BURST
Bill Haley and the Comets played V ancouver’s first rock ‘n’ roll concert on June 27, 1956.
But no one would ever accuse Bill Haley of being wild. Well, they might, but they’d be wrong.
Little Richard, on the other hand, was genuinely wild. And when he played the Kerrisdale Arena on Sept. 24, 1956, he caused quite a kerfuffle.
“Teen-agers Mob Rock, Roll Singer,” read a headline in the Sept. 25, 1956 Vancouver Sun.
“A rock ’n concert turned into a near riot in Kerrisdale Arena Monday night. Benches were smashed as 2,000 teen-agers went into a rhythm-wracked frenzy .
“The star of the show, singer ‘Little Richard,’ was mobbed repeatedly. Police broke up the mob surrounding the entertainer. One fight broke out.”
Part of the reason the crowd was rambunctious was that the singer had been held up at the border and was two hours late. He finally went onstage at 10:30 p.m.
“The eager and angry youngsters screamed and chanted for the rock ’n roll singer. Police were called in to avert a possible riot, one of the show managers said,’” the Sun reported.
“‘The minute he arrived,’ said one schoolgirl, ‘it was wild. The kids were climbing all over the place – climbing on benches and on the stage. They were screaming. We all love Little Richard. He’s a real cool cat.’”
Seventeen-year-old Betty Bloome of New Westminster concurred.
“She said screaming started the minute Richard came in and continued until the end of the show at 12:30 p.m. Residents in the surrounding area said they could hear the screams through the walls.”
Oddly there was no description of Little Richard onstage. But there’s a clip of Little Richard singing Long Tall Sally and Tutti Frutti online that shows what all the fuss was about.
It’s from the 1956 movie Don’t Knock The Rock, and finds Little Richard in full screaming nutcase mode, boppin’ away while pumping out a wicked rhythm on his piano.
He lifts one leg on top of the piano and plays underneath it, he plays backwards, and he screams “whoo-oo-oo” and “whop boom a loo bop a lop bam boom!”
It was a nonsense lyric, although there were probably some early rock ‘n’ roll detractors who thought it had some secret sexual meaning.
“That’s really like a dance break, a time-step break,” he explained in a 1992 interview. “I did it like a drummer do. ‘Whop boom a loo bop a lop bam boom!’ Like an endin’ or beginnin’, and that’s how we used it.”
The erstwhile Richard Penniman had no false modesty about his importance to rock and roll.
“I am the architect of rock and roll,” he said in 1992. “Before me, there wasn’t no rock like that. There wasn’t any. You got to remember Chuck Berry used to play blues and there wasn’t wild piano rock ’til I came along.
“Rock and roll is really rhythm and blues up-tempo. It’s black music, regardless of what anyone says, that’s what it is. We’re not down on anybody, but we are the originators. I am the one that started it.”
As it happened, his sound appealed to teenagers.
“I knew the groove that the kids wanted,” he said. “I danced around and was with them, so I knew how they felt, the pulse that they felt I felt with them, the vibration they felt.
“That’s the reason I was able to create the music in the groove that they loved, like Long Tall Sally, Rip It Up, Reddy Teddy, She’s Got It, The Girl Can’t Help It, Miss Anne, Keep a Knockin’, Jenny Jenny. We was right in the pocket for those things.”
At the height of his fame in 1957, he abruptly quit rock ‘n’ roll to devote his life to Jesus, eventually becoming a Seventh-day Adventist minister.
He went back to rock ‘n’ roll in 1963, but from time to time would go back to being a preacher. At times he would say he was gay, but later would deny it.
He died on May 9, 2020 at 87.
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