If David Kirby had his way we’d start every sentence with “A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom!”
The guy makes the case in Little Richard: The Birth Of Rock ‘n’ Roll
that “Tutti Frutti” is the rock song that started rock and roll. Less
a bio on Little Richard then a socio-musical study, this short hardcover runs
us through the whys and wherefores of this very famous early rock hit and how
Kirby claims it changed the world.
Kirby interviews ex-band mates, recording engineers, musicians who worked and
grew up in Little Richard’s hometown of Macon, Georgia, and even Little Richard’s
aunt (the funniest story in the book, actually). There’s a lot of quoting other
sources as well, even Ralph Waldo Emerson. Kirby is a stickler for detail and
he has done his research well. My only complaint, and really no fault of Kirby’s,
is that I have loved an entire book on the making of “Tutti Frutti”
alone. When he finally gets into the meat and potatoes of the recording at Cosimo
Mattassa’s backroom studio at J&A Amusement Services in Louisiana, Little
Richard: The Birth Of Rock ‘n’ Roll really comes alive for me.
Kirby makes a good case for what he calls the ‘Old Weird America’ and how it
existed years before Little Richard put down his infamous hit and where it has
gone these many years after. In a country just about busting at the seams in
its need for the rebel release of a “Tuttu Frutti” and all the great
songs that came after it, Richard Kirby shows how a diminutive black man with
the big voice and slightly paralyzed leg set the world ablaze. It might all
have begun with Little Richard: The Birth Of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
~ Ralph Greco, Jr.
