{"id":4679,"date":"2020-05-15T03:39:12","date_gmt":"2020-05-15T09:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/?p=4679"},"modified":"2025-07-03T04:31:48","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T10:31:48","slug":"penniman-shelley-and-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/15\/penniman-shelley-and-lee\/","title":{"rendered":"Penniman, Shelley and Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Little Richard died Saturday. He instinctively figured in my review<\/a> of Martin Aston’s Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache: How Music Came Out<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Richard Penniman was kicked out of the house by his father; that and a lewd conduct sentence sent \u201cLittle\u201d Richard on the road as Princess Lavonne, whose act employed elements of his idols. Including lyrics: his hit \u201cTutti Frutti\u201d was inspired by Carmen Miranda\u2019s \u201cThe Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat,\u201d and was given the drag act treatment with explicit rhymes that begin with \u201cbooty\u201d but were bowdlerized in the booth. This began a series of, mm\u2026, seminal singles, many of which had their genesis in his drag act. But, as Aston explains, Little Richard became remorseful, retreating to gospel at the decade\u2019s end, returning only with reticence to the rock\u2019n\u2019roll he\u2019d essentially invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n