Richard Wayne Penniman passed away this morning in Tennessee, of bone cancer. He was 87.
Penniman, better known as “Little Richard,” a family nickname that stuck with him throughout his life, was a very successful early rock and roll musician. Little Richard’s smash hits of the mid-1950s included “Tutti Frutti,” “Long, Tall Sally” and “Good Golly Miss Molly.” He has been called “the architect of Rock ‘n Roll,” and was inducted into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, in its first group of inductees.
He was also a frequent guest speaker in Seventh-day Adventist Churches.
People find it interesting and ironic that 50s rock ‘n roller Jerry Lee Lewis (“Great Balls of Fire”) was a first cousin of famous television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. But in Penniman’s case, the rocker and the preacher were even more closely related: they were the same man. Maybe Little Richard inherited it from his dad, who was both a saloon owner and a deacon at his Baptist Church, but Richard went further in both directions.
At the height of his mid-1950s success, Penniman had a conversion experience, was born again, and enrolled at Oakwood College, the black Seventh-day Adventist school in northern Alabama, to study theology.
The back and forth between rock and religion apparently was a repeating cycle throughout much of Penniman’s life. He was ordained a minister in 1970. I heard him at a packed Keene SDA Church in the mid-1970s. As you might expect, he preached about the evils of the rock ‘n roll lifestyle, and hinted, without being graphic, that some of the lyrics of his fifties rock hits were euphemisms for sex acts. And yet by the late 1980s and 90s, the nostalgia circuit for 1950s rockers was very lucrative, and Penniman went back to making his living from rock.
In recent years, he was again Little Richard the preacher. Below is an appearance on 3ABN from October, 2017, which they rebroadcast this evening, apparently in notice of his passing.
Ave Atque Vale, Little Richard, as the Romans would have said. In the words of the wonderful African-American spiritual, “In that great gettin’ up mornin,’ fare ye well, fare ye well.”
Little Richard shares his personal testimony and love for Jesus during worship hour at the 3ABN Camp Meeting.