The Black Queer Genius Behind Rock and Roll | Big Lives Podcast

He screamed, shimmered and rewrote popular music and then disappeared from the throne he built. This episode reveals Little Richard’s unstoppable rise, painful erasure, and lifelong battle between the divine and the profane. A vivid, funny and heartbreaking meditation on race, queerness, faith and why rock and roll history still gets its origin story wrong. Additional archive: Tutti Frutti by Little Richard, Speciality, 1957 Listen ad-free with a Pushkin+ subscription. Sign up on the Big Lives show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus. #podcast #history #popculture #popculturehistory #littlerichard ABOUT BIG LIVES Every legend has a twist. From pop culture icons to music and comedy greats, award-winning journalists Kai Wright and Emmanuel Dzotsi dig into the BBC archive to unpick the story behind the icons who shape our culture. Each week on Big Lives, Kai and Emmanuel take an iconic figure — from musical trailblazers like David Bowie, Amy Winehouse and Tina Turner to stars of the screen like Richard Pryor, Meg Ryan and Jane Fonda — and dissect their lives. Join them as they see these icons in a new light, uncover deep cuts from the BBC's archive, and learn how each legend set the stage for our contemporary cultural landscape.  After all, you can't understand today's culture until you understand the icons who built it. Smart, curious, and full of heart.  ABOUT PUSHKIN Pushkin Industries is dedicated to producing audio in any format that challenges listeners, encourages their curiosity, and inspires joy. Or, in other words: Good, Smart, Fun. Pushkin has produced many podcasts that have broken into the top 10 on the podcast chart, including Malcolm Gladwell’s hugely successful Revisionist History, as well as Against the Rules from Michael Lewis, Paul McCartney’s A Life in Lyrics, The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos, Broken Record, and Tim Harford’s Cautionary Tales. Pushkin’s audiobook catalog includes Steve Martin’s So Many Steves, Inside Voice by Lake Bell, Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis, and Malcolm Gladwell’s Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon, The Bomber Mafia, and Talking to Strangers. Follow us @pushkinpods. ABOUT BBC STUDIOS BBC Studios, the BBC’s main commercial arm, generated revenues in the last year of £1.8 billion. Its content, internationally recognised across a broad range of genres, includes world-famous brands like Strictly Come Dancing/Dancing with the Stars, the Planet series, Bluey and Doctor Who. BBC Studios Audio produces and distributes an expansive portfolio including hit podcasts, vodcasts and iconic radio including Desert Island Discs, You’re Dead to Me, The Global Story, Things Fell Apart, The History Bureau and In Our Time. With drama, factual and comedy and entertainment teams delivering world-class audio and digital content to audiences around the world, BBC Studios Audio produced over 600 hours of content in the last year, winning 33 awards internationally. ABOUT KAI WRIGHT Kai Wright is an award-winning writer, editor, and podcast host. He was host, most recently, of WNYC’s Notes from America, which aired live each week on public radio stations around the country. He was also host of the Peabody Award-winning podcast Blindspot: The Plague in the Shadows, which documents activism in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, and of several documentary podcasts from WNYC Studios. Prior to audio journalism, Kai was an editor at The Nation, editorial director of Colorlines, and an investigative fellow of Type Media Center, among other roles. ABOUT EMMANUEL DZOTSI Emmanuel Dzotsi is an award-winning journalist and podcast host. Over the last decade he’s reported stories on everything from backroom deals for political power, the strange phenomenon of white people sending Black folks Venmo payments as reparations, to vast money-making phone scams hidden in plain sight. He’s co-hosted and produced some of the most downloaded podcasts of all time – Serial and Reply All – and for the last couple of years has worked as a producer at This American Life. Emmanuel’s work has been featured in publications like the New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Guardian, among others. STAY CONNECTED Twitter:   / pushkinpods   Instagram:   / pushkinpods   Web: https://www.pushkin.fm/