In his 1958 classic “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” Little Richard wailed a couple of bad girl who “sure prefer to ball.”
But little doubt — it was the late rock legend who was a sex fiend himself.
“I had all these orgies occurring,” he reveals in the brand new documentary “Little Richard: I Am All the pieces,” which has a special one-night-only opening in theaters on Tuesday before hitting additional cinemas and pay-per-view on April 21.
He was thirsty for each men and ladies: “I just loved whatever got here. You realize, I didn’t refuse nothin’ if you happen to knocked on my door and I wanted more. Fo sho.”
However the artist often known as the architect of rock and roll — who left his eyelinered imprint on everyone from Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to Elton John, David Bowie and Prince — was as deeply religious as he was raunchy.
Just as his music — and hits resembling “Tutti Frutti,” “Long Tall Sally” and “Lucille” — was by turns R&B and pop, Little Richard himself vacillated from gender-bending to God-fearing.
“You realize, he’s on a roller coaster,” director Lisa Cortés, who began working on “Little Richard” shortly after his 2020 death, told The Post.
“He loves God, but he doesn’t think that God can love him as a queer rock-and-roller. And so throughout his life, he’s attempting to navigate easy methods to be in those two spaces — the sacred and the profane.”
Born Richard Wayne Penniman in Macon, Georgia, in 1932, Little Richard had a slight deformity that left one leg and arm shorter than the opposite.
As an adolescent, he was kicked out of his father’s house for being gay, and one other queer black artist — Esquerita — taught him easy methods to play the piano.
He got his name with considered one of his first big singing gigs — a stint with Buster Brown’s Orchestra in 1950.
Around the identical time, he also performed in drag as Princess LaVonne, regardless that homosexuality was illegal.
But Little Richard got his big break with 1955’s “Tutti Frutti,” whose original lyrics were highly sexual — “Tutti Frutti, good booty.”
The documentary recounts how songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie was brought in to scrub up the lyrics for radio play with the “Tutti Frutti, oh rooty” refrain everyone knows today.
In 1957, Little Richard had what he perceived as a near-death experience while flying to Sydney, Australia, on tour.
He had a vision of angels holding up the plane while it was on fire that deeply affected him.
It “felt like God was chatting with me,” said Little Richard, who went on to enroll in Oakwood College, a Seventh-day Adventist school in Huntsville, Alabama.
He began referring to his recordings as “devil’s music” and vowed to purchase them back from fans to burn them in a bonfire.
But, within the Sixties, he revived his rock-and-roll antics to maintain up his expensive lifestyle — having various sexcapades while abusing cocaine, PCP and heroin. Still, he remained conflicted
“There have been times I went and slept in the lavatory, ‘cause the remainder of the suite was stuffed with naked people,” his former road manager Keith Winslow says within the film. “And he’d be sitting there with the Bible right there beside him. And every so often he’d quote a [scripture].”
He also took each The Beatles and the Rolling Stones under his wing before they hit it big.
Paul McCartney even stole his “whoooo!” heard on “I Saw Her Standing There” from Richard.
“All my screaming numbers were to do with him,” McCartney says in an interview featured within the doc.
Similarly, Mick Jagger learned easy methods to work your complete stage by studying Little Richard.
“I can be by the side of the stage, like, every night to look at him,” he says within the film.
But in 1977, his brother Tony died of a heart attack, leading Little Richard to again turn to religion — and even resign his queerness.
“God let me know that he made Adam to be with Eve, not Steve!” he said in a 1982 interview with David Letterman.
“At the tip of his life, he stops going backwards and forwards between rock and roll and religion. And he really dedicates himself to the Lord,” Cortes said.
However the musical legacy of Little Richard — who was a part of the first-class of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees in 1986 — lives on today.
“If we don’t have Little Richard,” said Cortes, “you don’t have Lil Nas X, you don’t have Harry Styles.”
