I reviewed the new Little Richard documentary – Little Richard: I Am Everything – for Ebert.
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When I was in seventh grade, I saw an ad on Channel 61, the UHF station in Cleveland, for a two-disc compilation of Little Richard’s greatest hits. I’d read Nick Cohn’s great Rock from the Beginning (a.k.a., A-Wop-Bo-a-Loo-Bop-a-Lop-Bam-Boom), so I already knew I loved the *idea* of Little Richard, but hearing snippets of his songs in the TV ad let me know I was absolutely bonkers about the *sound* of him. I still have that compilation and I proudly started every edition of my nighttime college radio show with “Tutti Frutti.” Which is a long way of saying, I can’t wait to see this documentary! Thank you for bringing it to my attention.
By the way, does the documentary include a clip of Richard on the Dick Cavett Show, alongside John Simon, which was so famously described at the beginning of Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train?
Bill – yeah, I really dug it – particularly how many clips of him performing they included. Not too much from the 50s era – mainly because there isn’t a hell of a lot out there. But all the talk shows and crazy appearances in the 60s and 70s – concert footage from his nonstop touring – he was just a BEAST onstage! DRENCHED in sweat, the crazy outfits, standing on the piano, etc. He was just such a wild man.
and yeah – the SOUND.
The doc seems to take the view that the gospel stuff was somehow a betrayal of his true self – or an unfortunate switchback – which … okay, I get. But I still think this kind of attitude represents a failure on some level to grasp the whole of him. the same is true for Elvis. and I suppose Jerry Lee Lewis too. BOTH sides are equally true (I do get at that in the review – and that one expert did say in re LR: “He existed in contradiction”). Yes, but we really REALLY don’t like that now. (We didn’t like it back then either.). We don’t WANT him to “exist in contradiction”, we don’t WANT him to be “a problematic fave”, we want him to reflect our values back at us in a smooth unbroken mirror – and etc. Nobody SAID this outright. But everyone is very invested in the SUBVERSIVE Little Richard – but I would argue that in a way his gospel phase was the most subversive shit he ever did, lol.
also, his gospel stuff is so beautiful! It shows his range, vocally – that gorgeous falsetto!
so there’s the typical incomprehension of the academic secular world to understand these Southern boys and their faith – and how to reconcile that with their explosive sexual onstage personae. Why reconcile it? In the contradiction is the human condition.
I can’t remember if the Dick Cavett show clip is in there.