"The Tutti Frutti Theory" -- what is he talking about?

[aimeeandbeatles]

Link.

Petty takes particular exception to critics who seek literary merit in everything. Although he is gracious toward the press, which has always treated him well, he says much rock criticism is misguided.

“What if they got ‘Tutti Frutti’? How would they treat that? What if they got ‘Blue Suede Shoes’? How would they analyze that one? Sometimes it’s very valid; I take time to write my songs. But you must remember the ‘Tutti Frutti’ theory in the back of your mind.”

I think I get the gist of it but Im not sure 100% what he means by it (yes, I know about the song). What are your thoughts on it? Do you agree with him?

 

[Cynovolans]

I'm guessing it means writing a song that makes little sense to confuse the critics, but I'm not really sure.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I thought he was referring to taking lyrics too seriously but, as I said, Im not sure

 

[GinandTonic]

There is an interpretation of tutti frutti that it is about certain sexual acts. Depending on your point of view the song either represents an amusing way of getting massive mainstream play for a song about something naughty, or the embodiment of over analysis of meaningless pop froth.

 

[holy king]

Link to video.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

There is an interpretation of tutti frutti that it is about certain sexual acts. Depending on your point of view the song either represents an amusing way of getting massive mainstream play for a song about something naughty, or the embodiment of over analysis of meaningless pop froth.

I'm not sure I entirely understood your post, but if I did understand it right, Im leaning to the second one.

Actually, I was looking up something for a friend, and I found this from a 1986 article:

Petty hates critics who try to wheedle "significance" out of his songs, but with the Heartbreakers, he's created some of the most enduring American rock of the last decade.

 

[NovaKart]

Tutti Frutti was a song by Little Richard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
Link to video.

It's part of the beginning of Rock and Roll. Listening to it, it's kind of hard not to find something sexual in it really. The video is from 1956.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Yes, I said in the OP i know about the song.

 

[NovaKart]

If we're just going by a reference to articles about Tom Petty then I suppose he's just talking about overanalyzing the lyrics like when the FBI investigated Louie Louie.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

This whole thing reminds me:

There's a Petty song on the second album, "Baby's a Rock 'n' Roller." It's not that good, to be honest, but it's fun to listen to. He said.... Actually, here you go:

The album finishes up with a pretty naive ‘Baby is a Rock’n Roller’ song which says just that several times over — was that wise?

“Probably wasn’t wise if you’re worried about the press,” Tom explained dryly, “but it was a very conscious thing. It’s a real bubblegum song and it was intentionally done, because I get very bothered when records start to sound artistic. I just don’t want to make records that you have to go to college to listen to — I can’t stand that. You know, we spent all this time trying to figure out how to end the album, and we had all these tracks, and then me and Michael wrote that song sort of as a giggle: we delibrately wrote it as one of those Mid-West Kiss-type song. I don’t know, it probably made a lot of people mad — but it’s one of my favourite songs. The production’s real crazy — we spent about a week trying to make that sound like a four track…”

Why not use a four track, I interjected? The smile became dryer still. “We tried to — we actually brought a TEAC in but we found we couldn’t transfer the tape properly. I wanted it to sound very live. — “She’s a rock ‘n’ roller and that’s all she ever wants to be” — I figure that’s just so dumb, it’s such a dumb thing to say and it’s so true! I mean, if I wrote ten ‘American Girls’ I really wouldn’t like the album that much: that’s all fun, but I just want this band to be very much a kids’ band. I don’t want the kids to think we’re going over their heads, so we put that song at the end of the album.”

 

[Plotinus]

It is quite an interesting topic in general. "Tutti Frutti" was a rude song that Little Richard was playing between takes of something else in the record studio. The executives liked it, had him clean up the lyrics (by making them incomprehensible), and the result was rock and roll bedrock. When you know this it's pretty obvious that it's basically a rugby song (or equivalent) with a few words changed.

I'm sure that there have been lots of attempts to understand the lyrics of "Tutti Frutti" and similar songs which assume that they're more meaningful than they are. Comedians have been parodying this for as long as such songs have existed. In the early 90s there was a splendid sequence on KYTV in which Angus Deayton plays a "professor of lyricology" who explains that the song's about "Neapolitan ice cream on the way". