Searching for "Little Richard" [1] results in:
100 Littla Richard
99 Little Richard

(note that "Littla Richard" has sortname "Little Richard", and is newer). This seems like a bug, since the perfect match of the name should get preference over a slight variation of the name (even with the same sortname).
Since the wrong artist will soon be merged, here is the search for the test server [2], which should work in about 3h. The bug was reported by RocknRollArchivist in [3].

[1] http://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Little+Richard&type=artist
[2] http://test.musicbrainz.org/search?query=Little+Richard&type=artist
[3] http://forums.musicbrainz.org/viewtopic.php?id=3154