‘Little Richard: I Am Everything’ Makes Case For His Claim As True King Of Rock N’ Roll 

“I am the originator. I am the emancipator. I am the architect. I am the one that started it all,” said Little Richard after receiving the American Music Award of Merit in 1997. The new documentary, Little Richard: I Am Everything, makes a strong case to back up his claims. Directed by the documentarian Lisa Cortés, it uses celebrities, educators and archival interviews to examine and explain how the singer, songwriter and piano player changed music and society as a whole, creating some of the greatest rock n’ roll of all time and breaking down racial and gender norms along the way.  

Richard Wayne Penniman grew up poor in Macon, Georgia, one of 12 children. As he points out, there was no rock ‘n’ roll when he was born in 1932. At church he heard gospel and down on the corner he heard the blues. He was torn between the sins of the flesh and the light of God throughout his life. It was a habit he learned at home. His father was both a minister and a nightclub owner who sold bootleg whiskey on the side. 

Writer and Georgetown University professor Zandria Robinson notes that, “the South is the home of all things queer, of the different, of the non-normative.” She is one of several scholars from both the Black and queer communities who provide insights into the complex world Richard inhabited. Though it feels pedantic at times, it works in the film’s favor, providing context and illustrating how his reach goes beyond the confines of oldies rock n’ roll. 

Little Richard was different from the start. He was born with one arm and leg shorter than the other. He enjoyed playing with his mother’s makeup and jewelry as a child, for which he was often punished. He says his father never liked him. “I never could do nothing good,” he tearfully recalls in an old interview. His father later kicked him out of the house. He found shelter at Ann’s Tic Toc, a Macon nightclub where Black acts performed that was also a safe haven for the local gay community. 

Inspired and goaded onto stage by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the unsung “Godmother of rock n’ roll,” Richard began blending the fervor of gospel music with the Earthen tones of rhythm and blues. He performed on the “Chitlin’ Circuit,” the legendary network of black clubs that thrived during segregation, where he encountered openly gay musicians who sang bawdy lyrics and he sometimes performed in drag. There were other early rock n’ rollers and then there was Little Richard. He wore makeup and fine suits. His music was louder, faster, more outrageous. 

Though he was recording as early as 1951, Little Richard didn’t come into his own until 1955’s “Tutti Frutti.” An ode to anal sex before the lyrics were rewritten, Richard became a master of double entendre. On stage he radiated sexuality and privately had both male and female lovers. His ability to bring together white and Black audiences led to enmity from the powers that be and the musicians in his band recall being run out of town on more than one occasion. 

In 1957, Richard had a religious epiphany while on tour in Australia and dramatically quit music to enroll in a Black Seventh-day Adventist university. He married a fellow student and he and his wife adopted a son though they would later divorce. This was the first in a series of  about-faces, swearing off the excesses of rock n’ roll stardom for the supposed redemption of religious piety, his conflicted feelings about his own sexuality intertwined with his art and faith. Financial considerations, however, would repeatedly lure him back to the stage and all the temptations that came with it before another return to the church. 

Like many Black artists of the era, Little Richard saw little money from his original hits while inferior cover versions by white artists undercut his own sales. Though he often softened the blow with humor, he bitterly spoke out about how others had appropriated his music and reaped the rewards which eluded him. He was one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s inaugural class but tragically missed his induction following a car accident. Upon receiving the American Music Award of Merit, he was overcome with emotion before reminding the audience how much he deserved it.    

Little Richard: I Am Everything often feels like a cross between a musicological gender-studies course and a dreamy music video. While talking heads expound upon his cultural importance with sober efficiency, musical interludes and subtle animation touches connect the dots of his existence between the sacred and the profane, the Earth and Heaven, to which he ascended in 2020 at the age of 87. It ends with a montage of the myriad artists he influenced, from the Beatles to Harry Styles. As we learn earlier in the film, even Elvis Presley called him, “the true king of rock n’ roll.”  

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.