In the 1950s, rock and roll singer and pianist Little Richard pioneered ideas that are still too transgressive for the mainstream. Between 1955 and 1957, when his groundbreaking debut album, Here’s Little Richard, was recorded and released, Richard was the most captivating entertainer on earth. Clocking in at under 29 minutes, Here’s Little Richard features the hits “Long Tall Sally,” “Rip It Up,” “Jenny, Jenny,” “Slippin’ and Slidin,” and “Tutti Frutti,” which kicks off the album with the immortal words: A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bam-boom!
In the new 33 1/3 book (out now on Bloomsbury Academic), author Jordan Bassett examines the classic album in-depth for the first time since Richard’s passing in May 2020. Bassett, a London-based music journalist and longtime contributor to NME, includes new interviews with famous Richard fans Dave Grohl, Joan Jett, Elton John, Tom Jones, and others. In this exclusive interview, Bassett explains why Richard was the most vital cultural figure of the last century, reveals the original ribald lyrics of “Tutti Frutti,” and shares his favorite track on the album.
Editor’s Note: This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. You can check out the video of the entire interview at the end of this article.
360°Sound: The first sentence of the prologue reads: “Little Richard was the most significant cultural figure of the twentieth century.” That’s a bold statement, but I think anyone who reads your book will be inclined to agree. Why was Little Richard the most important cultural figure?
It wasn’t just about music. It was it was about film, fashion, and the invention of the teenager as a concept. It was about the idea of music being rebellious and countercultural, and it was a precursor to punk and hip hop and everything that followed. If you think Little Richard invented rock and roll music, which I do, then you have to say he’s the most important figure of the most important movement. Hopefully, by the end of this book, you’ve been convinced, and you see it as self-evident. But yeah, it did give me the heebie-jeebies a little bit.
Little Richard first achieved success with “Tutti Frutti.” Tell us about the genesis of that song and the lyric changes that had to be made.
That’s a fun story. So Little Richard records this audition tape. He’s living in Macon, Georgia, working as a dishwasher. He talks to Lloyd Price who’s playing at the Macon City Auditorium. Price had the big R&B hit of 1952 with “Lawdy Miss Clawdy.” He says, “I want a record deal. What can I do?’ Price says to mail an audition tape to Art Rupe at Specialty Records in L.A. Richard records some scratchy, ratty audition tape and sends it off. He doesn’t hear anything back, and he spends a year pestering the label.
Eventually, Rupe listens to this tape and says, “Okay, there’s something in this.” He sets up a session at the J&M Recording Studio in New Orleans and sends this rookie producer, Bumps Blackwell. They’ve got these crack New Orleans musicians who backed Fats Domino. But weirdly, it’s just not happening. They’re recording these nice but not particularly spectacular R&B songs.
They take a break and go to the Dew Drop Inn, which is a drag bar in New Orleans, a place that maybe we don’t think of as being in the South in the ‘50s. Richard was fostered by an incredible queer scene, both there and in his hometown of Macon. Richard gets on the piano and starts banging out this filthy song. He said that he was playing it to “crack the crows up.” Blackwell can’t believe what he’s hearing. It’s absolutely electrifying. He says, “Richard, I don’t know what that is, but we need to get back to the studio now and record that immediately because that song’s a hit. We’re gonna have to change the lyrics.”
The original lyrics are “Tutti Frutti, good booty/If it don’t fit, don’t force it/Just grease it, make it easy.” It’s a song about lubrication and anal sex. They rope in songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie to clean up the lyrics. The official story is that she cleans up the lyrics in 15 minutes and makes it about a gal named Daisy and a gal named Sue, making it more wholesome. She reckons she did a lot more than that. That’s a whole other story, which I also go into in the book.
Richard didn’t even want to sing the song in front of LaBostrie because she was such a nice lady, and he was so embarrassed about singing it. But they do it with 15 minutes on the clock in the studio at the end of the session. Richard sounds hoarse because he’d been singing all day. They released it, and it just absolutely exploded. All the DJs wanted to play this song because it just had this strange power to it. Even though it had been cleaned up, it still sounded rebellious and countercultural.
Little Richard’s flamboyant, gender-bending appearance was so outrageous in the ‘50s that he was not taken seriously. Do you think Richard knew that if he had an over-the-top look he’d be more accepted by conservative white audiences?
He was an incredibly emotionally intelligent person. He didn’t have the opportunity to be educated academically, but he was an unbelievably intelligent person, and he read this situation. He was a queer Black man living in the South in the 1950s. He was in danger every single day of his life. And yet, you look at the way he lived, and you think, “How the hell did he get away with this?” There’s a great book called The American Nightmare: The History of Jim Crow by Jerrold Packard, who basically lists all the alleged crimes that a Black person could commit in the ‘50s in the South that could bring violence upon them. These transgressions would be like wearing clothes that are too flamboyant, being too flashy with your money, and looking appealing to a white woman.
Richard would wear these crazy outfits. He would dress up as the pope. He would pull up to venues in Cadillacs. He would have cash stuffed into the trunk of these Cadillacs. At one gig, at the height of his fame, the car got mobbed, and fans were hanging onto the back of the car. It was amazing what he did, and he achieved it because he made himself into a living cartoon. He amped up the gender-bending and the makeup so that people didn’t take him seriously enough to realize just how transgressive he was. People got up in arms about Elvis blurring the racial lines in terms of mixing black and white music, which at the time was very segregated. People got up in arms about rock and roll music in general. The North Alabama White Citizens Council put out this statement saying, “We need to stop rock and roll music because it’s bringing the people of two races together.”
No one got wound up about Little Richard. How? I think the answer is that no one even knew what the hell they were looking at. They just thought he was a wild entertainer. People just couldn’t compute what he was. He blinded people with his absolute brilliance, and so that was how he managed to slip into the mainstream. He’s this incredibly transgressive figure who would still be transgressive now.
Do you have a favorite track on Here’s Little Richard?
My favorite track is “True Fine Mama,” which is a deep cut. It’s a weird one because Richard mostly recorded his ‘50s stuff for Specialty with the band I mentioned, which was a bit of a revolving cast. It was basically the J&M Recording Studio house band. It’s these amazing musicians who were at the forefront of segueing R&B into rock and roll. But he also had his live band, the Upsetters, and they were a bit wilder and raucous. Even though he had these crème de la crème musicians, Richard always wanted to record with the Upsetters because they were his guys. The label was resistant to that because they wanted it tighter.
The weird thing about “True Fine Mama” is that it’s not recorded with any of those guys. It’s recorded with some dudes that he picked up in New Orleans. But how did he meet these guys? There’s no record of it. I think he went for a night out the night before the session and just rolled into the studio with these dudes. But he never recorded with this band again. He had one session with this band. It’s amazing because they really split the difference between the polished sound of the J&M band, and the rawness of the Upsetters.
It’s a romantic song, but it’s got this edge to it. It’s got this tight looseness to it. I know that’s a contradiction, but that’s what the song is. That’s what’s so extraordinary about it – this kind of contained chaos. It’s unlike anything else he did. I could just listen to that song all day.
Learn more about Jordan Bassett on jordanbassett.com
