Dylan is part of a generation of artists influenced by the Georgia-born performer, along with the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, David Bowie, Prince and Jimi Hendrix. (The Indipendent)
The singer-songwriter issued a poignant statement via his Twitter account: "I just heard the news about Little Richard and I’m so grieved," he wrote.
"He was my shining star and guiding light back when I was only a little boy. His was the original spirit that moved me to do everything I would do."
He continued: "I played some shows with him in Europe in the early Nineties and got to hang out in his dressing room a lot. He was always generous, kind and humble. And still dynamite as a performer and a musician and you could still learn plenty from him."
"In his presence he was always the same Little Richard that I first heard and was awed by growing up and I always was the same little boy. Of course he’ll live forever. But it’s like a part of your life is gone."
In Dylan’s high school yearbook in 1959, then-senior Robert Zimmerman famously wrote that his life ambition was “to join Little Richard.” As the Star Tribune reported, Dylan even attempted to emulate Little Richard’s imitable performing style during his first-ever public performance at a Hibbing High School talent show in 1957.
Dylan recently announced that he is releasing his first new album of original songs in eight years, on 19 June. Rough and Rowdy Ways will be his 39th album, and is preceded by the release of the 17-minute epic "Murder Most Foul" and "I Contain Multitudes".
It wasn’t just his bristling energy that made Little Richard one of the architects of rock’n’roll, and by extension most popular music today – he also personified its mutinous outsider appeal, and its fundamental immersion in the beat. Here was the effeminate, cross-dressing and sexually explorative cast-out from a deeply religious Georgian family, the loudest kid in the Baptist church singalongs (they nicknamed him “war hawk” for all his screeching), who would hammer out music with tin cans and pots on his front doorstep.
