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Eddie van Halen 10/2020

Tapping virtuoso Eddie van HalenBorn in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on January 26, 1955 Edward Lodewijk – Eddie van Halen was the son of Jan van Halen and Eugenia (née van Beers). Jan was a Dutch jazz pianist, clarinetist and saxophonist and Eugenia was born Indonesian from Indonesian and Italian parents in the town of Rangkasbitung on the island of Java in what was then called the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Jan and Eugenie married in August 1950 and re-emigrated on March 4th 1953 on board of the ship “Sibajak” to Holland, where they settled in Amsterdam. Shortly after the birth of Eddie, the family moved to Nijmegen, where they lived at 59 Rozemarijnstraat. On February 22nd 1962 the Van Halen’s moved again, this time by boat across the Atlantic to New York. After which they proceeded on a continent-crossing journey by train to finally settle in California, where they lived in Pasadena at 1881 Las Lunas Street for two decades. It was here that the two Dutch born Indo-Americans started to write music history and the swirling Van Halen story began.

After experiencing mistreatment for their mixed-race relationship in the 1950s, the parents moved the family to the U.S. in 1962. They settled near other family members in Pasadena, California, where Eddie and his brother Alex attended a segregated elementary school. Since the boys did not speak English as a first language, they were considered “minority” students and experienced bullying by white students

Eddie and his older brother, Alex Van Halen, became naturalized U.S. citizens. The brothers learned to play the piano as children starting at the age of six. They commuted weekly between Pasadena and San Pedro to study with an elderly piano teacher, Stasys Kalvaitis.

Even though van Halen was never taught to read music, he learned by watching recitals of Bach or Mozart and improvise. From 1964 through 1967, he won first place in the annual piano competition held at Long Beach City College. His parents wanted the boys to be classical pianists, but van Halen gravitated towards rock music. Consequently, when Alex began playing the guitar, Eddie bought a drum kit for himself; however, after he heard Alex’s performance of the Surfaris’ drum solo in the song “Wipe Out”, he gave Alex the drums and began learning how to play the electric guitar. According to him, as a teen, he would often practice while walking around at home with his guitar strapped on or sitting in his room for hours with the door locked.

Van Halen and his brother Alex formed their first band with three other boys, calling themselves The Broken Combs, performing at lunchtime at Hamilton Elementary School in Pasadena, when he was in the fourth grade. He would later cite this performance as key to his desire to become a professional musician.

Eddie van Halen described supergroup Cream’s “I’m So Glad” on the album Goodbye as “mind-blowing”. He once claimed that he had learned almost all of Eric Clapton’s solos in the band Cream “note for note… I’ve always said Eric Clapton was my main influence,” he said, “but Jimmy Page is actually more the way I am, in a reckless-abandon kind of way.”

Eddie and his brother Alex formed the band Mammoth in 1972. Two years later, David Lee Roth joined Mammoth as lead singer and Mammoth officially changed its name to Van Halen and became a staple of the Los Angeles music scene, playing at well-known clubs like the Whisky a Go Go.

At a 1976 concert at The Starwood in California, the band opened for UFO. Kiss bassist Gene Simmons saw the performance, and said: “I was waiting backstage by the third song.” He asked the band about their plans, and they said: “There is a yogurt manufacturer that is going to invest in us.” Gene begged them not to go that route and invited them to record some demos at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village in New York City. Gene then signed them to his company and the band recorded early demos of their songs, including “Runnin’ with the Devil“. Excited about the band, Gene approached Kiss manager Bill Aucoin and Kiss frontman Paul Stanley about them, but they dismissed his desire to sign them to Aucoin’s management fold. Stanley later said he “rejected Van Halen to protect Kiss”, and that they made an effort to make Gene drop the band to “keep Gene in check”. The discouraging words caused Gene to rip up the contract, and he “let them go” after feeling he may have held the band back. The next year, Warner Records offered Van Halen a recording contract.

Van Halen’s major label debut, their self-titled 1978 album, launched the group into super stardom with hits such as “Runnin’ with the Devil”, “Ain’t Talkin’ ’bout Love”, “Jamie’s Cryin'”. The album also contains Eddie Van Halen’s instrumental “Eruption”, considered one of the best electric guitar solos of all time. The song globally popularized the technique of two-handed tapping, which he had painstakingly perfected after seeing Jimmy Page do it on the song “Heartbreaker”. The technique was first shown by Italian Guitarist-Physician Vittorio Camardese.

