There's more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream...

January 14th – Great music has a habit of highlighting many things that are happening in society, both good and bad. For the good one only has to call to mind the protest songs running right through pop history. But sometimes the treatment a song undergoes, if we take the time to look, gives us an insight into the darker corners of our social fabric and puts a spotlight onto historical events giving them a significance we often dismiss as either trite or of little concern to our daily lives; such a song was ‘Tutti-Frutti’ which entered the charts on this day in 1956.

Contained in its lyrics and wrapped up in the events surrounding its release, promotion and treatment were couched the chasm between black and white America in the 50’s which led neatly on to the race brutality and denial of the 60’s and onto today when we finally recognise how the creationist movement operates…and all this in a simple pop song. 

The original lyrics –

“Tutti Frutti, good booty, If it don’t fit, don’t force it, you can grease it, make it easy…”

– were all about having casual sex, something that was anathema to WASP America, whilst the opening stanza,

“A wop bop-a loo-mop, a good goddamn!" 

neatly outraged the religious right, so a double-whammy for the American white right and the houses of the wholly holy. 

Mr. Richard has struggled with his own religious convictions and sexuality throughout his life, and admitted that he enjoyed sex with white and black, male and female didn't exactly help to placate white America. Finally landing on the side of preacher (as of now) Mr. Richard looks back on his life with few misgivings and a great deal of eloquence but, back in the 50’s with these espoused values as his foundation for life and living? They may have been ‘just the lyrics of a silly pop song’ to many but in the eyes of the status quo…? Here was a black man, whose racial group at the time was seen as little more than a beast of burden by the good, religious folk of the deep White South, announcing to the youth of America that it was OK to have conjugal relations with white or black of either sex for no other reason than pure enjoyment. Even those involved in the recording and release of ‘Tutti-Frutti’ could see the difficulties that could arise from being associated with that bit of youthful propaganda; so compromises had to be undertaken. The above lyrics were changed for its release to the ones we know now…but anyone ‘in the know’ (and that included young America) knew exactly what he was singing about so there was a strong possibility that when these real meanings filtered back to the white population that ran church and state...well let's just say they might have feared for the souls of their children…they did. The white American answer to this was to get the all-american, all-white Pat Boone to re-cut the record and lay it out in open contest against Mr. Richard’s single.

Pat Boone was the pop equivalent of a sixteen year old giving up the opportunity to go away on an unsupervised Christmas camping vacation with a mixed-sex group of his/her schoolmates and instead opting to toast marshmallows over a log fire with mum, dad, gramps and their younger cousins, and wearing the patterned jumper granny knitted throughout. Mr. Boone’s safety as a role model for white American youth had been confirmed when during the shooting of in an early film of his (‘April Love’) he refused to do an unplanned kiss-scene until he’d gone home and discussed it with his wife to make sure it was alright with her; not knocking him for that particular one. He was and is a devout Christian and how people hold to their faith is entirely up to them (I do draw the line at slaughtering the first-borne though) and we also have to look at the times and context. But when Mr. Boone, with all the learning and understanding we have now, stated that Barack Obama was ineligible for the Presidency because ‘he read the Koran as a boy and is fluent in Arabic’; well, let’s just say that certainly gives us a measure of the man.

That line of left-field social control exercised by governmental/religious factions concerning the education of a nation’s youth runs through to today’s musical genres but is done with more subtlety than the old-style direct conflict of Mr. Richard against Mr. Boone. Just cast your mind not so very far back to how pop musical social movements have been crushed simply because their work and/or existence were highlighted and associated with and by politicians.

“Arctic Monkeys? My very favourite band!”

“Brit-Pop leaders Oasis identifying with unemployed youth and subverting their work ethic? Get ‘em round to Number 10 for tea!”

It’s what’s known as ‘Death by Peer Recognition’ and is still highly active today. The movement kick-started by Nirvana and which ran through Foo Fighters and Papa Roach to give us many of the U.S. Deathcore bands of today is now being championed, surprisingly, by the U.S. Christian right as they pay for the recording and tour expenses of a number of Soft-Deathcore bands. The message of horror at the way the world is being manipulated (a central tenet in screamer lyrics) by politicians, by big business and by the lunatic right, from arms dealers to religious fanatics, and the language and solutions offered by these self-same bands is slowly being subverted by bands preaching the gospel as recognition of the power of this music to alter the social fabric of the young is once more slowly stifled by the Christian money-men. They will spare nothing in their efforts to choke any alternative to the teachings of the ‘praise the Lord’ faction, thereby saving the souls of their youth by stopping them thinking for themselves; Death by Mirror-Image.

Mr. Boone’s single went on to chart higher than Mr. Richard’s offering (wouldn't you give a couple of quid to have a list of the names and employment of the folk who bought Mr. Boone’s single?) and the rest, as they say, is continuing to become history.