Imagine this: aliens land and take you hostage. Spirited away to their spacecraft, you are then dragged to meet their leader; a vile green beast with a glistening fang and one gigantic blinking eye, and are told that you must sum up all the achievements of Western Civilization in a single word or you will either be vapourised by their laser or, worse, forced to become a contestant on Family Feud. Under these heightened circumstances, what word do you choose to try and save your skin? Something naff like ‘hope’ or stomach-churningly turgid as ‘love’? There’s no way an alien leader is going to swallow that. The answer is simple. The word that best describes all of Western Civilization is as follows: Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom.
Imagine this: aliens land and take you hostage. Spirited away to their spacecraft, you are then dragged to meet their leader; a vile green beast with a glistening fang and one gigantic blinking eye, and are told that you must sum up all the achievements of Western Civilization in a single word or you will either be vapourised by their laser or, worse, forced to become a contestant on Family Feud. Under these heightened circumstances, what word do you choose to try and save your skin? Something naff like ‘hope’ or stomach-churningly turgid as ‘love’? There’s no way an alien leader is going to swallow that. The answer is simple. The word that best describes all of Western Civilization is as follows: Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom.
So begins and ends ‘Tutti Frutti’. For those unfamiliar with it, ‘Tutti Frutti’ is not merely a record by Richard Wayne Penniman (better known as ‘Little Richard’). It’s Christmas, all your good birthdays and that time you managed to merge onto the Kings Way off-ramp without someone threatening to careen into your back bumper, all rolled into two and half mind-blowing minutes. Forget the Vostock 1 and the Mercury-Redstone 3; ‘Tutti Frutti’ is when human kind truly left this planet. It is an achievement that remains without equal. The Renaissance and its glut of cultural polymaths like Leonardo Da Vinci and other assorted clever clogs are but dunces. Little Richard is a genius without equal.
Whilst it’s fair to say that any one individual did not invent rock and roll, Little Richard deserves a fair chunk of the credit. This was the song that changed everything. He was fond as describing himself as the architect of rock and roll, but I don’t think that’s going far enough. For me, Little Richard is not only the architect but the plumber, the electrician and the dude that puts the blinds up also.
That the song exists at all is a miracle. Little Richard was born in Macon, Georgia in 1932. In many ways, his upbringing exemplifies the tension between the spirit and the flesh that underpins the very best rock and roll. His father was a deacon at the local church who also sold bootlegged moonshine liquor and ran a nightclub. As a child, Little Richard loved to sing in the church choir, but even then his voice was extremely dominant and he had a tendency to overpower the other singers, earning him the nickname ‘War Hawk’.
Leaving home at sixteen, Little Richard travelled with various touring shows and, at one point, even worked as a drag performer. He started making records in the early fifties, but no one noticed. In early 1955, he dropped in a two-song demo to Specialty Records. Early sessions failed to yield a hit. It was only after the producer, ‘Bumps’ Blackwell saw Little Richard perform at the Dew Drop Inn and heard ‘Tutti Frutti’ that things turned around. But there was a problem: the song had been improvised in performances on the chitlin’ circuit and its lyrics were risqué even by today’s standards, much less those in the mid-fifties.
A songwriter, Dorothy LaBostrie, was brought in to tone down the innuendo and the song was recorded in just three takes in September before being unleashed on an unsuspecting public in November. The world would never be the same again. Oddly, Pat Boone recorded a version of Tutti Frutti a short time later and both versions were on the American charts at once, with Pat peaking at number 12, and Little Richard at 17. Little Richard later claimed that white kids preferred his version, but had the Pat Boone rendition on hand to mollify their parents.
In 1955, the charts were dominated by songs like ‘Sixteen Tons’ by Tennessee Ernie Ford and ‘Mr. Sandman’ by The Chordettes. The former was a song about coal mining; the latter was subsequently re-written and vastly improved by Metallica. Into this polite world, Little Richard arrived.
From the first instant, it sounds like nothing else with an acapella introduction that is unintelligible and yet makes perfect sense. The word ‘Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom’ imitates a drum pattern. The band goes like the clappers from the get go. The whole thing is nothing short of anarchy. Music no longer needed to be pleasing to the ear or in any way sweet. Rather, it had permission to be terrifying. Songs like Tutti Frutti were regarded as a threat to society back in 1955. You can’t say that about One Direction. Or, if you can, then not for the same reasons.
This year is its sixtieth anniversary. You’d think a recording that old would sound frail or tame. Polite even. But listening to it now, it still sounds immensely powerful. It makes pretty anything you might hear on the radio sound lame and half asleep – the voice all but threatens to tear through the speakers at any moment. Death metal sounds like an afternoon nap in comparison. Aliens would, of course, be either highly intimidated or deeply impressed. Either way, they’d soon let you go on your way, saying only ‘Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom’ as their farewell.