By A.D. Amorosi No one can do a Little Richard composition like Little Richard. In the finest moments from the rock and roll pioneer — who died Saturday at the age of 87 — self-penned songs were as flamboyant as his appearance.
Informed by his Georgian roots in the Pentecostal church and the nightlife business (tellingly, his dad was both a deacon and a nightclub owner), every Little Richard song came straight from the heart, the soul, the hair and the pelvis.
The syncopated horn charts, the chugging rhythm, the howling, pleading vocals, the sheer theatricality — Little Richard was an architect of all rock and roll that followed.
Read more on variety.com