There is no question that Little Richard was a hit-making machine. Between 1955 and 1958, Little Richard bopped into the Top 5 on the Billboard R&B charts nine times. His work prior to that, on RCA ...

Little Richard upended American culture starting in the mid-1950s with a set of scorched-earth performances on record, in concert, in film and on televison. The high-pompadoured pianist, born Richard ...

In 1956, Elvis Presley exploded onto the music scene, changing music history. One of the songs on Presley's introductory album was his rendition of "Tutti Frutti," a song released the previous year by ...

Rock & Roll is a combustible mix of passion, attitude, and sound, and nobody embodied the essence of this deliriously flammable mix than Little Richard. He called himself the architect of rock & roll, ...

Little Richard and the Space Age got into gear at roughly the same time. They both administered hefty shots of heebie-jeebies to a complacent 1950’s world, whose citizens, depending on where they were ...

A wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom! If early rock ’n’ roll sounded alien to mid-’50s American pop-cultured ears, the opening salvo of Little Richard’s "Tutti Frutti"signaled a full-scale ...

He was a challenge to 1950s proprieties, wrapped in a package of pleasure and freedom. Hear 17 of his essential songs. By Jon Pareles Wild and outrageous don’t begin to describe Little Richard. He hit ...

Born Richard Penniman on Dec. 5, 1932, in Macon, Ga., Little Richard was the third of 12 children with a stern father who never approved of the boy's lifestyle choices. Richard took solace in gospel ...

Little Richard, a founding father of rock & roll whose fervent shrieks, flamboyant garb, and joyful, gender-bending persona embodied the spirit and sound of that new art form, died Saturday. He was 87 ...

Little Richard had a fervid relationship with religion, and even quit rock and roll music for religion once in 1957, only to return years later. He was regularly preaching in 1984, claiming that his ...

Imagine this: After “Purple Rain” came out in 1984, Prince, at age 26, suddenly left showbiz to study Jesus at a small-town college whose entire student body was just a fraction the size of most ...