Little Richard: I am Everything is a fitting tribute to a rock ’n’ roll icon

Like most of the great 1950s rock ’n’ rollers, Little Richard is arguably best served by compilation albums – any creditable example is shot through with his unrelenting intensity and irrepressible panache. But most of the screamer’s best-ofs hitch their wagon to his formidable body of mid– to late-50s hits, sidelining his early R&B singles, the musical digressions of his 60s and 70s comebacks, and his born-again Christian songs. Lisa Cortés’s documentary about the icon appraises him from a variety of angles, creating a dazzling hall of mirrors: we see him reflected everywhere, while Richard himself, despite his boundless outward confidence, struggles to reconcile the many selves he spent his life constructing.

We begin with a brief excerpt from a 1972 BBC interview that has, thanks to social media, enjoyed renewed exposure in recent years. Little Richard, wearing eyeliner and a studded crown-shaped headband, with carefully tended eye-brows and a repertoire of camp hand gestures, hollers: “Let it all hang out with the beautiful Little Richard from down in Macon, Georgia!” (to which the mild- mannered interviewer responds, “Were you always so shy?”). It hints at the documentary’s most transgressive argument: that one of the originators of rock ’n’ roll – a multi-billion-dollar industry and a foundation stone of post-war popular culture – was not only Black, but proudly queer.

Whether or not this comes as a surprise will depend on how familiar you are with Little Richard’s media appearances over the years. Many of the charms and narrative beats of Cortés’s documentary are on display in that 11-minute BBC interview, in which Richard’s queerness, as well as his confidence and propensity for trash talk (markedly similar to Muhammad Ali’s in its rhymes, rhythms and wordplay), are unabashed; the segment, available on YouTube, also covers the star’s religious conversion and his alternating graciousness, bitterness and gratitude towards the white artists who enjoyed greater success with his music than he did.

Perhaps the most interesting contention raised in Cortés’s film is that Richard’s gender nonconformity, though undoubtedly radical, was in fact a precondition of his success: supposedly, it took the edge off his masculinity and made him seem less of a sexual threat to white girls in a world where the Black teenager Emmett Till, barely a fortnight before Richard recorded his touchpaper-lighting hit ‘Tutti Frutti’, had been murdered and mutilated for allegedly whistling at a white woman. But Richard himself unpacked this point, very articulately, in a 1997 interview with US talk-show host Tom Snyder – excerpted in the film, and again easily findable on the internet. 

Cortés’s film, then, is a compilation of sorts – a largely chronological assemblage of the known facets of Little Richard. For viewers unfamiliar with Richard’s story or the history of rock ’n’ roll, the documentary makes for an engaging primer. The influence of gospel singer and guitar maestra Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the segregation of Black music from white in the American charts, Richard’s childhood as one of 12 siblings in a poor Georgia household – the personal and historical context is efficiently but evocatively sketched out.

What feels subversive in Cortés’s treatment is her deft weaving of queer histories and subcultures into the well- worn cloth of rock ’n’ roll history. Richard started out as a drag queen with the stage name Princess LaVonne, and was taught how to play piano (and wear a magnificent pompadour) by Esquerita, a gay performer several years his junior. Billy Wright, another openly gay musician, was also a key influence, and helped Richard score his first recording contract.

The film is most poignant when exploring the consequences and complications of Little Richard’s intersectionality – Richard being arrested multiple times for his Blackness and queerness, or renouncing his homosexuality when in the throes of his evangelical convictions, which welled up periodically throughout his life. Little Richard was “very good at liberating other people through his example,” says pop music academic Jason King: “He was not very good at liberating himself.”

Cortés ends with a rapid-fire montage of the countless musicians that have walked the path Little Richard blazed: the Beatles, Prince, Lizzo, Lady Gaga, Harry Styles… It recalls a quote from earlier in the film that, in typical Richard fashion, combines wit with bitter insight. “We built a hell of a highway,” Bo Diddley growls, in an archival chat with Little Richard and Chuck Berry. “People are still driving on it,” Richard adds, “and they ain’t payin’ no toll.”

 ► Little Richard: I am Everything is in UK cinemas from 28 April and will be available to stream on  Apple TV.