Little Richard to me is a timeless genius and as important as Elvis Presley. We think of his rock’n’roll power songs as having been around forever, but ‘Tutti Frutti’, ‘Long Tall Sally’, ‘Lucille’ and ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ all appeared in an incredible creative burst between 1955 and 1958. He was a timeless genius but got sidelined in the 1960s, possibly because of the rich plethora of talent around like Sam Cooke, Otis Redding and James Brown.

This book tells us so much about Little Richard – a man who was always happy in his shoes and in what he was doing in a time where people were overtly judgemental (as
opposed to the covertly judgemental masses who stalk social media today).

With his inimitable gender-crossing style, he must surely have been the main inspiration for Prince and many others – a black man wearing make-up and flamboyantly gender-neutral clothes, talking about religion and singing his lungs out … it must have been beautiful to watch.

Wish I’d seen in him in Liverpool in 1963, just casually strutting the stage holding a
chair in his teeth (as you do).

I thought we’d had some pretty wild times in The Christians but reading Spencer’s
depictions of Little Richard’s times with Larry Williams and Esquerita, I feel like our nights were pretty tame.

This book is an excellent read from a time when music led the way

Foreword by Garry Christian

About Spencer Leigh

Living in Southport, the journalist, acclaimed author and BBC broadcaster Spencer Leigh is an authority on popular music, especially the Beatles. He has written many music biographies including, most recently, Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and Buddy Holly. Collect the set!

Spencer Leigh has been broadcasting his weekly show, On the Beat, on BBC Radio
Merseyside for over 30 years and he has interviewed thousands of musicians. He has written over twenty-five books, hundreds of album sleeve notes and obituaries of musicians for the Guardian, the Independent and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Spencer is an Honoured Friend at Sir Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute of
Performing Arts (LIPA) and has a Gold Badge of Merit from the British Academy of
Composers and Songwriters.

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