Photo credit: Alan Light
Little Richard interviewed by Army Archerd on the red carpet at the 60th Annual Academy Awards on April 11, 1988.
Little Richard’s recent death has inspired an outpouring of praise for the “Architect of Rock & Roll” and his contribution to American and world popular culture. It also has some writers reflecting on and making the case for his queerness as a historic marker in the evolution of LGBTQ liberation.
In his career’s outset during the post-McCarthy 1950s, Little Richard’s brazenly out gay sexual identity was indeed extraordinary for an individual of those times. An acquaintance shared a story of a Little Richard appearance at Milwaukee’s Satin Doll’s Lounge. Suffice it to say, the rock ‘n’ roll pioneer was unabashedly extroverted in that regard. No doubt his blatant flaunting played a role in shaping his revolutionary sound during those “Tutti Frutti” years. For the pre-Stonewall generation, he was a gay maverick.
But later he would call himself “omnisexual,” then renounce his sexual orientation, omni or otherwise, and find his way to religion, due, apparently in part, to his witnessing of a sky borne fireball (that turned out to be the Soviet Sputnik satellite).
The shift in Little Richard’s self-acceptance could also have been rooted in more earthly and practical considerations. In the shadow of McCathyism, perhaps he feared a second anti-gay wave would again target LGBTQ artists. As in any pandemic, the first may ebb, but could be followed by a more sweeping one. He may have retreated to religion to buttress his deception, or better said, self-deception. Of course, it may not have been as calculated as all that. Sometimes we like to impose a lofty behavioral analysis on such things when, in actuality, the motive is much more pragmatic. In this case, it may have simply been a matter of money. After all, selling his brand as an effeminate black gay man in a country where homosexuality was illegal would certainly have faced insurmountable obstacles. In fact, he had several run-ins with the law on that account even after his embrace of religion.
Conversion Strategy?
The strategy is nothing new. I once watched a Christian TV documentary about Baroque composer George Frideric Handel’s oratorio, Messiah. It portrayed the composition of this familiar masterpiece as Handel’s come-to-Jesus moment. It exalted the composer’s miraculously speedy completion of the work as Divine intervention. In fact, Handel had long before recognized box office trends and shifted from writing Italianate operas that his London audiences had grown weary of, to the more popular biblically themed oratorios sung in English. The speedy composition was perhaps merely a matter of genius.
Similarly, Little Richard’s conversion strategy can be seen as a practical business decision rather than a Pauline epiphany. If that was the case, he took it to heart. By the 1980s, he turned vehemently trans- and homophobic.
Understandably, all artists, in addition to knowing how to exploit and market their creativity, need their audiences to survive. For LGBTQ artists the challenge is always how to negotiate their public and private lives. Until recently for artists of almost any discipline, the mere act of publicly coming out was box office suicide. In some cases, it still is.
So, on the one hand, we have a rock ‘n’ roll master whose music and performance art shaped, inspired and defined pop culture for decades. On the other, we have a gay man, who was either painfully conflicted or simply savvy enough to realize his gayness was a liability.
If anything, Little Richard’s legacy serves as the parable of the man who sold his soul, one way or the other.
