I haven’t seen anyone outside the oldies/beatles side of the classic rock fandom talking about the recent death of Little Richard and it makes me sad because he really was one of the main creators of Rock n Roll, especially the scream-singing style.
Chuck Berry defined Rock n Roll guitar, Elvis did…something, but Little Richard was the one who started the rocker voice, the screaming, the yelling, the vocal intensity of the the style. Without his work we wouldn’t have hard rock, punk, metal, screamo, basically every “hardcore” singing style. He started singing loud and fast so that white cover artists, who often covered and “stole” the songs of black artists, couldn’t successfully copy his style. The origin of scream-singing is his defiance of being screwed over by the white system.
The other thing he gave Rock n Roll was flamboyance, theatrics, glam. He was gay and, while closeted or struggling under societal homophobia for most of his career, still was openly flamboyant in both his music and personal style. This seeped into the genre of rock n roll itself, which has always been a little bit gay, a little bit colorful and high-voiced and on the opposite side of mainstream masculinity. His style was also a huge influence on the glam rockers.
Rock n Roll isn’t very old. It’s only really existed for about 65 years. Little Richard lived through all of that. The Beatles named him as a huge influence. Jimi Hendrix used to play guitar for Little Richard’s band. Almost every classic rock band has a song that’s just a knockoff of “long tall sally” or another one of his songs. His influence became a part of Rock n Roll itself.
