Little Richard

It, it, it, it was a massive bummer because, you know, these people don't have any-- If you were talking to the, to the artists, th- they would have a-- I know they would have a different perspective on it.

Because whenever I've seen people interviewed, they say, "Well, where do you think we got everything from? You know, we were standing on the shoulders of Chuck Berry or Little Richard or, or whatever, Elvis," whatever.

You know? They, they, there's this influence that goes through a conversation, that goes through music.

But yeah, these investment companies who own the pu- a lot of the publishing these days just see it as a, some massive grift.

Like, it didn't even just start with us.

You can go back to Pat Boone and, and, and artists like that who would take Little Richard songs-

Mm-hmm

... and because Little Richard couldn't step foot in these white establishments, they took a Pat Boone or an Osmonds or whatever, sing Black music, now it's accepted.

This is nothing new.

Like, this is, this is American history.

The historic recording engineer and studio owner passed away at the age of 88.

From his J&P recording studio, Matassa shaped the foundational architecture of early rock and roll and R&B music tracking hits for Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Ray Charles.

In 2020, reggae pioneer Toots Hibbert passed away.

The iconic frontman of Toots and the Maytels passed away in Kingston, Jamaica at the age of 77 due to complications from the pandemic.

But sadly, as early as 1956, the band's popularity in the United States began to plummet.

You know, there was acts like Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard kind of took over.

And then after Skinny Minnie hit the charts in 1958, Haley had little further success in the United States.

He soon cut off his kiss curl and went on his way.

And we'll talk about it more.

But, you know, one of his earlier stints as he was becoming a professional musician was filling in for Little Richard.

And when I say filling in for Little Richard, what I mean is replacing Little Richard where audiences were being told they were going to see Little Richard and they were not seeing Little Richard.

They were seeing James Brown.

This story is great.

So like the way, I'll just hop in to fill in the blanks real quick.

So like, you know, Little Richard and James Brown, I guess, knew each other somewhat.

Little Richard was ahead of the curve in terms of his success.

John Lennon said, if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might just call it Chuck Berry.

Little Richard can't compete.

Chuck Berry laid the blueprint down for rock and roll.

Little Richard was a force of nature, undeniably.

But Chuck Berry's influence was actually structural.

He created the structure of rock and roll.

They became mandatory for every rock guitarist who followed.

And he was the ultimate songwriter.

So we got songs from the Platters.

We got Frankie Avalon, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Dion, Little Richard, Joe Turner, the Everly Brothers, Bobby Darin, Carl Perkins, and a whole bunch more.

So sit back and enjoy some great music from the 50s.

We're kicking it off with the Platters, Great Pretender.

That was number 30, Teenager in Love, by Dion and the Belmots.

So we're going to end up the whole show ending with number one, the most popular song in the 1950s.

Up next, starting at 29, Long Tall Sally, Little Richard.

Gonna tell Aunt Mary about Uncle John.

So as high as those black musicians were rising, they were getting higher on the race chart, records chart, which was like the segregated charts for the black artists, and also starting to rise on the billboard charts, which was for the white artists.

major music industry started to create their own rock and roll artists so they would you know Elvis came along and there were kind of like quite a few other like the I think it's Georgia Gibbs the Gibbs sisters and they would often do a lot of covers of black artists so you'd find that and Pat Boone so kind of artists like that you'd find that say Little Richard would release a song and two weeks later Pat Boone would release his version of the song and that version of the song would rank higher on the Billboard charts and sell more records and also those white artists usually got better deals because of the way that music industry was structured and the racialization of kind of what was going on so they started to become a time as that happened years and years after years that what white American knew as rock and roll was those white artists that were charting, that were kind of getting more visibility, getting more promotion, were coming into the mainstream a lot more.

And alongside that, then there was a rise of music media, so Rolling Stone magazine, and they started to kind of codify what was rock and roll and change it into rock.

and then create these labels of kind of the idea of your rock star was authentic and he was kind of innovative a songwriter and they all revolved around white maleness so the people that were pillared as these kind of like icons of rock were bob dylan the beatles the rolling stones there was always a way to codify rock so it excuse kind of like shut out any women or any people of color And it was kind of like a multitude of those things, kind of like the, you know, fight back against racism that's happened at the time, the music media, the music industry, alongside the fact that by the late 60s, you know, the civil rights movement was happening and the Black Power movement was happening.