Tutti Frutti
by Little Richard
- 92
- BPM
- Bb major
- Key
- 6B
- Camelot
- 53
- Danceability
- 78
- Acousticness
In April 2012, Rolling Stone called the refrain of "Tutti Frutti" the most inspired rock lyric ever recorded. The Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in 2009, and it entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2007 a panel of artists put it at number 1 on Mojo's list of the 100 records that changed the world.
It began in New Orleans in September 1955, when Little Richard recorded at Cosimo Matassa's J&M Studio for Specialty Records. The producer was Robert "Bumps" Blackwell, and the band was Fats Domino's, including Earl Palmer on drums and Lee Allen on saxophone. Richard grew frustrated that the session was not capturing his wild style. At a lunch break he pounded the piano and sang a ribald song he had been performing for years. Blackwell heard a hit and called in the local songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie to clean up the words. The refrain, often written as "A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bam-boom!", was Richard's spoken version of a drum pattern. A third name, Lubin, also appears in the writing credit.
Tutti Frutti runs at 92 BPM, the tempo of hip-hop, R&B and reggaeton. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.61 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 652 ms. It is in Bb major, Camelot 6B, which shares its notes with G minor and mixes cleanly with Eb major and F major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.