Here’s a Stomp sneak peek with a great live performance from Sugar Pie Desanto when she toured Europe as part of the American Folk Blues Festival. Ponderosa Stomp alum Hubert Sumlin is on guitar!
Below is snapshot of Sugar Pie’s Ponderosa Stomp poster- from the letterpress geniuses at Yee Haw Industries. See Sugar Pie Desanto live and snag her poster on at the Ponderosa Stomp in New Orleans on September 24th and 25th, 2010.
Fifty-four years ago today, per Bumps Blackwell’s recommendation, Little Richard Penniman (seen above with Jet Harris, Gene Vincent and Sam Cooke) joined forces with Fats Domino’s band — which included the late Earl Palmer, drummer extraordinaire who performed at the 1st annual Ponderosa Stomp and served as Master of Ceremonies for Stomp #4 — at Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Recording Studio.
Their collective goal was to lay down tracks for Art Rupe’s Specialty label. As legend has it, nothing much happened, though, until the group broke for lunch. Then, in true recording studio mythology (see Elvis’ inaugural Sun session, or the story behind Isaac Hayes and David Porter’s “Hold On, I’m Comin’”), Little Richard sat down at the piano and began banging out a high voltage tune that he’d woodshedded in gay bars:
“Tutti Frutti, good booty
If it don’t fit, don’t force it
You can grease it, make it easy.”
Blackwell called in Dorothy LaBostrie to clean up the lyrics, and, after rolling tape for a record 15 minutes, one of the most iconic songs ever recorded in Orleans Parish was complete.
Mac Rebennack just happened to be standing outside J&M when the magic happened — and I got to quiz him about it 50 years later, for an article published in MOJO magazine:
“I was always hanging out there during Specialty sessions, trying to sell Art Rupe some songs. I remember telling my older sister, ‘This guy Little Richard is doing a session at the studio,’ and she replied, ‘Oh, I used to see him at Panama City.’ So Richard was already doing his thing as a solo act. He came out of those revues, where he had to really know his shit. Some people say he bummed his act from Esquerita, but to me, Eskew was more gospel sounding, and Richard was straight up hip. Sure, he sang kinda gospel but he played that ratty shit on the piano, with Earl Palmer following on the cymbals. His style was a revelation, a really good sound that could rock the house without fail.
Richard was a totally original cat – everything about him was off the hook. He was a little flamboyant, sure, but it went with that turf. Seeing him and Eskew hanging out wearing men’s suits, topped off with lipstick, that high hair, and women’s shades, would catch people off guard – they’d give them the once over two or three times, even though in New Orleans, we were used to the drag queen revues and traditions like that.
This is what made Richard special: As Fats Domino told me, ‘I couldn’t tell you what’s the difference between rock and roll and R&B.’ But Richard changed something in the New Orleans groove. Instead of a shuffle, he could play that eighth note thing on the piano, which set him apart from the rest of us. He used it from that first record on, and a lot of other people started using that shit. They still use it in rock and roll today.”
As Cosimo explained to writer Todd Mouton in the pages of Offbeat a while back, “If you transmit an emotion to the listener, it’s a good record. It’s gonna be a successful record. Now, having said that, how you measure it, I don’t know. How you predict it, I have not a clue. Because it happens, and everybody’s aware of it, you know, it’s fundamental. And yet totally evasive.”
Rebennack: “Back then, though, we didn’t really appreciate it. Everybody in New Orleans had so much to do, so many sessions to play on, that Tutti Frutti was just a little chunk of their lives. They didn’t have time to think much about it. I remember someone asking Red Tyler and Earl Palmer, ‘What do you remember about playing on it?’ and they both said, without batting an eye, ‘Very little.’”
Of course, like any million-selling single, there’s been an argument over the songwriting credits ever since.
LaBostrie, from Jeff Hannusch’s I Hear You Knocking: The Sound of New Orleans Rhythm and Blues:
“Little Richard didn’t write none ‘Tutti Fruitti.’ I’ll tell you exactly how I came to write that. I used to live on Galvez Street and my girlfriend and I liked to go down to the drug store and buy ice cream. One day we went in and saw this new flavor, Tutti Fruitti. Right away I thought, ‘Boy, that’s a great idea for a song.’ So I kept it in the back of my mind until I got to the studio that day. I also wrote the flip side of ‘Tutti Fruitti,’ ‘I’m Just a Lonely Guy,’ and a spiritual, ‘Blessed Mother,’ all in the same day.”
