Music executive Art Rupe, whose Specialty Records was a premier label during the formative years of rock ’n roll and helped launch the careers of Little Richard, Sam Cooke and many others, has died.

Little Richard later sued Specialty Records decades later for millions in unpaid royalties. The pop icon, who died at the age of 87 on May 9, sought $112 million in owed money in the 1984 suit.

Record man Art Rupe, who started a small Boyle Heights-based independent label called Specialty Records in 1946 and went on to help launch the careers of artists including Little Richard, Sam ...

The story of Little Richard’s rise to stardom in the 1950s is a textbook example of the vital David-and-Goliath role that independent record labels played in the birth of rock ’n’ roll in a ...

A new PBS American Masters documentary showcases the influence of Little Richard, a dynamo performer who never let himself be defined for long by any one musical category or sexual identity.

Little Richard, the screaming, preening, scene-stealing wild man of early rock ‘n’ roll with hits like “Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally,” died Saturday, Dick Alen, his former agent ...

Little Richard in performance at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in New York ... An earlier version of this obituary misidentified the producer of Little Richard's first session for Specialty Records.

News of Richard's death surfaced shortly after the music world learned that Andre Harrell, an influential music executive who launched Uptown Records and hired Sean "P. Diddy" Combs as an intern ...

In the mid-1960s, Little Richard emerged from his self-imposed retirement to record for small R&B labels including Okeh, which released “The Explosive Little Richard” in 1967.

Little Richard, who died this weekend at 87, was a real fashion freak, and a great beauty. Skip to main content. ... (Indeed, he didn’t even record solo until after Little Richard, ...

In a 1988 interview, Bowie called Richard his “patron saint.” He obsessively listened to and studied Richard’s early records as a kid in 1950s London, thousands of miles away from New ...