Onstage, Little Richard was a juggernaut. He harnessed every bit of his power and worked the crowd with a combination of Sunday-service intensity and pure sensual allure, singing and playing with otherworldly fervor, baptized in his own sweat. A true theatrical showman, he refused to be upstaged, and gave everything he had to his audiences, including his clothes. He was known to climb on top of his piano and toss his sweat-soaked garments out into the frenzied crowd, a holy communion of sorts. In the Jim Crow 1950s, black and white audiences were assigned separate seating areas in venues, but nobody went to a rock 'n' roll show to follow the rules. Little Richard's early concerts were liberating and liberated. It's been said that the very first panties ever to be thrown onstage were tossed at one of his shows "WHEN I FIRST HEARD LITTLE RICHARD SAY 'AWOP- BOP-A-LOO-BOP ALOP-BAM- BOOM,' I KNEW I DIDN'T WANT TO SELL INSURANCE. I DIDN'T WANT TO BE A DOCTOR, LAWYER OR AN INDIAN CHIEF. I WANTED TO BE IN ROCK 'N' ROLL." -PHIL WALDEN PHOTO COURTESY MARK PUCCI MEDIA 36 maconmagazine.com | JUNE/JULY 2020

• Cover