Little Richard was hungry, frustrated, and running out of time. It was September 14, 1955. He was at J&M Music Shop in New Orleans, and the recording session with Bumps Blackwell was going nowhere. They had been trying to capture a hit for hours, but everything sounded like standard, polite blues. It was boring. Richard Penniman wasn't a "boring" guy. During a lunch break at the Dew Drop Inn, he sat down at a piano and hammered out a raucous, lewd, and totally un-broadcastable song he’d been playing in clubs for years. Those original words to Tutti Frutti weren't about ice cream. They were about something much more explicit.
The song was a floor-filler in the Chitlin' Circuit, but it was filthy.
Blackwell knew the beat was a goldmine. He also knew that if Little Richard sang the lyrics he used in the clubs, the record would be banned instantly, and they might all end up in the back of a squad car. The transition from a scandalous club chant to a global anthem is one of the most important pivots in music history.
What Little Richard Actually Sang in the Clubs
If you grew up listening to the version on the radio, you know the line as "Tutti Frutti, all rooty." It’s catchy. It’s nonsense. It’s safe.
But the original words to Tutti Frutti were much more direct. The initial opening lines Little Richard screamed at the Dew Drop Inn were: "Tutti Frutti, good booty / If it don't fit, don't force it / You can grease it, make it easy."
Yeah. It wasn't about fruit.
Little Richard was a queer Black man performing in the deep South during the 1950s. His stage persona was flamboyant, but his lyrics—especially in the late-night, "adults only" sets—reflected the underground drag and gay culture of the era. The term "Tutti Frutti" itself was often used as slang for a gay man. When Richard sang those lines, he was laughing. He was pushing boundaries. He was being himself in a space that allowed it, long before the rest of the world was ready to listen.
Bumps Blackwell recognized the energy. He saw the way the room shook when Richard played that "wop-bop-a-loo-mop" drum pattern on the piano keys. But he also saw the brick wall of 1955 censorship. He needed a "clean" version, and he needed it fast.
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Dorothy LaBostrie and the 15-Minute Rewrite
Blackwell didn't trust Richard to clean up his own lyrics. He was too close to the original "booty" version. So, Blackwell called Dorothy LaBostrie, a local songwriter, and told her to get to the studio.
She arrived and reportedly took about fifteen minutes to flip the script.
She kept the title. It was too good to lose. But she replaced the graphic sexual metaphors with names of girls. "Good booty" became "all rooty"—a slang term at the time meaning "all right." The verses about greasing things up were swapped for lines about a girl named Sue and a girl named Daisy.
"Tutti Frutti, au-rutti, A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bam-boom!"
That iconic opening scat? That stayed. Little Richard originally came up with that vocalization to mimic a drum pattern he had in his head. It was pure aggression and joy. LaBostrie’s lyrics gave him a "clean" vehicle to deliver that raw power. Richard was initially embarrassed to sing the new version. He thought it was silly. He thought it lost the "edge" that made the song work in the clubs.
He was wrong. The tension between the wild, frantic delivery and the innocent lyrics created a new kind of energy. It was Rock 'n' Roll being born in real-time.
Why the Censorship Actually Worked
It sounds counterintuitive. Usually, we hate it when the "man" steps in and cleans up an artist's vision. But in the case of the original words to Tutti Frutti, the cleanup was a stroke of genius.
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By making the lyrics nonsense, the focus shifted entirely to the sound. The "A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop" wasn't a word; it was a feeling. It was a rhythmic explosion that bypassed the brain and went straight to the feet. If Richard had kept the original lyrics, the song would have been a novelty record for a niche underground audience. It would have been relegated to "race records" and likely suppressed by every major radio station in America.
Instead, it became a Trojan Horse.
White teenagers in 1955 didn't know they were listening to a song that started as a raunchy gay club anthem. They just knew it made them want to jump out of their skin. It was dangerous, but they couldn't point to why. The "originality" was still there in the screaming, the piano pounding, and the sheer velocity of the track.
The Pat Boone Problem
You can't talk about the history of these lyrics without mentioning the "whitewashing" that followed. After Little Richard’s version started climbing the charts, Pat Boone released a cover.
It was terrible.
Boone’s version was stiff, polite, and devoid of any of the soul that LaBostrie and Richard had baked into the rewritten version. But because of the racial dynamics of the 1950s, Boone’s version actually outperformed Richard’s on some charts initially.
This is where the original words to Tutti Frutti provide a bit of cosmic justice. Richard knew his version was better. He reportedly said he intentionally made the song faster and the delivery more chaotic so that "square" white artists wouldn't be able to keep up. He wanted to reclaim the song through sheer technical difficulty. Pat Boone could sing the words "Tutti Frutti," but he couldn't sing the meaning behind them.
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The Legacy of the "Good Booty"
Little Richard eventually became more open about the song’s origins as he got older. He was proud of where it came from. He understood that the song was a bridge.
The original words to Tutti Frutti serve as a reminder that Rock 'n' Roll wasn't just born in a vacuum. It was born in the queer, Black spaces of the South. It was born out of a need to express desire, frustration, and joy in a world that tried to stifle all three.
When you hear that "A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop" today, you aren't just hearing a silly scat. You’re hearing the echo of a man who was told he couldn't say what he wanted to say, so he decided to scream it in a way that the whole world would have to repeat, whether they understood the "booty" subtext or not.
Honestly, the fact that a song about "greasing it to make it easy" became the foundation for modern pop music is the ultimate prank. Richard Penniman won.
How to Appreciate the History of Tutti Frutti
If you want to truly understand the impact of this transition, here is what you should do:
- Listen to the Specialty Records 1955 session: Specifically, find the early takes. You can hear the struggle in Richard's voice as he tries to find the right "vibe" before they settled on the final version.
- Compare the versions: Play the Little Richard version back-to-back with the Pat Boone cover. Notice the "ghost" of the original lyrics in Richard’s delivery—the growls and the "woos" are where the original raunchiness lives.
- Read Dorothy LaBostrie’s accounts: She often felt she didn't get enough credit for "saving" the song. Her ability to translate "club talk" into "radio talk" is why we are still talking about the song 70 years later.
- Look into the "Chitlin' Circuit": To understand why the original lyrics were what they were, you have to understand the venues where Richard was cuting his teeth. These were safe havens for expression that didn't exist in the mainstream.
The history of music is often sanitized, but the truth is usually much louder and a lot more fun. Little Richard didn't just give us a song; he gave us a code that changed culture forever.