What does Little Richards’ ‘Tutti Frutti’ actually mean?
Little Richard was originally a gospel singer, which makes sense in the grand scheme.
The man grew up in the church and would find himself drifting in and out of faith his entire life so the concept clearly meant a lot to him. There was also the fact that he was an artist of colour in the 1950s, that was where he was expected to make his bones. It was unlikely he was going to make any friends in the industry by leading with the shocking, flamboyant personality, especially because, in 1955, he thought he’d wasted his chance at fame.
It’s true, eight years earlier, Little Richard had been set for stardom at the tender age of 14. Not only that, he was noticed by none other than Sister Rosetta Tharpe. However, his first singles were flops, and by the time he was 22, he’d been dropped by his label and was working as a dishwasher in a Greyhound bus stop diner. You can’t keep a talent like that down, and through his firebrand singing voice and incredible live shows, he caught the attention of a new label.
Said label sent the producer Robert ‘Bumps’ Blackwell to help him record some music, and finally, Little Richard had gotten a second chance. One that he wasn’t going to waste; thus, when he first went into the recording studio with Blackwell, he played it safe. Recording a set of five uninspiring gospel tunes that absolutely no one was happy with, least of all Little Richard. Frustrated with the sessions, the team retired to the nearby Dew Drop Inn nightclub for a break.
The artist then changed rock ‘n’ roll music forever by spotting a piano nearby and an audience just begging to be entertained. After spending hours confined to boring gospel tunes, Little Richard finally just wanted to be himself.
What did Little Richard do next?
Blackwell himself recalled in a later interview that Richard “hit the piano and hollered, ‘A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-good-God-damn!’ And those were the cleanest words of it!” He nearly caused a riot by hollering a number that he’d composed in that Greyhound station kitchen, and had performed at a few of his club gigs when asked for an encore, called ‘Tutti Frutti’ that would go on to become one of the most celebrated rock records ever made.
One that you may know too, and may be confused by Blackwell saying, “those were the cleanest words of it”. This is because while the man knew a hit when he heard one, and had one staring him in the face, the lyrics you may know and love were not the ones that Richard was singing. Put it this way, y’know how the song goes “tutti frutti/oh rootie”? Yeah. That was a rewrite. The original line was “Tutti Frutti / Good booty” because the entire song was a spectacularly filthy ode to anal sex.
If reports are to be believed, the lyrics are still blush-inducingly raunchy 70 years later. Richard’s drummer Charles Connor claimed that the chorus ran “Tutti Frutti, good booty / If it’s tight, it’s alright / If it’s greasy, it makes it easy”. Others have said that the line read “If it don’t fit, don’t force it / You can grease it, make it easy”. The truth is that, considering that Richard often just improvised the lyrics on the fly, it was probably both, the little scamp.
A song explicitly about not only the pleasures of bottoming but also the mechanics of it was a little much for 1955, as you can imagine. So Blackwell brought in songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie to finalise and sanitise the lyrics. However, that counter-culture spirit still lies at the heart of ‘Tutti Frutti’ decades later and will do so forever.