The band continued their success with a string a hit albums: Van Halen II (1979), Women and Children First (1980), Fair Warning (1981), Diver Down (1982) and 1984 (1984). By the early 1980s, Van Halen was one of the most successful rock acts of the time.

In late 1982 Eddie recorded the solo on the Michael Jackson song “Beat It” when Pete Townshend became unavailable and recommended him. Eddie met with Quincy Jones and Jackson. Unsure of what he could add to a pop song, he played along with the song and ended up restructuring it and adding the classic solo.

In a 2012 CNN interview, he said, “I listened to the song, and I immediately go, ‘Can I change some parts?’ I turned to the engineer and I go, ‘OK, from the breakdown, chop in this part, go to this piece, pre-chorus, to the chorus, out.’ Took him maybe 10 minutes to put it together. And I proceeded to improvise two solos over it.” He added, “I was just finishing the second solo when Michael walked in. And you know artists are kind of crazy people. We’re all a little bit strange. I didn’t know how he would react to what I was doing. So I warned him before he listened. I said, ‘Look, I changed the middle section of your song.’ Now in my mind, he’s either going to have his bodyguards kick me out for butchering his song, or he’s going to like it. And so he gave it a listen, and he turned to me and went, ‘Wow, thank you so much for having the passion to not just come in and blaze a solo but to actually care about the song and make it better.” Eddie was so pleased he refused payment for his work.

Ironically, Jackson’s Thriller went to the #1 spot on the charts, pushing Van Halen’s album 1984 to #2. 1984 went five-times Platinum a year after its release. Its lead single, “Jump”, became the band’s first and only #1 pop hit and brought them a Grammy nomination. Beat It  however became one of the best selling single ever, with more than 11 million copies sold.

In 1985 there was a falling out between David Lee Roth and the Van Halen brothers. Roth left and was replaced by Sammy Hagar. The change did not affect the Band’s popularity, clearly indicating that Eddie had the dominant drawing power of all the players in the Band. In later years Sammy Hagar was replaced by Gary Cherone, and at one point Roth actually returned for a few performances.

Van Halen engaged in several projects outside of the band, including solo work and partnerships with his brother on film soundtracks (such as The Wild Life, Twister, and Sacred Sin) as well as musical collaborations with Kiss bassist Gene Simmons, singer/songwriter Nicolette Larson, Queen guitarist Brian May, Sammy Hagar, Black Sabbath, ex-Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, and LL Cool J.

In 2004, Van Halen made a comeback and announced another national tour. The tour made stops in many cities. Unfortunately the tour was marred by reported dissension among the players. But the loyalty of Eddie’s, and the Band’s, fans still made it a triumphant tour. The success of the 2004 tour made it likely that another tour would be on the horizon. And in August 2007, the Band’s Fall 2007 tour was announced. It would begin at the end of September, and make about 40 stops. The Band’s original successful lead singer, David Lee Roth, would be back, and Eddie’s son, Wolfgang [Wolfie] Van Halen would play bass.

Van Halen struggled with alcoholism and drug abuse. He began smoking and drinking at the age of 12, and he stated that he eventually needed alcohol to function. He entered rehabilitation in 2007, and later shared in a 2015 interview that he had been sober since 2008. Rock and Roll lifestyle during his rock years probably led to his many illnesses over the years.

Speaking at an event at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in 2015, Van Halen discussed his life and the American Dream, saying “We arrived here with approximately $50 and a piano, and we didn’t speak the language. Now look where we are. If that’s not the American dream, what is?” Of course this was largely due to his talent and an era in history were his talent and tenacity to learn, was greatly valued.

Van Halen was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. His son, Wolfgang Van Halen, continued his father’s legacy when he became Van Halen’s bassist in 2006. During its life, the “Van Halen’s” album sales exceeded 75 million albums. Eleven of their studio albums reached the top 20 of the Bill Board’s music charts. The Band has the most #1 hits on Bill Board’s Main Stream, a record that is recorded in the Guiness Book of World Records. A total of 26 albums, 16 singles, 2 box sets and 5 videos of the Band were produced, marketed and sold.

