Page 78 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2013

These are the intertwined stories of booking agents, show
promoters and nightclub owners, the moguls who controlled wealth
throughout the black music business. Though the moguls’ names are
not recognized among the important producers of American culture,
their numbers rackets, dice parlors, dancehalls, bootleg liquor and
prostitution rings financed the artistic development of breakthrough
performers.
Of the future rock hall-of-famers who started in small-town black
America, the most quintessentially chitlin’ circuit of them all came
out of Macon, Georgia. He became a female impersonator, a wild
entertainer and finally, an American icon.
Richard Penniman left home with a snake oil showman named
Doc Hudson in 1949. Doc Hudson hit small towns that lacked black
The Dew Drop Inn on La Salle St. in New Orleans was a mecca for touring and local restaurants or accommodations, so the entertainers slept out under
talent beginning in the 1940s Photo by Sax Kari a tent in a field. On the Doc’s medicine show, Richard whooped the
only song he knew, Louis Jordan’s “Caldonia.”
(I Can Still Lick Around the Jar),” “Your Dog’s About to Kill My Cat” In Fitzgerald, Georgia, a lady who owned a club called the
and “It Ain’t Cheatin’ (Till You Get Caught).” Winsetta Patio, took pity on Richard, lured him away from Doc
Bobby Rush’s cohorts proved every bit as intriguing as he. A Hudson, brought him under her roof and fed him chitterlings and
former gospel singer named Marvin Sease wrote a song called pigs feet. When her club’s vocalist got sick, she plugged Richard
“Candy Licker” in the late ’80s, and enjoyed steady chitlin’ circuit into the band. They hired him on and Richard became a lead singer
headliner status until his death in 2011. More than mere song, with the B. Brown Orchestra.
“Candy Licker” is a sometimes belligerent, 10-minute liberation of As Richard’s sister recalled, “the most exciting thing…that ever
cunnilingus from black man taboo, sung from the perspective of happened to the family – B. Brown’s band came to town and taped
Jody, the John Henry of the bedroom. Jody does what other men do to the station wagon was this placard with the name Little Richard all
not deign discuss. Even more subversively, he cares about female over it. That was the first time he was called Little Richard.”
satisfaction. Jody calls out the sorry-ass men who won’t go down. The family’s joy was short-lived. Richard split the B. Brown group
Sitting in the makeshift dressing room, really a boiler closet, at the to join the Sugarfoot Sam from Alabam minstrel show. “That was the
Leflore County (Mississippi) Agri-Center in October 2004, I asked first time I performed in a dress,” he recalled.
Sease how he devised his shrewd approach to such a controversial They changed his name from Little Richard to Princess LaVonne.
topic. “It came to me in a dream,” he said. He couldn’t navigate in high-heels, so the band carried him to the
This would make a hell of a book, I thought. microphone before the curtain opened and plopped him down on
Beginning with the basic questions of where and when did it the stage.
start and who’s behind it, I traced the circuit’s story. It unfolded Though the Princess Lavonne persona died off, Richard
through old newspapers, interviews with aged jitterbugs, torn Penniman absorbed a part of her. He quit Sugarfoot Sam, and
scrapbooks and city directories, crossed unexpected backroads landed in Atlanta, 75 miles or so up the road from Macon. There
with the numbers racket, hair straighteners, multiple murders, he met Billy Wright, a cookie-cutter rhythm and blues singer who
human catastrophe, commercial sex, bootlegging, international curled his hair up high. Wright influenced Richard’s style from his
scandal, female impersonation and a real female who could screw mulberry shoes to his makeup: Pancake 31. Wright also helped
a light bulb into herself – and turn it on. I found that racketeering Richard record for the first time. October 16, 1951, 18-year-old
and bribery were indispensable factors in the growth of black Little Richard Penniman, still yet to play piano professionally,
music. I was most surprised, though, to find how the circuit had cut four tunes for RCA, one a Penniman composition, “Every
musically evolved – how life and business on the circuit tinged Hour.” Teenage Little Richard sang like an evening-gown-blues
its sounds and how the sounds struck back and shaped circuit chanteuse.
business and culture. Down in Macon, Richard’s father Bud sold moonshine out of
There are other eras of chitlin’ circuit history and action that the neighborhood juke joint, the Tip In Inn.
deserve exploration – from ’60s soul to Bobby Rush and Marvin The Tip In was a one-room café that dealt fried food and cold
Sease’s circuit today – to the comedy chitlin’ circuit that spanned beer. Though Bud and his effeminate son had scrapped, Bud
from Butterbeans and Susie to Redd Foxx, Dolemite and Richard supported Richard’s career choice and played “Every Hour” as
Pryor and the drama chitlin’ circuit that August Wilson championed, often as possible on the Tip In jukebox. Bud’s death, however,
where Tyler Perry got his start – they have their stories too. would do even more to propel the rise of Little Richard.
I focused on how the chitlin’ circuit’s live music scene developed At 11:30pm February 14, 1952, Macon police found Bud
from the late 1930s to the early 1940s, and how it nurtured rock-n- Penniman’s body sprawled across the floor near the Tip In
roll from the early 1940s to the mid-1950s. entrance, victim of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest.

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