There are Lifetime Achievement Awards and there are Lifetime Achievement Awards, but probably none has ever been presented to an artist as singularly flamboyant as Richard Penniman, who gave the world such musical hits as “Long Tall Sally,” “Tutti Frutti” and “Ready Teddy.”
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Better known as Little Richard, he will be receiving the Ray Charles Lifetime Achievement Award from the non-profit Rhythm & Blues Foundation March 2 as part of Grammy week.
Based in Washington (D.C., of course, not the far-from-funky state), the foundation has announced its other fifth annual Pioneer Awards. Ten seminal vocalists and instrumentalists and two performance groups will share $190,000 at the ceremony in New York’s Roseland Ballroom.
Winners are Jerry “Iceman” Butler, a solo singer as well as a member of the Chicago-based group the Impressions; singers Clarence Carter, Mable John and Irma Thomas (“Soul Queen of New Orleans”); singer/
songwriter Don Covay, who wrote “Chain of Fools”; Ben E. King, lead singer for the Drifters; drummer/band leader Johnny Otis; pianist/arranger Bill Doggett; drummer Earl Palmer; “influential yet obscure” songwriter/pianist Otis Blackwell; the Coasters, aka the Robins (“Yakety Yak,” “Charlie Brown”) and the prototypical “girl group,” the Shirelles (“I Met Him On a Sunday”).
The awards are designed to honor men and women “who created an art form that is a wellspring for contemporary popular music and is deeply reflective of American life and culture.”
Good golly, Miss Molly.