![]() Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images ![]() whose flamboyant persona and piano technique inspired Little Richard. While his authorised biographer went celestial in choosing to style Richard “ the Quasar of Rock”, perhaps we might do better to listen to the artist, introducing himself at the Club Matinee in Houston, Texas, in 1953: “Little Richard, King of the Blues … and the Queen, too!” The longstanding pissing contest over who can claim the title “King of Rock’n’Roll” – Elvis? Jerry Lee Lewis? – is a case in point. Rock’n’roll history has never exactly neglected or ignored Little Richard: it just has never quite known what to do with him. ![]() But “influence” is perhaps too weak a word here. ![]() A s the world marks and mourns the passing of Little Richard, many have been asking: how was someone so unapologetically black and queer present at the origins of rock, a world-shaking music still associated, to this day, with white male musical acts like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones?Īll these artists and more, including Bob Dylan in a Twitter thread, would be quick to acknowledge Little Richard’s formative influence on them. ![]()
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