Ok, here's a few bits from Will Ashon's book - he's quoting other people a lot of the time as it turns out, so this seems to be a well worn strain of thinking:
Here's a bit about Little Richard:
'He'd scream and scream and scream', writes Nik Cohn of Little Richard in his study of the birth of pop, Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom. 'He had a freak voice, tireless, hysterical, completely indestructible, and he never in his life sang at anything lower than an enraged bull-like roar... He sang with desperate belief, real religious fervour.' The religious fervour was never faked. Though he was homosexual and started out performing as a drag act, Richard Penniman grew up poor and Black and very much in the church. In fact, he went to them all, from Pentecostal to Baptist to Methodist to Foundation Templar. At one point, he even retired from the music business to concentrate on being a Seventh Day Adventist. As a child, he liked the Holiness Church best, both for the holy water in which they washed their feet and for the opportunity to imitate them talking in tongues, though we didn't know what we were saying.' This babbling may have influenced his vocal style, which was already well developed when his family entered church singing contests as the Penniman Singers: "The sisters didn't like me screaming... and threw their hats and purses at us', he recalled in his memoir, The Life and Times of Little Richard. 'They called me War Hawk because of my hollerin' and screamin' and they stopped me singing in church.'
Here's a bit about Little Richard:
'He'd scream and scream and scream', writes Nik Cohn of Little Richard in his study of the birth of pop, Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom. 'He had a freak voice, tireless, hysterical, completely indestructible, and he never in his life sang at anything lower than an enraged bull-like roar... He sang with desperate belief, real religious fervour.' The religious fervour was never faked. Though he was homosexual and started out performing as a drag act, Richard Penniman grew up poor and Black and very much in the church. In fact, he went to them all, from Pentecostal to Baptist to Methodist to Foundation Templar. At one point, he even retired from the music business to concentrate on being a Seventh Day Adventist. As a child, he liked the Holiness Church best, both for the holy water in which they washed their feet and for the opportunity to imitate them talking in tongues, though we didn't know what we were saying.' This babbling may have influenced his vocal style, which was already well developed when his family entered church singing contests as the Penniman Singers: "The sisters didn't like me screaming... and threw their hats and purses at us', he recalled in his memoir, The Life and Times of Little Richard. 'They called me War Hawk because of my hollerin' and screamin' and they stopped me singing in church.'