David Kirby, “Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll” (Continuum, 2009)

New Books in African American Studies · Oct 2, 2012 · 1h 3m

“A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop, a-lop-bam-boom!”And so rock and roll was born. And so American culture changed forever. So says David Kirby in Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll (Continuum, 2009). “Tutti Frutti,” Little Richard’s first hit, recorded by Robert “Bumps” Blackwell at Cosimo Matassa’s J & M Studio in New Orleans in September 1955, co-written and sanitized by Dorothy LaBostrie after Richard’s original lyric (“A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop, a-good-goddamn/Tutti Frutti, good booty”) was deemed a bit too racy for a recorded release (it was, after all, a song about anal copulation, writes the…