Little Richard Made My Week
A whop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom forever!
Earlier this week I watched the documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything and I can’t recommend it enough. In an interview with Rasheed Zaire Ajamu for Cinespeak, director Lisa Cortés noted that she was inspired to make the documentary after hearing his music everywhere in tribute when he died in May 2020, “energy and joy” amid the thick of the pandemic. Realizing there had never been a documentary made about Richard, particularly one that centered his story as a (THE?!) architect of rock and roll music as opposed to centering his story as someone who was continually usurped by other people.
I had honestly never taken the time to consider how radical Little Richard’s entire deal was. I’ve always loved 1950s music and remember getting incredibly psyched for “Good Golly Miss Molly” and “Tutti Frutti” as a kid. I also loved when Little Richard would show up on TV and his appearance on the Pee-wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special [available in its entirely on YouTube and please do treat yourself to a viewing!] was a thrilling crossover event for little me. On the other hand, he seemed incredibly old-fashioned and From The Past and I wasn’t savvy enough to connect that there was no Prince, no David Bowie, hell, no Rolling Stones or Beatles without him. (The Beatles actually opened up for Little Richard in Germany, just one of the many fun pieces of trivia in this movie!)
I also didn’t know that he’d been openly queer, although he also periodically condemned homosexuality as well as rock and roll in general, renouncing everything to devote himself to Christianity and gospel music, which is covered in the documentary as well. And I was COMPLETELY unaware of the rich tradition of Black southern queerness from which he emerged. Particular inspirations included Sister Rosetta Tharpe, of course, who I did not know was queer, as well as “Prince of the Blues” Billy Wright and Esquerita, both of whom are complete music and style icons who should be FAMOUS! I know we all know about the severity and all-encompassing evil of cultural appropriation and erasure but GOD DAMN if it isn’t so deep and so unfair. Documentaries like this, full of joy and reclamation and complicated history, are a gift.
Dame Sophie-Certified Links of the Week
This week, Spotify unveiled Wrapped 2023, aka Christmas morning for music and data nerds. For those who don’t use Spotify, each year’s Wrapped provides summaries of what we listened to most avidly in the last year include most-played artists and songs, most-listened-to genres, total number of minutes listened to, most-listened-to podcasts and more, all customized for each of us. It can be funny, poignant, weird, cringey, and baffling by turns, and is built for sharing, with each moment available to download or share directly to your platform of choice (I add mine to Instagram Stories). It’s worth remembering that the idea for Wrapped didn’t come from nowhere; there’s no VP who plucked the notion out of thin air. It’s the brainchild of artist Jewel Ham, who created it for a proposal she during a short-term internship with the company in 2019.
The biggest I Did A Thing of my 2023 is now something I can talk about & show you! This past spring, the lovely Emma Fraser—once & future Two Bossy Dames guest editor, writing collaborator, and friend—asked me if I’d be interested in writing an essay about Midge Maisel’s famous brisket for a book she was editing about the show. Would I???? The book is a lavish, full-series retrospective and is a For Your Consideration promo piece for voters of various award-bestowing organizations, so it won’t be available for sale at your local book emporium. But! Since I received a copy, I can share my photos, and Emma’s photos, and Lauren Milberger’s unboxing video. The Magnificent, Magical, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is an absolute wonder of book design, TV history, and thoughtful writing about a show tailor-made for functional furbelows including an oversized, coffee table format, full-color stills, script excerpts, interviews, even movable parts that we usually only see in pop-up books and Pat The Bunny. Like its subject, the book is maximalist and exuberant, grabbing life by the lapels and daring greatly. Tits up, indeed! Working on more projects like this is definitely a goal I’m embracing for the foreseeable future.
For dinner-and-tree decorating at a friend’s house this evening, I made Claire Saffitz’s focaccia, and all I can say is that it is so delicious that you may yell about it, and it’s a very straightforward, low-effort/high reward thing to make on a dreary Gloomvember day.
I loved this documentary too. I knew next to nothing about him beforehand, but it blew me away.
As usual, Dame Karen, you nailed it!