Blackwell, quoted in Charles White’s biography of Little Richard:
“I Knew that the lyrics were too lewd and suggestive to record. It would never have got played on air. So I got hold of Dorothy La Bostrie, who had come over to see how the recording of her song [I'm Just A Lonely Guy?] was going. I brought her to the Dew Drop. I said to her: ‘Look. You come and write some lyrics to this, ’cause I can’t use the lyrics Richard’s got.’ Richard turned to face the wall and sang the song two ot three times and Dorothy listened. Break time was over, and we went back to the studio to finish the session, leaving Dorothy to write the words. Fifteen minutes before the session was to end, the chick comes in and puts these little trite lyrics in front of me.”
And Penniman himself, again from White’s book:
“I’d been singing ‘Tutti Frutti’ for years, but it never struck me as a song you’d record. I didn’t go to New Orleans to record no ‘Tutti Frutti.’ Sure, it used to crack the crowds up when I sang it in the clubs, with those risqué lyrics. But I never thought it would be a hit, even with the lyrics cleaned up.”
I’ll let Mac close it out:
“Of course, the idea for Tutti Frutti was probably already floating around New Orleans. I bet Richard heard something like it from Eddie Bo. Considering who actually wrote this sucker – Dorothy LaBostrie, who wrote Johnny Adams’ and Irma Thomas’ first hit records – I’m sure the song came straight up out of the dozens. ‘A gal named Sue/She knows just what to do’ – that shit was nasty! Some New Orleans songs, like Tee-Nah-Nah, are Creole. You know, your tee-nah-nah is your ass cheeks, and your tee-nah-noo is your asshole. But Tutti Frutti isn’t Creole, and I don’t think it went with the ice cream flavor. You know what a fruit is, right? I think it had more to do with that shit. But did you ever hear Pat fucking Boone singing that crap? I don’t know if he got it and fucked it up, or if he didn’t get it, and fucked it up. Either way, it was pretty fucked up, but we didn’t pay no attention to that crap!”
On Saturday night, exactly 54 years after he headlined the St. Francis County Fair in Forrest City, Arkansas, alongside Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Floyd Cramer, Sun rockabilly Eddie Bond took the stage at the Center for Southern Folklore‘s Memphis Music & Heritage Festival.
At the fifth annual Ponderosa Stomp, Bond was backed by Deke Dickerson and the Eccofonics, along with special guest guitarist (and one-time Bond protege) Travis Wammack. Saturday, he played with a group of Middleton, Tennessee country musicians, including an unknown hotshot guitarist disguised in a Hawaiian shirt and glasses.
Bond, a showman responsible for the phenomenal 1956 b-side “Rockin’ Daddy” and the 1973 pop culture hit “The Ballad of Buford Pusser” who cranked out the hits even as he pulled double-duty hosting several popular Memphis TV shows, took the stage inside the Center’s Folklore Hall wearing his trademark yellow blazer and played “Rockin’ Daddy” — twice!
Go here to read my Memphis Flyer feature about the changing face of the Memphis Music & Heritage Festival, which lost two perennial performers, Stomp alum Billy Lee Riley and famed producer Jim Dickinson, in recent weeks.
From the article:
When I caught up with Center for Southern Folklore director Judy Peiser a week before festival time, she had a heavy heart. Upon pausing to contemplate the gaping holes caused by the absence of the ever-dependable Riley and Dickinson, she said:
“Things are definitely mutating. It’s gotten so hard to do a festival every year because of the people who aren’t there anymore, people who had a major effect on what we do. I grew up listening to the music I started presenting, and now I’m presenting music that’s one generation removed. People like Jim and Billy Lee weren’t playing off records — they were playing off life.”
Peiser sighed, recalling moments she spent with Dickinson, co-producing bluesman Mose Vinson’s solo CD Piano Man. She remembered the blues sets that Riley often delivered, peppered with his classic Sun rockabilly hits such as “Flying Saucer Rock and Roll” and “Red Hot.” She sounded dismayed at the thought of anyone other than Thomas, the minstrel performer turned Stax Records mainstay — billed as “the World’s Oldest Teenager,” he died in 2001, when he was 84 years old — performing “The Funky Chicken.”