Eddie Van Halen died from a stroke on October 6, 2020 after a 10 year battle with lung cancer. He was 65. He is survived by his son, his wife Jamie, and his ex-wife, Valerie Bertinelli, all of whom were by his side at the hospital.

Some Tributes:

Kenny Chesney – “He was a friend and and a hero to anyone who has ever picked up a guitar and had a dream,” Chesney wrote. “Eddie and his brother Alex joined us on stage at one of our stadium shows in Los Angeles and it was one of the highlights of my touring life in all my summers on the road. I will never forget that night and how happy we both were that our musical paths crossed that night on stage. Rest In Peace to the best guitar player that ever lived.”

Valerie Bertinelli, Van Halen’s ex-wife and the mother of his son Wolfgang, shared a moving message to her ex-husband on Twitter. “40 years ago my life changed forever when I met you,” Bertinelli wrote. “You gave me the one true light in my life, our son, Wolfgang. Through all your challenging treatments for lung cancer, you kept your gorgeous spirit and that impish grin. I’m so grateful Wolfie and I were able to hold you in your last moments. I will see you in our next life my love.”

Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler: “Just when I thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse, I hear Eddie Van Halen has passed. So shocking,” wrote . “One of the nicest, down to Earth men I have ever met and toured with. A true gent and true genius. RIP. So sad. Thoughts go out to his brother Alex, and his family.”

Styx frontman Tommy Shaw:“I was heartbroken to hear the news of EVH’s passing.”  “A genius musician and quite an interesting personality. I first met him when we shared a dressing room with them in Germany for a TV music show there in the ’70s. Van Halen was new and ascending, and I observed him practicing his amazing guitar riffs in a style I’d never seen before. His style influenced a new generation of shredders. It was sad to hear about his health struggles, but always seemed to overcome them. Thank you Eddie for the incredible gifts of your music and live performances. History and music fans will remember and cherish you with the highest esteem.”

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Spencer Davis – 10/2020

Spencer Davis was born Spencer David Nelson Davies on 17 July 1939 in Swansea. He later changed his name to Davis because he disliked being called “Daveys”. A musical child, he took up the harmonica and accordion and although he passed seven O-levels at Dynevor School, Swansea, he left at 16 and moved to London where he landed a job with HM Customs and Excise. He did not take to it. “We always wrote in red ink,” he remembered, “it was like writing in my own blood. I thought I was writing my life away.” After 18 months he returned to school to study for A-levels, became head boy and in 1960 enrolled at Birmingham University.

By then he was an enthusiastic amateur musician, keen on skiffle, jazz and blues, and an accomplished guitarist, influenced by the rhythm and blues he heard on the radio and on records imported from America. As a student he often performed on stage in the evenings, playing in folk clubs in and around Birmingham. In music circles, Davis was later known as “Professor”.

His early musical influences were skiffle, jazz and blues. Musical artists who influenced Davis include Big Bill Broonzy, Huddy Ledbetter, Buddy Holly, Davey Graham, John Martyn, Alexis Korner and Long John Baldry. By the time he was 16, Davis was hooked on the guitar and the American rhythm and blues music making its way across the Atlantic. With few opportunities to hear R&B in South Wales, Davis attended as many local gigs as practically possible. Continue reading Spencer Davis – 10/2020

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Peter Green – 7/2020

Peter Green – Peter Allen Greenbaum was born into a Jewish family, the youngest of Joe and Ann Greenbaum’s four children, on Oct. 29, 1946, in Bethnal Green, London’s East End. His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Ukraine. Fascism and anti-Semitism were on the rise in England as well as Germany in the years before WWII — thugs threw bricks and bottles through the windows of Jewish homes in the East End. After the war, Peter’s father officially changed the family name to Green.
The gift of a cheap guitar by his older brother Len,who had lost interest in learning how to play, put the 10-year-old Green on a musical path.
His other brother, Michael, taught him his first guitar chords and by the age of 11 Green was teaching himself. He began playing professionally by the age of 15, while working for a number of east London shipping companies. He first played bass guitar in a band called Bobby Dennis and the Dominoes, which performed pop chart covers and rock ‘n’ roll standards,including Shadows (Cliff Richards’ backing band at times). He later stated that Hank Marvin, lead guitarist for the Shadowd was one of his guitar heroes and he played the Shadows’ song “Midnight” on the 1996 tribute album Twang.

