Don Rhodes: Area music fans saw flamboyant Little Richard in person

The death of Little Richard Penniman on Saturday morning at the age of 87 also ended the life of the last survivor of what many classic rock music fans describe as “Georgia’s Big Soul Four.”

Penniman, a native of Macon, was part of four rock and soul pioneers closely identified with the Peach State.

That group also included Otis Redding who died in 1967, Ray Charles who died in 2004 and James Brown who died in 2006.

Brown, born in rural Barnwell County, S.C., near Snelling, grew up in Augusta. Charles was born and reared in Albany in deep south Georgia. Redding was born in Dawson, also near Albany, but grew up in Macon.

Brown, Charles and Little Richard all would be in the first group of inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 with Redding following in 1989.

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All four also would be among the early inductees into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.

Augusta music fans came to personally know all four with each of them performing on separate shows in Bell Auditorium.

Little Richard headed an all-star package show on April 29, 1956, that included Fats Domino, The Clovers, Ruth Brown, The Cadillacs, The Turbans, Ann Cole, Joe Medlin, Little Willie John and plus Al Jackson and his Fat Man Quartet.

One local resident who came to know Little Richard is Allyn Lee, of Martinez, who was a popular radio disc jockey and music promoter in both Augusta and Montgomery, Ala.

“A friend of mine, Nate Kendrick, was a drummer who lived at 346 Gilbert Manor in Augusta, and I lived next door at 348,” Lee recalled a few years ago for The Chronicle.

“Little Richard came to Augusta for a show and took Nate back to Macon, Ga., to play for him. Later Little Richard returned to Augusta for a show, and Nate brought him to Gilbert Manor to meet his family and neighbors. That’s when I met Little Richard. I later booked him on shows in Montgomery.

“When Little Richard got into towns, he liked to make grand entrances. When he arrived one time at his hotel in Montgomery, his entourage rolled out a red carpet for him to walk on into the hotel. That night the Ku Klux Klan showed up at the hotel, because they didn’t think a black person should get that kind of treatment. Somehow it was worked out without any major trouble.”

Little Richard and James Brown crossed paths for the first time in Toccoa, Ga., in 1955 at Bill’s Rendezvous nightclub where Brown was just getting started with a former gospel music group called The Famous Flames that included vocalist and songwriter Bobby Byrd.

The pivotal incident was depicted in the 2014 movie “Get On Up!” based somewhat factually about Brown’s life.

Little Richard himself told this writer about that encounter during the only time I got to interview the star. The occasion was the grand opening gala in September of 1996 for the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in Macon.

"I first met James in Toccoa, Ga, when I was doing a show in that town," he related.

“James and his group, The Famous Flames, asked if they could sing at intermission of my show," Richard continued. "They called themselves `famous' even then. I'll never forget that.

"I could hear them (from) backstage and what they were doing to the audience. James sang Please, Please, Please (Don't Go). I thought they weren't going to give me my microphone back! I thought they were going to keep my show. I said to myself, `I'd better go out and look and see what's happening.' They were fantastic."

Most major entertainers would have been upset to be upstaged like that, but not Little Richard. He recommended they go to Macon and hook-up with his manager, Clint Brantley, who owned a nightclub called The Two Spot.

The Flames did audition for Brantley singing an old gospel song called “Looking For My Mother.” Brantley was so impressed he arranged for the Flames to make a demonstration recording in the studio of Macon radio station WIBB-AM.

The song Brown and The Famous Flames picked for that recording was their own composition “Please, Please, Please (Don’t Go).” It later would prove their stepping stone to super stardom.

In the 40 years after that first encounter" Richard and Brown crossed paths only a few times, with one of those dates being the Georgia Festival held in the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium in July of 1991.

During our conversation at the Hall of Fame opening in 1996, Little Richard talked about his heavy touring.

"I played in Atlanta two nights ago at the Fox Theater," Richard remarked. "We are going to be in Los Angeles this week coming up, and in Orlando, Fla., the next night, and then we do San Francisco.

"I never be off," he said kiddingly, with a dazzling smile and the exciting eyes of a performer who just had his first hit. "I be off when I please and when I don't want to work, but I work all the time.

"Everybody says, `Richard, you shouldn't work so much,' but I work because it keeps me young, because it's the only exercise I get and because it makes me feel good about ME as I get older. It keeps my legs moving and my hands on the piano, and I'm blessed."

Just a few months after being with him in Macon, Little Richard became the 24th recipient of the American Music Awards’ special Award of Merit.

At the grand opening of the Georgia Music Hall of Fame building, all the other stars arrived in the heavy rain and dashed from their limos to an awning leading into the building.

Except for some quick waves and smiles, they basically ignored the hundreds of fans, huddled under umbrellas, who waited hours behind waist-high metal rails for the stars to arrive.

Not Little Richard. The Macon native wasn't about to disappoint his hometown crowd.

He didn't care about getting his expensive, glittery red and black outfit wet if he could make some fans happy. He went to the rails and worked the crowd, shaking hands and exchanging greetings as if he were a presidential candidate.

Little Richard was happy that his hometown of Macon was the site of the state Music Hall of Fame.

It was in Macon that teenager Richard Penniman washed dishes at the bus station and set up pins in the bowling alley next to the City Auditorium.

And it was in Macon that he started stirring up audiences at the Young Men's Club on Cotton Avenue and Ann Howard's Tick Tock Club on Broadway with his outlandish performing antics, wild piano playing and falsetto singing.

"I'm grateful to the Lord that I'm alive to see it," he told me. "That's what I'm grateful for. Most people don't even get to smell the roses in their lifetime. I've been able to smell the flowers and plant them, too!

"Listen," he said turning serious for a moment, "if I had to chose my life over to be born, I'd still want to be born in Macon. There is no place like Macon. When you tour the world like I do, you appreciate a place like Macon."

He also appreciates his good health, his entourage of family and friends and his deep faith in Jesus Christ.

"I reckon some of my looks is the Indian coming out of me," he said. "My mother was real thin and fair-skinned with long, black pretty hair. My mother could have passed for anything she wanted to. If she wanted to have been white, she could have been white. That's the way my mother looked."

Little Richard then reached back to one of his assistants and handed me a thin paperback book of religious philosophies called Finding Peace Within.

"I still believe in the Lord," he added. "You know, most everybody from the South believes in God. It's the Bible Belt. I believe in God. Here's a book for you. It's for free. And here's one of my pictures you can have for free. This book is not a book about racism or nothing like that. It's a book about God and love."

Sitting beside Little Richard that evening in the new Georgia Music Hall of Fame building as he was surrounded by close friends and admirers, I truly felt he had found both.