35 Tutti-Frutti

“I’d been singing ‘TuttiFrutti’ for years,” said Little Richard, “but it never struck me as a song you’d record.” Producer Robert Blackwell asked Dorothy LaBostrie, a young songwriter pestering him for work, to clean up the filthy original lyrics (“Tutti-Frutti, good booty/If it don’t fit, don’t force it/You can grease it, make it easy”). “Fifteen minutes before the session was to end, the chick comes in and puts these little trite lyrics in front of me,” said Blackwell. Richard cleaned up his own “Awop-bop-a-loo-mop a-good-goddamn” and loaded LaBostrie’s doggerel with sexual dynamite.