Porter - Journey to the Centre Of The Cramps

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As long as there are girls and boys theres gonna be sex and its gonna be in rocknroll if its good rocknroll. The people that keep sex out of rocknroll its not rocknroll any more.

Lux Interior

J UST over a year after Elvis Presley lit rocknrolls initial fast burning fuse by launching into Arthur Crudups Thats All Right at the end of an otherwise unproductive July 1954 session at Sun Studios, Little Richard amplified that spark into a full blown conflagration by recording Tutti Frutti. More than any other record, Tutti Frutti established the template for rocknroll to the extent that over 50 years later, the track was named as the number one selection in Mojo magazines list of 100 Records that Changed the World. The primal, onomatopoeic holler with which Richard opened the song was the sound of rocknroll being born, kicking and screaming, into a world that it would soon conquer.

Any examination of what made the Cramps such a vitally unique group has only to take Tutti Frutti as its departure point. Like millions of others, Lux Interior and Poison Ivy Rorschach implicitly understood the significance of Little Richard Pennimans first major hit. Whereas Elvis Presley immediately embodied the kind of square-shocking rebellion that has always been a cornerstone of youth culture, Little Richard dramatically upped the ante by adding overt sexuality to the mix. Mindful of the necessity to court white audiences at venues such as Nashvilles Grand Ole Opry, Elvis pulsing sexuality was kept on a tight rein. Richard had no such immediate concerns: He was an outsider a black bisexual with a penchant for voyeurism and a talent for outrageous behaviour, on and off stage. At a time when the motions of Elvis hips were subject to moral panics and seat-dampening enthusiasm in equal measure, Little Richard represented a loudly ticking timebomb. It was really dangerous, observes Poison Ivy. Ive talked to people that remember the first time they heard Little Richard and they said it just scared em older people that were young at the time, they said it was just terrifying.

Almost immediately, efforts were made to clean Tutti Frutti up for mass consumption. The unmistakable intent of Richards original lyric; Tutti Frutti, good booty / If it dont fit, dont force it / You can grease it, make it easy was simply too lewd for an era where even milder innuendo was often considered shocking. While instantly aware of the tracks potential, producer Robert Bumps Blackwell also saw that it would be necessary to revise the songs minstrel modes and sexual humour in order to get any kind of airplay. With the repeated substitution of the phrase Tutti Frutti, aw rooty for the offending passages in place, Speciality Records had themselves a Top 30 hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

For some sections of the white establishment, Little Richard embodied the too black, too strong notion that Malcolm X would refer to in his landmark 1963 Message to the Grass Roots speech. Many radio stations pulled the single as soon as they realised that Richard was black, and a new version of Tutti Frutti was recorded by Pat Boone, a white, wholesome vocalist. Boone, who would later embark on a career as an evangelist, writing books such as Pray To Win and A Miracle A Day Keeps The Devil Away, as well as involving himself in politics by campaigning tirelessly for Ronald Reagan, scored a much bigger hit with the song, following it up several months later with a similarly sanitised version of Richards Long Tall Sally. When Tutti Frutti came out, explained Richard, they needed a rock star to block me out of white homes because I was a hero to white kids. The white kids would have Pat Boone upon the dresser and me in the drawer because they liked my version better, but the families didnt want me because of the image that I was projecting. Richards performances of Tutti Frutti and Long Tall Sally in the 1956 movie Dont Knock The Rock are likewise sanitised, depicting him standing behind the piano lip-synching to the tracks before a seated white audience, all of them handclapping politely in an unthreatening fashion.

In many ways, the conflicting dynamics to which Tutti Frutti were subjected established a template that would underpin the societal and generational conflicts that would serve to imbue youth culture with much of its vitality for the remainder of the century, with rebellion and sex constantly opposed by the forces of morality and commerce. In terms of rebellion, this template would usually involve the youth of the day taking things a little further than their predecessors and creating a media-led furore in the process. From Elvis Presley shaking his thing on the Ed Sullivan Show to Lady Gaga wrapping herself in the contents of the meat counter, successive generations appropriated and developed pre-existing aspects of popular or underground culture in ways that shocked and outraged their elders. This is a lineage that also included the Cramps. Its important to remember that no less a figure than Frank Sinatra made headlines angrily dismissing Elvis and his contemporaries as cretinous goons, observed Ken Burke in his book Country Music Changed My Life: Tales Of Tough Times And Triumphs From Countrys Legends. By contrast, the punk crowd and the Cramps in specific completely embraced the aspects of rockabilly that scared Sinatra. They nurtured no desire to assimilate into the so-called classier, more respectable end of show biz. In fact, they revelled in the garish garb and raucous rhythms their idols sought to escape.

While fifties rebellion opened up the generation gap, the manner in which rocknroll was sexualised created a more substantial schism by depositing youth culture firmly at the centre of Americas moral battleground. At a time when any number of false syllogisms were being drawn by the likes of psychiatrist Fredric Wertham who posited that juvenile delinquency was caused by reading comic books on the basis that a high proportion of juvenile delinquents answered in the affirmative when asked if they read comics, and perceived hidden sexual messages in illustrations of shoulder blades any overt reference to sex was a sure-fire way to create an uproar. Rocknroll originally meant you know, sex thats what it meant, observed Lux Interior. Its the most powerful thing. Even to this day it causes people to be very uncomfortable; even at a party if someone mentions it, it causes people to squirm in their seats. I dont know why that is. Any type of intimacy upsets people.