Remember When Pat Boone Covered This Early Little Richard Hit in 1956?

By 1955, Little Richard had released several songs. But it’s “Tutti Frutti” that became his first hit. On Here’s Little Richard, his debut album, Little Richard wrote the fun song with Dorothy LaBostrie.

The chorus of the fun song says, “Tutti frutti, oh rutti / Tutti frutti, woo! / Tutti frutti, oh rutti / Tutti frutti, oh rutti / Tutti frutti, oh rutti.”

Interestingly, only one year after Little Richard had a hit with “Tutti Frutti”, Pat Boone put his own spin on the song. By the time Boone released “Tutti Frutti” in 1956, he had also released several singles, including “Two Hearts” and “Ain’t That A Shame”, the latter his first No. 1 single.

Surprisingly, the song began in the kitchen. Little Richard was working as a dishwasher at a Greyhound bus station at the time, and was frustrated with his job.

“I couldn’t talk back to my boss man,” Little Richard recalls to Rolling Stone. “He would bring all these pots back for me to wash. And one day, I said, ‘I’ve got to do something to stop this man bringing back all these pots to me to wash,’ and I said, ‘Awap bop a lup bop a wop bam boom, take ’em out!’ and that’s what I meant at the time. And so I wrote ‘Tutti Frutti’ in the kitchen.”

Boone’s “Tutti Frutti” is part of his eponymous freshman album. His version became a Top 15 hit.

What Pat Boone Says About Recording Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti”

Boone’s first No. 1 single is “Ain’t That A Shame”, a cover of the Fats Domino song, also out in 1955. Boone put his own spin on “Tutti Frutti”, even changing some of the words. Boone’s version changed the line, “Boy you don’t know what she’s doing to me” to “Pretty little Susie is the girl for me.”

“Of course, the kids didn’t care,” Boone tells Songfacts. “They didn’t know. And Little Richard didn’t care, because as he said himself—he and Fats Domino—their songs were hits in the rhythm and blues genre, where a huge No. 1 hit like ‘Ain’t That A Shame’ might sell 150,000.”

“When I recorded their songs, my records of their songs sold 10 times that—and introduced them to the white audiences, or the pop audiences,” he continues. “So, they were grateful for my having recorded their songs. And of course, we became friends, as well.”

Photo by Stroud/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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