Little Richard died on May 9th
The king of rock & roll and hero for a generation of musicians was 87
WHAT WAS it, that thing he had? What was it that propelled him in 1955 from washing pots at the Greyhound bus station in Macon, Georgia, to being such a star that girls fainted to see him and he was paid $10,000 an hour? And from a cat that everyone laughed at, never good for anything but scrubbing dishes, into the inventor of the sound that formed a whole generation of music-makers, from the Beatles to James Brown to Elton John to the Rolling Stones? Because almost everybody agreed: he was the one.
This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline “Gonna have some fun tonight”
Obituary May 23rd 2020
From the May 23rd 2020 edition
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