Why was Little Richard’s hit song “Tutti Frutti” so difficult?

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Early recording sessions in New Orleans failed to capture the magic. Producer Robert “Bombz” Blackwell said he didn’t appreciate Richard until he saw him play at the city’s famous Dew Drop Inn. “That’s when I started to know and understand Richard,” he said, “because all you have to do is give Richard an audience, turn on the lights, and the show starts.” “He jumped on the piano and sang, ‘Awop-bop-a loo bop alop-bam-boom!’” Richard’s bandmate and friend Ron Jones recalled in the documentary Arena: “And they heard that and said, ‘Wait a minute, what’s that?’” It was a hook they’d never heard before, but Richard had been singing that phrase for years on the chitlin’ circuit.

Richard’s influence spans generations and genres

But if “Tutti Frutti” was going to be a hit, its raucous lyrics needed a major rewrite. Deacon John, former bandleader of Dew Drop Inn, told Arena: “The lyrics could be interpreted as homoerotic. They wouldn’t play that on the radio! … And everyone knew this wasn’t about ice cream! But the main reaction from a producer’s point of view was, ‘Hey, this sounds like a hit record.'” “Bumps” producer Blackwell said: “I asked him did he have a grudge against making money?” He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Fine.’ So we wrote the words, ‘Tutti Frutti, Oh Rotti,’ and a girl called Sue and a girl named Daisy put Richard on the piano, and in 15 minutes I think we had two or three pieces down, and it’s been history ever since.”

The recording may have been unbeatable, but it was not the most successful release in the United States. The man who brought the joy of tutti frutti to the mainstream was Pat Boone, a squeaky clean square who specialized in taming rock ‘n’ roll for a mostly white audience. If he had known the original words at the time, he would likely have been horrified. “What I wanted to sing were songs about love and happiness and all that,” Boone told Arena. “That was what was played on the radio at the time. Rhythm and blues was called race music. Here I am, a white kid from Nashville who goes to church. I knew very little about it. But then when I heard a Little Richard song called Tutti Frutti, I absolutely loved it and so I thought, ‘I’ll do my own version.’ “From it.” Records.

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