“You ain’t supposed to hide anything – you got it, God gave it, show it to the world!” An interview clip early in Little Richard: I Am Everything gives the rock ‘n’ roll icon a chance to spell out his mission statement. Director Lisa Cortes, taking her subject’s own words, indeed attempts to connect Little Richard with everything: the mainstream success, the white bread covers, the gospel era and, time and again, the flamboyant showmanship that many at the time might not have recognized as queer, but was undeniably loud and proud. Really, the straightest thing about the profile is the conventional chronology. Still, the cosmic connective tissue doesn’t quite help one get over the feeling that this straightforward structure wasn’t the best way to showcase such a mercurial powerhouse of a performer. But what would be?
Aired on BBC in 1972, the clip came at a time when Little Richard was perhaps more emboldened to show his true self on television, and the way he eyeballs a soft-spoken BBC interviewer (who’s almost androgynous himself) is practically a public seduction. It’s a fascinating clip, and sums up Richard’s sexuality, his musicality, his outrageousness and his clarion call to self-expression. (And in this era, one can’t help but notice how much he looks like Prince.) But as inspirational as the artist is seen in one sense—acolytes frequently tell us how his antics gave them the freedom to be themselves—the movie doesn’t seem to know what to do with the conflict that led Little Richard to pivot in and out of religious fervor throughout his career.
What other doc subject earns talking head endorsements from Mick Jagger and John Waters? But the power of that first clip suggests that the clips themselves tell a story that’s simply amplified by the queer artists and scholars that make up the lion’s share of the commentary. The varieties of fashion and the different talk show hosts alone tell a story about the media landscape Little Richard navigated: from early clips of Pat Boone lamely trying to make hay out of “Tutti Frutti” to appearances on shows hosted by David Letterman, Donny and Marie and Arsenio Hall, there’s a narrative, and one that the film’s talking heads acknowledge at a crucial point: Little Richard appealed to everybody.
It’s instructive to note the range of interviewers who want to share their love of Little Richard, but as inclusive as the lineup is, it somehow feels incomplete. As Specialty Records scholar Billy Vera explained, “there’s something about this music that made black kids and white kids wanna be together.” And if in that sense the endorsements are integrated, on one level there are questions left unanswered: did his religious awakening inspire anybody? The problem may be that the artist himself didn’t know how to integrate the conflicting sides of himself. Keith Winslow, a classmate of Little Richard’s at the historically black Seventh-Day Adventist Oakwood University, comes closest to dealing with these opposing facets. Winslow ended up being Little Richard’s road manager, and tells stories from both sides of the pulpit: “There were times I went and slept in the bathtub because the rest of the suite was full of naked people.” But at the same time Richard would read the bible: “we had prayer every day.”
As scholar Jason King says, “he was very good at liberating other people through his example; he was not very good at liberating himself.” There are great ideas here, but something doesn’t sit well, as if continuing the artist’s strange pattern of recognition and denial: at the 1997 American Music Awards, right after he tearfully accepts a Merit Award, the show’s producer has the bright idea to cut to Celine Dion. And the film’s closing credits run over an uninspired late career version of “Tutti Frutti” which kinds of negates the spirit of the man at the height of his powers. What is this, PBS? Little Richard: I Am Everything doesn’t quite know what to do with all the conflicts that made Richard Wayne Penniman tick and holler. But neither did he.
Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
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