He went on to join a rhythm and blues outfit, the Muskrats, then a band called the Tridents in which he also played bass.
It was right around his 20th birthday when he got his first big exposure break, replacing Eric Clapton in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers — initially for just 4 gigs in October 1965, after Clapton abruptly took off for a Greek holiday. Continue reading Peter Green – 7/2020

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Moon Martin 5/20

May 11, 2020 – John David “Moon” Martin was born on October 31, 1945 (some report 1950 but not true) in Altus, Oklahoma.

If you go to Moon’s Wikipedia page, it says he was born in 1950. But if you read some of the obits, he was born in 1945. Which makes complete sense. If for no other reason than his hair was prematurely gray nearly instantly. And there’s no way he could have played with Hendrix and Joplin if he was only 20, they died in 1970. But Martin did.

His first band, The Disciples, later renamed Southwind, formed in Norman while he was a student at the University of Oklahoma and then relocated to Los Angeles where they attained some success and even toured with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix before calling it quits in 1972. After a brief stint playing with Linda Rondstadt, John focused on session work and songwriting, penning the hit track “Cadillac Walk” which was recorded by Mink DeVille on his debut album.

And then came “Bad Case of Loving You.”

By this time we’d already moved on to the second album, “Escape From Domination,” “Rolene” was heard on KROQ, back when that was a free form station, before the ROQ of the 80s, before the death of rock and the decimation of the station this year. But at this point, Moon Martin was not famous for the Robert Palmer cover, but the Willy DeVille covers.

By 1978 he was recording under the moniker “Moon” Martin due to his multiple song lyrics referring to the moon. He began his solo career with his Victim of Romance EP that included his most successful song “Bad Case of Loving You.” Robert Palmer – Singer would later cover the song, making it a Top 20 hit a year later. Moon’s first solo album, Shots From a Cold Nightmare, remains a Power Pop classic.

Moon Martin sold his soul to rock and roll. He followed the music to the very last note. He died with his guitar strap on, coming out of the studio after a full day’s work on a new album. It wasn’t a fling, something Moon did before law school. He had no desire to work at the bank. (Although let’s not forget Harry Nilsson was a teller!) It was all music, all the time.

It is said they he had lived comfortably off his song royalties, until the day he died. A true exception i rock-n-roll.

He was 74 years old, and he had become a little frail over the last few years…He went to sleep in a big easy chair in his living room with a book in his hand, a blanket in his lap, and a little glass of Coke on the nightstand next to him. He left this world as peacefully as anybody could ever hope to

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Little Richard 5/20

Little Richard in performance at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in New York in 2007. “He was crucial,” one historian said, “in upping the voltage from high-powered R&B into the similar, yet different, guise of rock ’n’ roll.”

Little Richard, born Richard Wayne Penniman, delved deeply into the wellsprings of gospel music and the blues, and screaming as if for his very life, he created something new, thrilling and dangerous, called rock and roll. Richard Penniman, better known as Little Richard, who combined the sacred shouts of the black church and the profane sounds of the blues to create some of the world’s first and most influential rock ’n’ roll records.

Little Richard did not invent rock ’n’ roll. Other musicians had already been mining a similar vein by the time he recorded his first hit, “Tutti Frutti” — a raucous song about sex, its lyrics cleaned up but its meaning hard to miss — in a New Orleans recording studio in September 1955. Chuck Berry and Fats Domino had reached the pop Top 10, Bo Diddley had topped the rhythm-and-blues charts, and Elvis Presley had been making records for a year.

But Little Richard, delving deeply into the wellsprings of gospel music and the blues, pounding the piano furiously and screaming as if for his very life, raised the energy level several notches and created something not quite like any music that had been heard before — something new, thrilling and more than a little dangerous. As the rock historian Richie Unterberger put it, “He was crucial in upping the voltage from high-powered R&B into the similar, yet different, guise of rock ’n’ roll.”

Art Rupe of Specialty Records, the label for which he recorded his biggest hits, called Little Richard “dynamic, completely uninhibited, unpredictable, wild.”

