Esquerita

Biography

Circa 1958 Eskew Reeder was signed to Captiol Records at the urging of Gene Vincent, he changed his name to Esquerita and adopted a flamboyant, processed and pompadoured look tht made him one of the most outlandish acts in the day. He was also known as "The Magnificent Malochi", aka "S.Q. Reeder", aka "The Voola".... While studying as one of his students, the later much more well known Little Richard borrowed heavily from Esqueritas look and piano playing style. after 1 album on Capitol, Esquerita recorded for Minit Records with Allen Toussaint manning the boards. He then bounced around to various other small labels, even recording some material for Berry Gordys new Motown imprint that went unreleased to this day.

At one point in the mid sixties, he became a sideman to Little Riichard alongside Jimi Hendrix. By the 70s hed drifted into obscurity and even served some time at Rikers Island before his death in Harlem in 1986. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.