Little Richard

📍Pleasant Hill, Macon, GA 31201, USA

“I was born Richard Wayne Penniman in December 1932 in Macon, Georgia, the third of twelve children, and I grew up in Pleasant Hill, a close-knit Black neighbourhood of small wooden houses, churches and corner stores just west of downtown. My father, Bud, was a church deacon who also sold moonshine and later ran a nightclub, and my mother, Leva Mae, kept the big family going. Our family were churchgoers, and my grandfather and uncles were preachers. Music was everywhere in Pleasant Hill. I sang in churches all over Macon, Baptist, Methodist and Pentecostal, and I loved the shouting gospel singers best; I sang so loud that the neighbours called me War Hawk. I banged out rhythms on steps, tin cans and anything I could find. I was a flamboyant child, and I was teased for it, and I did not always fit in at home. As a teenager I sold Coca-Cola at the Macon City Auditorium, watching the stars perform. In October 1947, the gospel star Sister Rosetta Tharpe heard me singing her songs before her concert there, invited me on stage, and paid me afterwards. I knew then what I wanted to do. Soon after, I left Macon to travel with a medicine show and then on the chitlin' circuit, and in 1955 Tutti Frutti exploded across America and helped invent rock and roll. My childhood home in Pleasant Hill was moved in 2017 to make way for a highway project, and it is now the Little Richard House, a museum and resource centre for the neighbourhood where I first learned to sing.”

Sources: visitmacon.org wpganews.com gpb.org Wikipedia: Little Richard