‘Tutti Frutti’: The classic song Little Richard wrote as an ode to anal sex
In addition to being one of the most pioneering figures in rock ‘n’ roll, Little Richard is one of the most fascinating. A tremendous musician, his work is inseparable from his colourful character, and together, they made his rise to the status of icon a meteoric one. Whilst there are many famous aspects of the American’s personality, his penchant for hedonism is part of his allure, and his proclivity for sexual promiscuity is legendary.
While a great deal of mystery surrounds Richard’s sexual exploits, they are still fascinating. Despite its contested veracity, a claim he made in the authorised 1985 biography The Life and Times of Little Richard by Charles White outlines exactly the kind of character he was. Here, he recalled an alleged sexual encounter involving his stripper friend Lee Angel and rising star Buddy Holly.
Richard said: “One time, Buddy came into my dressing room while I was jacking off with Angel sucking my titty. Angel had the fastest tongue in the west. She was doing that to me, and Buddy took out his thing. She opened up her legs, and he put it in her. He was having sex with Angel, I was jacking off, and Angel was sucking me when they introduced his name on stage. He finished and went to the stage still fastening himself up. I’ll never forget that. He came and he went.”
Interestingly, Angel contested this story when speaking to GQ in 2010, maintaining: “I knew Buddy, but I didn’t know I knew Buddy that well.”
Another anecdote that reflects Richard’s nature is that one of his kinks, which he never shied away from discussing, was voyeurism. As is well-recorded, this got him in trouble on a few occasions. Once, in 1955 he was caught in a car watching a couple copulating and spent three days locked up in jail.
Later, in 1984 Richard revealed to Rolling Stone that he also liked overseeing his bandmates in orgies. “I used to like to watch these people having sex with my band men. They should have called me Richard the Watcher,” he conceded.
Given Richard’s highly sexual nature, it makes sense that his most famous song also contains a hefty dose of his sexuality. The original version of his pioneering 1955 hit ‘Tutti Frutti’, which the musician had played as a ribald song for years before recording it, contained a portion of lyrics that referred to anal sex and homosexuality. These were: “Tutti frutti — good booty! / If it don’t fit — Don’t force it! / You can grease it — Make it easy”.
The track’s producer Robert ‘Bumps’ Blackwell, knew that the track would be a big hit but was fully aware that the lyrics, with their “minstrel modes and sexual humour”, needed to be revised. To clean ‘Tutti Frutti’ up, Blackwell contacted local songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie to edit the lyrics, while Little Richard still played it in his usual style. The anal-worshipping lyrics were ultimately replaced with: “Tutti Frutti, aw rooty / Tutti Frutti, aw rooty.”
Whilst LaBostrie claimed a flavour of ice cream inspired her revision, it’s hard to escape what Little Richard really meant, despite the revised lyrics.