“Tutti Frutti” rocketed up the charts and was quickly followed by “Long Tall Sally” and other records now acknowledged as classics. His live performances were electrifying.

“He’d just burst onto the stage from anywhere, and you wouldn’t be able to hear anything but the roar of the audience,” the record producer and arranger H.B. Barnum, who played saxophone with Little Richard early in his career, recalled in “The Life and Times of Little Richard” (1984), an authorized biography by Charles White. “He’d be on the stage, he’d be off the stage, he’d be jumping and yelling, screaming, whipping the audience on.”

An Immeasurable Influence

Rock ’n’ roll was an unabashedly macho music in its early days, but Little Richard, who had performed in drag as a teenager, presented a very different picture onstage: gaudily dressed, his hair piled six inches high, his face aglow with cinematic makeup. He was fond of saying in later years that if Elvis was the king of rock ’n’ roll, he was the queen. Offstage, he characterized himself variously as gay, bisexual and “omnisexual.”

His influence as a performer was immeasurable. It could be seen and heard in the flamboyant showmanship of James Brown, who idolized him (and used some of his musicians when Little Richard began a long hiatus from performing in 1957), and of Prince, whose ambisexual image owed a major debt to his.

Presley recorded his songs. The Beatles adopted his trademark sound, an octave-leaping exultation: “Woooo!” (Paul McCartney said that the first song he ever sang in public was “Long Tall Sally,” which he later recorded with the Beatles.) Bob Dylan wrote in his high school yearbook that his ambition was “to join Little Richard.”

Little Richard’s impact was social as well.

Little Richard in the mid-1950s, around the time his first hit record, “Tutti Frutti,” was released.
Little Richard in the mid-1950s, around the time his first hit record, “Tutti Frutti,” was released.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

“I’ve always thought that rock ’n’ roll brought the races together,” Mr. White quoted him as saying. “Especially being from the South, where you see the barriers, having all these people who we thought hated us showing all this love.”

Mr. Barnum told Mr. White that “they still had the audiences segregated” at concerts in the South in those days, but that when Little Richard performed, “most times, before the end of the night, they would all be mixed together.”

If uniting black and white audiences was a point of pride for Little Richard, it was a cause of concern for others, especially in the South. The White Citizens Council of North Alabama issued a denunciation of rock ’n’ roll largely because it brought “people of both races together.” And with many radio stations under pressure to keep black music off the air, Pat Boone’s cleaned-up, toned-down version of “Tutti Frutti” was a bigger hit than Little Richard’s original. (He also had a hit with “Long Tall Sally.”)

Still, it seemed that nothing could stop Little Richard’s drive to the top — until he stopped it himself.

He was at the height of his fame when he left the United States in late September 1957 to begin a tour in Australia. As he told the story, he was exhausted, under intense pressure from the Internal Revenue Service and furious at the low royalty rate he was receiving from Specialty. Without anyone to advise him, he had signed a contract that gave him half a cent for every record he sold. “Tutti Frutti” had sold half a million copies but had netted him only $25,000.

One night in early October, before 40,000 fans at an outdoor arena in Sydney, he had an epiphany.

“That night Russia sent off that very first Sputnik,” he told Mr. White, referring to the first satellite sent into space. “It looked as though the big ball of fire came directly over the stadium about two or three hundred feet above our heads. It shook my mind. It really shook my mind. I got up from the piano and said, ‘This is it. I am through. I am leaving show business to go back to God.’”

He had one last Top 10 hit: “Good Golly Miss Molly,” recorded in 1956 but not released until early 1958. By then, he had left rock ’n’ roll behind.

He became a traveling evangelist. He entered Oakwood College (now Oakwood University) in Huntsville, Ala., a Seventh-day Adventist school, to study for the ministry. He cut his hair, got married and began recording gospel music.

For the rest of his life, he would be torn between the gravity of the pulpit and the pull of the stage.

“Although I sing rock ’n’ roll, God still loves me,” he said in 2009. “I’m a rock ’n’ roll singer, but I’m still a Christian.”

He was lured back to the stage in 1962, and over the next two years he played to wild acclaim in England, Germany and France. Among his opening acts were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, then at the start of their careers.

