“omnisexual”: “We are all both male and female. Sex to me is like a smörgåsbord. Whatever I feel like, I go for.”
But then in a rare interview in 2017 on the Christian-oriented Three Angels Broadcasting Network, Richard reiterated his belief that homosexuality is “unnatural” while simultaneously reaffirming the strong Christian faith that has followed him for most of his life. “Anybody that comes in show business, they gon’ say you gay or straight,” he said. “God made men, men, and women, women… You’ve got to live the way God wants you to live… He can save you.”
Despite all that, he’s left his mark on music forever.
“I think my legacy should be that when I started in show business, there wasn’t no such thing as rock ‘n’ roll,” he mused. “When I started with ‘Tutti Frutti,’ that’s when rock really started rocking.”
A 65-year veteran of show business and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, as well as a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Little Richard helped lay the groundwork for a number of artists during the ’50s before announcing his retirement from secular music toward the end of the decade.
Although he returned to his recording career during the following decade, he struggled to regain his commercial momentum, suffering through a few fallow years before reinventing himself as a steady live performer and studio sideman during the ’70s.
His most recent LP, the Disney Records release Shake It All About, was issued in 1992.