Little Richard: I Am Everything
A few weeks ago I watched the documentary Little Richard: I Am Everything. It explored how underappreciated Little Richard was during his lifetime and the queer influence inherent in the origin of rock-and-roll music.
The documentary relates to Cher for two reasons. One, Sonny worked closely with Little Richard back when he was employed with Specialty Records. There’s a documentary out there where Sonny tells some wacky anecdotes about being one of Little Richard’s handlers. I’ll try to track it down. It might even be an old Phil Spector documentary.
Anyway, at one point during the Little Richard documentary Mick Jagger is talking about how beholden everyone is to Little Richard and then Nile Rogers tells how Little Richard paved the way for everything that followed. And at that point there is what I would call “a collage of flamboyance” at marker 1:35:52 pulling the thread from Little Richard through to contemporary artists. Someone says, “it’s almost as if everyone is defined by Little Richard.”
As I was watching the collage unfold I thought Cher will not be included in this, flamboyant though she is. I just took it on faith she would not be included.
But she was.
Here’s the partial list in the collage. It’s pretty impressive:
- Elvis
- James Brown
- The Beatles
- Jimi Hendrix
- Prince
- Elton John
- David Bowie
- The Eurythmics
- Freddie Mercury
- Boy George
- Mick Jagger
- Jimmy Page
- Robert Plant
- Rick James
- Cher
- Madonna
- Rod Stewart
- Lady Gaga
- Plenty more new people after this I didn’t know.
I did a screen capture of Cher’s appearance (above). It’s a big deal. There were plenty of other deserving flamboyant artists who didn’t make it.
Cherlato
Cher’s new gelato truck finally started rambling around Los Angles a few weeks ago. I asked my peoples in LA to try it out for me because I can’t very well make a visit just for gelato. as reasonable as this seems to me. My friend Coolia caught the truck near Canter’s Deli while she was on her way to another event.
At first when I mentioned the gelato truck to Coolia, she said, “I don’t buy that Cher even eats ice cream!” So I googled ‘Cher eating ice cream’ and sent her the resulting collage, which looked something like this:
Coolia said, “I stand corrected.” She then fit it a Cherlato truck visit in between a family tragedy and a trip to Japan so I’m very thankful to her for taking the time to not only track it down but let it interfere with her diet.
Julie said the gelato was good but not mind blowing. The staff was really nice, she said, and they told her business was good. By closing time they had run out of three of their flavors (and it’s not like they have that many!) Coolia had the Chocolate XO Cher flavor (allegedly Cher’s favorite) and her boyfriend Dave had the Breakfast at Cher’s Coffee and Donuts. They didn’t upgrade to the $18 gold cone understandably.
The staff gave them tasting spoons and Coolia said the Stracialetta Giapo’s Way flavor was also good.
Here are Coolia’s pics:
You can check Cherlato’s landing schedule on their Twitter/X page: https://twitter.com/cherlato_gelato.
Cher on TV
I’ve been updating the main Cher TV page on cherscholar.com, adding links to her music videos. Strangely, not all of her videos have been published on her own YouTube channel.
I’ve also started to add the dates and songs for all the televised guest performances.
And I’ve started documenting the TV specials. I’ve completed two new ones so far, The Sonny & Cher Nitty Gritty Hour from 1971 and the 1978 Cher…Special.
A big theme of Cher…Special is hair. Cher-the-child laments the fact that she is not blonde. Intro 2 Anthro with Two Humans just did an episode about hair. So I’ve been thinking about it. I was blonde once inadvertently when I first arrived at Sarah Lawrence and I was highlighting my own hair. For those of us who were using that plastic head cap and needle instead of the foil, you were going to be blonde eventually.
I was never allowed to watch the movie Grease when it came out (one of only two things I was deprived of watching, that and the comedy Soap). So in high school I finally saw it and thought Cha Cha was the prettiest character in the movie. So I had red hair my senior year, constantly chasing the sultry Cha-Cha color and ending up occasionally with the more innocent-looking Molly Ringwald. I’ve had about 50-shades of brunette since then and the Susan Sontag streak. Right now my hairdresser Maxine, (who I just found out went to the same grade school I did only ten years earlier), is helping me evolve into a natural salt and pepper. Fingers crossed.
Hair color seems so fluid to get upset about. 
But I guess if you were Cher and your mother and your sister were California blondes in the 1950s and 60s, you might become an upset tween too. Honestly, I’ve never found hair color, eye color, height, shape, size, the car you drive or the shampoo you use a relevant factor in any successful friendship or relationship, but I understand other people have their fetishes. Sonny apparently did although he married two raven-haired beauties.
To elaborate on a comment Mr. Cher Scholar made in his Anthro episode about Cher, after a decade of Barbara Edens, seeing Cher on TV as a raven glamazon was a big deal. And due to Cher’s somewhat fluid-looking ethnicity, many kinds of women were impacted by this. It was beyond a personal statement; she was pulling us all through. She was all non-blonde women around the world on TV. Someone once told me they loved her in Iran. But still, she never lost her own blonde fetish. And she’s dipped into blondeness occasionally through the decades. I could probably do a whole essay on Cher exploring blondness.
