Richard Wayne Penniman (December 5, 1932 – May 9, 2020), known professionally as Little Richard, was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. He was an influential figure in popular music and culture for seven decades. Described as the "Architect of Rock and Roll", Richard's most celebrated work dates from the mid-1950s, when his charismatic showmanship and dynamic music, characterized by frenetic piano playing, pounding back beat and raspy shouted vocals, laid the foundation for rock and roll. Richard's innovative emotive vocalizations and uptempo rhythmic music also played a key role in the formation of other popular music genres, including soul and funk. He influenced numerous singers and musicians across musical genres from rock to hip hop; his music helped shape rhythm and blues for generations.
Richard Wayne Penniman, known by his stage name Little Richard, is an American recording artist, songwriter and musician. He has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for more than six decades. Little Richard's most celebrated work dates from the mid-1950s, when his dynamic music and charismatic showmanship laid the foundation for rock and roll. His music also had a pivotal impact on the formation of other popular music genres, including soul and funk. Little Richard influenced numerous singers and musicians across musical genres from rock to hip-hop; his music impacted the rhythm and blues era for future generations to come, and his performances and headline-making thrust his career right into the mix of American popular music.
Little Richard had been making records for four years before he rolled into Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studio in New Orleans and cut the epochal "Tutti Frutti" in the fall of 1955, but everything else he'd done – and much of what others had recorded – faded into insignificance when Richard wailed "A wop bop a loo mop a lomp bomp bomp" and kicked off one of the first great wailers in rock history. In retrospect, Little Richard's style doesn't seem so strikingly innovative as captured in 1956's Here's Little Richard – his boogie-woogie piano stylings weren't all that different from what Fats Domino had been laying down since 1949, and his band pumped out the New Orleans backbeat that would define the Crescent City's R&B for the next two decades, albeit with precision and plenty of groove.
Much worthy English music issues from the atéliers of minor talents and has a cottage or "small beer" quality. Of course "small beer" (locally brewed) can put the grand variety to shame, and so too in music, where dedication within limitation can produce work of exceptional beauty and character. John Ireland is one such (a miniaturist extraordinaire); Gerald Finzi (1901-1957) is another. Finzi, although of Italian-Jewish extraction, was London-born and in many ways more English than his teacher Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Sir Cliff Richard is an English singer, musician, actor, and philanthropist who holds both British and Barbadian citizenship. He has sold more than 250 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has total sales of over 21.5 million singles in the United Kingdom and is the third-top-selling artist in UK Singles Chart history, behind the Beatles and Elvis Presley. Richard was originally marketed as a rebellious rock and roll singer in the style of Presley and Little Richard. With his backing group, the Shadows, he dominated the British popular music scene in the pre-Beatles period of the late 1950s to early 1960s.
Sir Cliff Richard is an English singer, musician, actor, and philanthropist who holds both British and Barbadian citizenship. He has sold more than 250 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has total sales of over 21.5 million singles in the United Kingdom and is the third-top-selling artist in UK Singles Chart history, behind the Beatles and Elvis Presley. Richard was originally marketed as a rebellious rock and roll singer in the style of Presley and Little Richard. With his backing group, the Shadows, he dominated the British popular music scene in the pre-Beatles period of the late 1950s to early 1960s. His 1958 hit single "Move It" is often described as Britain's first authentic rock and roll song; John Lennon once said that "before Cliff and the Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music".