I Am Everything

I wanna watch this. Hard. Why? Because the music business tends to be be pretty homophobic (rock and roll, country, hip-hop come to mind) and each genre tends to try to erase its roots (usually queer and most often than not, Black). I'm sure you don't remember or know The Prairie Ramblers or Wilma Burgess or Lavender Country. But you do remember K.D. Lang or Little NasX or *lick* Orville Peck, of course. There has been some change in Country as a genre.

In Hip-Hop, 'fag' and 'faggot' has been thrown left and right as an insult since the inception of the genre. Many rappers use 'queer' as an insult and 'homo' is de rigueur in most contemporary rap and hip-hop. Even though giants of the genre like Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z have come around in what concerns LGBTQ rights (times are-a-changing!) there's still a long way to go.

But I think this documentary will peel layers off of Rock and Roll and its Queer, Black origins. I think that when Little Richard (né Richard Wayne Penniman, natch) wailed and shimmied his way through Tutti-frutti he literally invented Rock and Roll as we know it today. He tutored Mick Jagger and David Bowie. He liberated Paul McCarney and had him wail in his records. Little Richard was glam and bam, ma'am.

Little Richard was Queer when Queer was coded. He was a Black male figure that white girls could swoon over without being threatening. He was Queer with a capital Q: surrounded by queerness from the jump, he came to be in the middle of a very queer demi-monde among gender non-conforming folk, Drag artists and weirdos. THAT is Rock and Roll. That is Punk Rock. That is what being a rebel is. That's why I wanna watch this documentary. I know that Little Richard, like Prince and Dylan, kind of recanted his wild past and went on full religiosity, but that does not concern me. What concerns me is the Little Richard who sang Tutti Frutti, full of innuendo, because he had lived it: 

The original lyrics were: “Tutti Frutti, good booty. If it don’t fit, don’t force it. You can grease it, make it easy”. The lyrics were re-written to “Tutti Frutti, aw rooty. Tutti Frutti, aw rooty.” 

If that ain't Queer, I don't know what is. Little Richard WAS everything.

So, if you're as interested as I am, you can visit the documentary's website and figure out if you want to see it in theaters or stream it: 

https://www.littlericharddocumentary.com/

XOXO

P.S.