Rise to Fame
He was washing dishes at a Greyhound bus station in Macon when Specialty Records brought him to New Orleans in 1955. What came out of that session was 'Tutti Frutti,' a song that started as something unprintable until a local songwriter scrubbed the lyrics to make it radio-safe. Pat Boone's cleaner cover actually outsold him initially, which tells you everything about who the music industry thought the money was for. But the original stuck. By 1957, he had 'Long Tall Sally' and 'Lucille,' and was appearing in rock-and-roll films looking like nothing anyone had seen before.
In the Spotlight
He quit music at the absolute peak of it in 1957, deciding rock and roll was the devil's work and enrolling in Bible college. He came back, and by 1963 he was doing UK tours with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as his opening acts. The gender-bending persona, the pompadour, the pancake makeup, all of it was a template that Prince, David Bowie, and Elton John spent careers working inside. He did it first, in the early Eisenhower years, when none of it was safe.
Side Notes
His father kicked him out of the house for being gay. He spent the rest of his life oscillating between openly flamboyant queerness and evangelical condemnation of his own sexuality. Jimi Hendrix played in his backing band in 1964 and 1965, and left citing $1,000 in unpaid wages. 'Tutti Frutti' started as something anatomical that couldn't be broadcast, and Dorothy LaBostrie rewrote it in 15 minutes. He got famous from the clean version. The original was reportedly never recorded.
Final Chapter
He died on May 9, 2020, from bone cancer at his home in Tullahoma, Tennessee, reportedly with his brother, sister, and son present. He was buried on May 20 at Oakwood Memorial Gardens in Huntsville, Alabama. Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, and Elton John all issued statements. A 2023 PBS documentary, Little Richard: I Am Everything, directed by Lisa Cortes, explored his queer identity and the cultural history that kept obscuring it.