By: Greg McKevitt / BBC
Translation: Telegrafi.com

Awop-bop-aloobop alop-bam-boom! With a startling burst of nonsense, Little Richard introduced himself to the world. Did he use his voice to imitate the sound of a drum beat, or did those strange words have a deeper hidden meaning? Whatever the answer, Tutti-frutti became an instant classic - ever since it was released 70 years ago, on October 20, 1955 - and teenagers around the world turned him into a star. Screaming like a demon possessed, the self-proclaimed "Georgia Peach" topped the charts for several years, with a string of hits like Lucille, Good golly miss molly and Long tall sally.

But by the end of the decade, his glory days were over. He pleaded guilty to playing the devil's music and returned to his home in Georgia to sing gospel music. The irrepressible rocker attempted a comeback on the pop scene several times in the following years, but the initial momentum had faded. However, his superstar status remained intact.

In 1972, at the ripe old age of 39, Richard was on his way back to London - one of the first generation of rockers to enter middle age and considered a golden old man. He was in town to join Chuck Berry for a summer concert at Wembley Stadium - entitled The London Rock and Roll Show.

In an interview with the BBC to promote the concert, Richard shouted: "Let's hang out with the handsome Little Richard from Macon, Georgia. I'm the king of rock and roll!" Presenter Ray Connolly, with classic cynicism, asked him: "Have you always been this shy?" For a new television interviewer, this moment was baptism by fire.

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Born Richard Penniman in 1932 - "I have six brothers and five sisters, but I was the prettiest of them all and I'm not at all conceited" - Richard said he grew up singing in his preacher grandfather's church. "I played Tutti-frutti and Long tall sally while he preached". In the 50s, racial segregation in the United States meant that opportunities were limited for black artists. Richard found a safe secular space to develop his raw talent in a network of performance venues created by black artists and entrepreneurs [Chitlin' Circuit], mainly in the Deep South. It was in these venues that the sound of rock and roll was born.

Eager to escape his job as a dishwasher at a bus station in Macon - "I'd been washing dishes for so long, I was tired" - he sent a demo to the Los Angeles-based record label Specialty Records. In the 2023 BBC documentary archives, Sand: The King and Queen of Rock and Roll, the production's founder, Art Rupe, said: "We didn't listen to the tape right away. It was buggy and poorly recorded. But he kept calling us, so finally I said, 'Find that tape.' We found it and listened to it. If it hadn't been for Richard's insistence, we would never have met Little Richard."

The first recording sessions in New Orleans failed to capture his magic. Producer Robert “Bumps” Blackwell said he didn’t appreciate Richard until he saw him perform at the city’s legendary club, the Dew Drop Inn. “That’s when I started to understand and get to know Richard,” he said, “because you just give him an audience, turn on the lights, and the show is on.” Richard’s friend and bandmate Ron Jones said in the documentary, “He jumped up on the piano and sang: Awop-bop-a loo bop alop-bam-boom"They heard it and said, 'Wait a minute, what's that?' It was a motif they had never heard before, but Richard had been singing that phrase for years on stage [on the Chitlin' Circuit network]."

But, that Tutti-frutti to become a hit, the lyrics had to be rewritten - due to the sexual content. Deacon John, former bandleader at Dew Drop Inn, told Sand-s: “The lyrics could be interpreted as gay sex. They wouldn’t play it on the radio! ... And everyone knew it; it had nothing to do with ice cream! But the main reaction from the producer was, ‘Hey, that sounds like a hit.’” Producer Blackwell said: “I asked him if he had any grudge against making money. He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Okay then.’ So we wrote the lyrics: Tutti frutti, oh rooty, "with a girl called Sue and another girl called Daisy, we put Richard on the piano, and in 15 minutes we recorded two or three songs. And the rest is history."

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The recording may have been unbeatable, but in the US it wasn't the most successful version. The man who introduced the song to him Tutti-frutti The one who brought the song to the public was Pat Boone, a pedantic, conservative guy known for softening rock and roll for a predominantly white audience. If he had known anything about the original lyrics at the time, he would probably have been horrified. Boone said in Sand: “What I wanted to sing were songs about love and happiness and things like that. That’s what was playing on the radio at the time. Rhythm and blues was called race music. And I was a white, church-going boy from Nashville. I knew very little about this music. But when I heard a song by Little Richard called Tutti-frutti, I fell in love with it. And, I thought, 'I'm going to do my own version.'” He sold a million records.

Boone rejects any accusations of cultural appropriation. "Some people, if they weren't around at the time, think we were taking something from black singers. No, we weren't. We were introducing it to a much larger audience. I've said it many times: Elvis and I were like the 'midwives' at the birth of rock and roll." Little Richard himself said he wasn't bothered by Boone's version selling more. He told the BBC: "It made me feel good. They opened a door that was closed and I couldn't get in."

Richard may have burst through the closed door, but his departure in the late 50s was just as dramatic. In his autobiography, he claimed that during a turbulent flight from Melbourne to Sydney, he saw the hot engines of the plane and felt angels hovering over him. After the Sydney concert, he saw a huge red fire in the sky. This was later identified as the Russian satellite Sputnik 1, but Richard interpreted it as a sign from God to abandon secular music and repent.

Although he had been openly gay for many years, he also had relationships with women. In 1959, he married evangelical Ernestine Harvin and later adopted a son. When he was rebaptized as a Seventh-day Adventist, he renounced his homosexuality, presenting it as a temporary choice he had made.

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Within five years of abandoning rock and roll, he was back on stage and touring. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were among the young artists who shared the stage with him in Europe, watching him night after night as he gave a masterclass in stage performance. Beatles drummer Ringo Starr told the documentary Sand that Richard was a great inspiration, while Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards admitted: "Me and Mick [Jagger] would try to climb up the scaffolding of the theatre and look down on it, to see how it worked. It was a lesson in how much work you had to do if you wanted to do this thing."

Richard's influence spanned generations and genres; artists such as Bob Dylan, James Brown, Otis Redding and David Bowie have cited him as an inspiration, while Jimi Hendrix, in his youth, was a guitarist in his band. When Queen performed at Wembley Stadium in 1986, a year after their huge success at Live Aid, one of the songs performed was Tutti-frutti.

But what did Richard's famous phrase really mean: Awop-bop-aloobop alop-bam-boom? In a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, he claimed to have invented it as a secret way to curse his boss at the bus station where he worked. “He was bringing all those pots to wash, and one day I said, ‘I’ve got to do something to stop this guy from bringing me pots to wash.’ And I said, Awop-bop-aloobop alop-bam-boom, take it and go! That's what I wanted to say at the time. So I wrote it down Tutti-frutti-n in the kitchen, I wrote Good golly miss molly-n in the kitchen, I wrote Long tall sally"Right there."

Although he had drifted somewhat away from gospel music at the time of the 1972 BBC interview, Richard remained a true believer in the power of rock and roll. He said: "I consider my music sacred, and I consider the song Long tall sally "Holy. I'm not saying it's a church hymn, but there's nothing wrong with it. It's a song of love and joy. In a world of chaos, confusion and conflict, we need a little joy." /Telegraph/

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