He went on to tour relentlessly in the United States, with a band that at one time included Jimi Hendrix on guitar. By the end of the 1960s, sold-out performances in Las Vegas and triumphant appearances at rock festivals in Atlantic City and Toronto were sending a clear message: Little Richard was back to stay. But he wasn’t.

‘I Lost My Reasoning’

By his own account, alcohol and cocaine began to sap his soul (“I lost my reasoning,” he would later say), and in 1977, he once again turned from rock ’n’ roll to God. He became a Bible salesman, began recording religious songs again and, for the second time, disappeared from the spotlight.

He did not stay away forever. The publication of his biography in 1984 signaled his return to the public eye, and he began performing again.

By now, he was as much a personality as a musician. In 1986 he played a prominent role as a record producer in Paul Mazursky’s hit movie “Down and Out in Beverly Hills.” On television, he appeared on talk, variety, comedy and awards shows. He officiated at celebrity weddings and preached at celebrity funerals.

He could still raise the roof in concert. In December 1992, he stole the show at a rock ’n’ roll revival concert at Wembley Arena in London. “I’m 60 years old today,” he told the audience, “and I still look remarkable.”

He continued to look remarkable — with the help of wigs and thick pancake makeup — as he toured intermittently into the 21st century. But age eventually took its toll.

By 2007, he was walking onstage with the aid of two canes. In 2012, he abruptly ended a performance at the Howard Theater in Washington, telling the crowd, “I can’t hardly breathe.” A year later, he told Rolling Stone magazine that he was retiring.

“I am done, in a sense,” he said. “I don’t feel like doing anything right now.”

Little Richard onstage at Wembley Stadium in London in 1972, on a bill that also included his fellow rock ’n’ roll pioneers Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry

Richard Wayne Penniman was born in Macon, Ga., on Dec. 5, 1932, the third of 12 children born to Charles and Leva Mae (Stewart) Penniman. His father was a brick mason who sold moonshine on the side. An uncle, a cousin and a grandfather were preachers, and as a boy he attended Seventh-day Adventist, Baptist and Holiness churches and aspired to be a singing evangelist. An early influence was the gospel singer and guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe, one of the first performers to combine a religious message with the urgency of R&B.

By the time he was in his teens, Richard’s ambition had taken a detour. He left home and began performing with traveling medicine and minstrel shows, part of a 19th-century tradition that was dying out. By 1948, billed as Little Richard — the name was a reference to his youth and not his physical stature — he was a cross-dressing performer with a minstrel troupe called Sugarfoot Sam From Alabam, which had been touring for decades.

In 1951, while singing alongside strippers, comics and drag queens on the Decataur Street strip in Atlanta, he recorded his first songs. The records were generic R&B, with no distinct style, and attracted almost no attention.

Around this time, he met two performers whose look and sound would have a profound impact on his own: Billy Wright and S.Q. Reeder, who performed and recorded as Esquerita. They were both accomplished pianists, flashy dressers, flamboyant entertainers and as openly gay as it was possible to be in the South in the 1950s.

Little Richard acknowledged his debt to Esquerita, who he said gave him some piano-playing tips, and Mr. Wright, whom he once called “the most fantastic entertainer I had ever seen.” But however much he borrowed from either man, the music and persona that emerged were his own.

His break came in 1955, when Mr. Rupe signed him to Specialty and arranged for him to record with local musicians in New Orleans. During a break at that session, he began singing a raucous but obscene song that Mr. Rupe thought had the potential to capture the nascent teenage record-buying audience. Mr. Rupe enlisted a New Orleans songwriter, Dorothy LaBostrie, to clean up the lyrics; the song became “Tutti Frutti”; and a rock ’n’ roll star was born.

By the time he stopped performing, Little Richard was in both the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (he was inducted in the Hall’s first year) and the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the recipient of lifetime achievement awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. “Tutti Frutti” was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2010.

If Little Richard ever doubted that he deserved all the honors he received, he never admitted it. “A lot of people call me the architect of rock ’n’ roll,” he once said. “I don’t call myself that, but I believe it’s true.”

Little Richard died on Saturday morning May 9, 2020 in Tullahoma, Tennessee. He was 87. The cause was bone cancer.