This had the unexpected side-effect of making that section of the song appear to mean different things in different cultures: "Somewhere in that made-up language, I am actually saying something, because even to this day, we'll play India, and someone will tell me, 'Yes, you've touched on certain words in. So he just made up his own dialect, with sounds that suited the melody. But, as he told the New York Post, he'd given his friend too broad a brief - "Lionel, there's 101 African dialects." Inspired by the chant in Michael Jackson's Wanna Be Starting Something - which was itself derived from Manu Dibango's Soul Makossa - Lionel called up a friend at the United Nations for the right language to help him create a great African incantation. While it's been interpreted in all sorts of ways, largely from the effect it had on listeners, that cry is actually a vocal approximation of a drum break, making Little Richard not just a rock 'n' roll pioneer, but one of the earliest beatboxers on record too.Īlthough this song contains a great many words with actual meanings, most of which concern a terrific shindig with Lionel Richie and his pals, it's the breakdown section in the middle which deserves special attention. Cleaned up for recording purposes with the jive slang "aw rooty" (which means "how lovely"), the song manages to sound just as racy as ever, thanks in no small part to the explosive holler "A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom!" which Richard would throw in at key moments. The original lyric contained a fairly ripe, but relatively coded description of sex with a chorus beginning "Tutti frutti, good booty" that had been going down a storm in live performances. Arguably no other song encapsulates this better than Tutti Frutti - a track that Little Richard can rightly claim as a set text for 20th century pop. It has always hidden its most lascivious impulses in knowing winks and coded language (the term "rock 'n' roll" itself is, of course, a euphemism for sex). Rock 'n' roll is the music of late nights, bad behaviour, wildness and ribald shenanigans.
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