Little Richard was an architect of a new American culture, still in the making. The New York Times has an obituary.
Unembeddable: “Long Tall Sally” and “Tutti Frutti,” from Don’t Knock the Rock (dir. Fred F. Sears, 1956). And from Billboard, great moments and tributes.
Saturday, May 9, 2020
Richard Penniman (1932–2020)
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From the NYT obituary: “Without anyone to advise him, he had signed a contract that gave him half a cent for every record he sold. “Tutti Frutti” had sold half a million copies but had netted him only $25,000.”
Today with 500,000 “streams” that would be anywhere from $650 to $9,500 with $3,000 being about average. We really haven’t come a long way.
Alas, yes. Van Dyke Parks makes that point repeatedly. Composers too sometimes make pennies.
Or alas, no. I always confuse those.
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