Lunch With Little Richard. Whoo!

A 1984 interview, side of hash browns

It's a warm day in 1984, and Little Richard and I have a lunch date. I thought about some places befitting Little Richard, the undisputed father of what the kids called rock and roll.

I considered Le Cirque, where European royalty met upper class American ladies who lunched. It would have been a matter of time before some Duchess, fourth in line for the Queen of Luxembourg, broke protocol and asked Little Richard for an autograph,and perhaps leaving her room number at the fancy hotel upstairs.

Or there was the Four Seasons Grill Room, where political and publishing power players met to meal and deal. But it wouldn't have been fair to the regulars, used to ruling their celebrated fiefdoms, to not be the most famous person in the room.

So we walked into a luncheonette in midtown Manhattan, the kind of diner that used to be plentiful for the city's office workers. Our entry does not go unnoticed. As we are seated, the host says, "Little Richard! Haven't seen you since this morning's paper."…