American Legends: the Life of Little Richard

*Includes pictures*Includes Little Richard's quotes*Includes footnotes and a bibliography for further reading*Includes a table of contents"The grass may be greener on the other side, but it's still difficult to cut" - Little RichardA lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' American Legends series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most...
More Description

*Includes pictures*Includes Little Richard's quotes*Includes footnotes and a bibliography for further reading*Includes a table of contents"The grass may be greener on the other side, but it's still difficult to cut" - Little RichardA lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' American Legends series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. As the present generation of rock music devotees looks back to the early days of the genre, each fan base heralds one artist or another as the founder of the movement that swept the country in the 1940s and '50s. Titles such as "King of Rock" and "Father of Rock" are spread freely among a small group of pioneers that are revered today as the greats of early rock. Buddy Holly is noted for his combination of a traditional look with a driving beat and a refreshing, simplistic American style of romantic lyrics, Elvis Presley stands alone in terms of exerting a charismatic, seductive hold over his audience, and Chuck Berry is known for his guitar innovations and appeal to teen romance and the American automobile. Within this generation came Richard Wayne Penniman, a young blues singer from Macon, Georgia affectionately known to the public as "Little Richard." Whereas Holly, Presley, and Berry were daring innovators, Penniman based his appeal on an outrageous stage personality, a catalog of special vocal effects, a barbaric set of piano techniques, and a raft of nonsensical texts bordering on gibberish, many of which had to be significantly cleaned up for public consumption. Added to the gifts brought by rock music's other pioneers, Penniman represented the beginnings of soul and funk as blended into the new hybrid form, bringing with it a ferocious level of vocal and instrumental excitement.At the heart of the public's coronation of Elvis Presley as the "King of Rock" is a somewhat hidden suggestion that black American music made it all possible, despite few of the black artists receiving sufficient credit for the form's inception. Despite this unfortunate view, Little Richard was to be known by a myriad of nicknames, from "The Real King of Rock and Roll," "The Queen of Rock and Roll," "The Emancipator," "The Bronze Liberace," and "The Georgia Peach."The overriding phenomenon, in that era, was that black forms combined with traditional country had formed a new paradigm in this country's listening and dancing habits and that no one understood how to do it any better than Presley. Black entertainers were not, as one might suppose, resentful of Presley's success. He tended to be generous with his fellow artists, black or white, and Little Richard, in fact, referred to the Tupelo phenom's career as a "blessing" because the powers of the industry would not have allowed black music to break through without him. What he views as rock itself is an amalgam of Rhythm & Blues with variations of Boogie-Woogie - "Rhythm and Blues had a baby, and someone named it rock and roll," adding that "Boogie Woogie and Rhythm and Blues is rock and roll." As titles are concerned, Little Richard has always trumpeted his part in the formation of rock, having appointed himself the "Architect of Rock 'n' Roll," the moniker of "king" being already taken. In a view that sees Buddy Holly as an early experimenter, Little Richard declares that he, along with Presley, Berry, and Jerry Lee Lewis, "established rock as a real form." American Legends: The Life of Little Richard looks at the life and career of one of America's most influential musicians. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Little Richard like never before, in no time at all.