“Life goes on,” Peiser finally said. “Sure, there was Michelangelo, but there were also a lot of people after him.”
In a music industry where an artist’s life expectancy is often measured by their fleeting time in the spotlight, Ronnie Spector’s influence truly precedes her: it’s evident and immediate from the second that unforgettable drum intro to the Ronettes’ 1963 smash “Be My Baby” kicks in, and she hasn’t even started singing yet. No matter who you are, what you’ve heard before or what you will hear in the future, there’s little that can compare to hearing “Be My Baby” for the first—or even the millionth—time. Ask artists as varied as the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, the New York Dolls, the Ramones or even Billy Joel, whose “Say Goodbye To Hollywood” was written for her.
But don’t just stop there, look to Beach Boy Brian Wilson, who was so taken with “Be My Baby” that he penned the nearly-as-great “Don’t Worry Baby” in response to it. Even Madonna once famously stated, “I want to look the way Ronnie Spector sounds.”
Spector didn’t just shift the musical landscape, she shook it up with earthquake intensity, defining careers right and left with “Be My Baby,” “The Best Part of Breaking Up,” “Baby I Love You,” “He Did It” and unforgettable renditions of Christmas classics like “Frosty The Snowman.”
To quote the lady’s website, because we couldn’t say it better ourselves: “Only a few artists in history have been capable of defining an entire era in pop music. Ronnie Spector is one of those artists: the embodiment of the heart, soul and passion of female rock ‘n’ roll in the 1960s. And to this day, no one has ever surpassed Ronnie’s powerful trademark vocals, her gutsy attitude, or her innocent but knowing sexuality.”
The truth, plain and simple. From her slit skirts to her sensual voice, there’s never been anything ordinary about her. Born Veronica Bennett to a white father and half-Cherokee half-black mother, Spector grew up in Spanish Harlem during the heart of the doo-wop era. Her earliest influence and lifelong idol, Frankie Lyman, lived just blocks away, and Spector would often go out of her way to pass his house on 165th Street. Cutting her teeth at the Apollo Theater’s infamous amateur nights, she formed the Ronettes with sister Estelle and cousin Nedra while still in her teens. After a stint at the Peppermint Lounge, they were soon performing at DJ Murray the K’s notorious Brooklyn Fox rock ‘n’ roll package shows.
Signed to the Colpix label, their first records included standouts like the aforementioned “He Did It” and “You Bet I Would,” written by Jackie DeShannon and Carole King respectively. In 1963 the Ronettes hooked up with The Tycoon of Teen himself, Phil Spector, resulting in the worldwide smash “Be My Baby,” followed by a tour of England with the Rolling Stones and Yardbirds as opening acts. The next few years found them turning in a hysteria-inducing performance on the Tami TNT Show and taking front and center on the legendary Phil Spector’s Christmas Album.
In 1966 the Beatles personally requested the Ronettes to open for them on their final tour, then signed Ronnie to their Apple imprint in 1970 for the George Harrison-penned single “Try Some, Buy Some,” where she was backed by two-thirds of the Fab Four.
Inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Of Fame, Ronnie has remained a rocker to the very core, often commenting on the lack of passion in modern music. Her latest release, the tellingly titled (and excellent) Last Of The Rock Stars, features a smattering of friends and fans who range from veterans Keith Richards and Patti Smith to young Cincinnati garage rockers the Greenhornes. Never forgetting where she came from, it contains a great version of the tin-pan alley ballad-cum-R&B hit made famous by Frankie Lyman, “Out In The Cold Again.”
More videos:
Ronnie Spector performing “I Wonder” at the 7th annual Ponderosa Stomp.
Ronnie Spector performing “Baby I Love You” at the 7th annual Ponderosa Stomp.
Mac Rebennack just happened to be standing outside J&M when the magic happened — and I got to quiz him about it 50 years later, for an article published in MOJO magazine: 
On Saturday night, exactly 54 years after he headlined the St. Francis County Fair in Forrest City, Arkansas, alongside Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Floyd Cramer, Sun rockabilly 
Forty-six years ago today, the Ronettes charted with “Be My Baby,” dubbed by Brian Wilson as “the most perfect pop record of all time.” 
