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Like it’s subject, this is a thoroughly entertaining and eye-opening documentary that explodes the whitewashed canon of American pop music. Shining a clarifying light on the Black, queer origins of rock ’n’ roll, it establishes the genre’s big bang: Richard Wayne Penniman, better known as Little Richard. Testimonials from legendary musicians and cultural figures, Black and queer scholars, Richard’s family and friends, and interviews with the artist himself all exuberantly reclaim a history that was willfully appropriated by white artists and institutions. Gems amongst the treasure trove of rarely seen archival footage of Penniman, are scenes with his Black and queer predecessors and contemporaries, like Sister Rosetta Tharpe: the mother of rock ’n’ roll who gave 14-year-old Richard his first break. Other footage gives testimony to Richard’s greatness and well-deserved placement of one of the 20th Century’s unsurpassed, spectacular showmen. But Penniman’s complex journey depicts a conflicted revolutionary who careened between religion, sex, and rock ’n’ roll, navigating the extreme tensions of race and sexuality of his time and we are reminded that outsiders and outcasts can possess superpowers that, given the chance, can create new worlds for us all.
