Baynard Woods, a writer and reporter in Baltimore, is the co-author of I Got a Monster, which will be released by St. Martin’s Press in 2020.
A Points South essay from the South Carolina Music Issue.
Esquerita and Little Richard stayed in touch as friends, collaborators, and rivals until 1986, when Little Richard was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Esquerita died, a victim of AIDS who was buried in an unmarked grave on Hart Island, New York. Their careers had mirrored each other over rock & roll’s first thirty years, playing out the dualities of the sacred and the profane, music and money, and God and the Voola, what Esquerita called his mojo, the spirit that motivated his music.