Little Richard isn’t on his deathbed and isn’t ‘clinging to life,’ at least according to comments from the legendary singer’s attorney early this morning.
“I just spoke to him today,” William Sobel told Rolling Stone. “He said, ‘You know, I want you to talk to [the media] because I’m really annoyed.'”
Sobel continued, quoting his client: “‘This thing started on Facebook. Not only is my family not gathering around me because I’m ill, but I’m still singing. I don’t perform like I used to, but I have my singing voice, I walk around, I had hip surgery a while ago but I’m healthy.'”
Earlier, funk deity Bootsy Collins asked fans on Twitter and Facebook to lend their support and prayers to Little Richard in a dark moment. “He is not in the best of health so I ask all the Funkateers to lift him up,” the Facebook post read. That led to a string of reports regarding Little Richard’s health situation, including a report that the singer was surrounded by family in an unnamed hospital.
Whether the denial flattens the rumors remains to be seen, with fans nervous after a string of high-profile deaths. That of course includes Prince, whose untimely death at age 57 has produced a ‘who’s next?’ atmosphere in the music world.
Clearly there’s smoke here, but hopefully for longtime fans, no fire. Whether Rolling Stone — whose credibility was severely impugned by a fabricated story accusing multiple University of Virginia students of brutal rape — is the best place to clarify the situation is questionable, though it offers a counterweight nonetheless.
Collins himself has yet to offer clarifying remarks.
More as this develops.
Featured image by xrayspx; licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC by 2.0).
As organized tones that exist in space lose their monetary value, the purveyors of such ,must readjust their lives. Now that “anyone ” can play ,write and record,as opposed to trained muscans for the most part, product is becoming worthless.
Doesn’t help that your article yesterday, “Days After Prince, Little Richard Is Clinging to Life” was posted, let alone posted prematurely. Here you are blaming others in this article for this mis-information but not acknowledging DMN’s error for not appropriately fact checking. DMN did help perpetuate this rumor. Please take responsibility.
I love DMN and you’ve always been one of my “go-to” music business news sources but I’m starting to wonder what happened at DMN because in the last couple of months your content quality has severely decreased and seems to have started focusing on gossip and/or “what if” situations instead of actual news? You do still have quality content but this severe change is starting to scare me because I’m no longer sure if I can actually trust your stories without verifying them by multiple other sources. I love you guys and am not attacking you, I just want the old DMN back.
Social Media sites aren’t verified news sources. They’re good for a heads up to see what’s going on but people need to stop taking what’s said on social media as the truth. My complaint doesn’t only apply to DMN, it applies to major news outlets as well (who used to use AP as their news source but apparently TMZ has become just as credible). The Prince “drug,” story broke via TMZ then it got picked up by mainstream media and was viral within hours. The Prince “homophobe” story you guys posted last week was completely false. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go back to talking about only music industry news. Prince being a supposed homophobe is not news. Little Richard potentially dying is not news. It is gossip and garbage. Streaming royalty rates, CRB rulings, Lawsuits, Settlements, Jobs, Mergers & Acquisitions, Social Media changes, etc… those are news stories. Please do the entire industry (and yourselves a favor) by killing off the garbage gossip articles and go back to reporting news so you’re back to being the “go to” music business news source. I love you guys but please go back to how you used to be. Don’t be TMZ. Be DMN and stick with facts and news please please please.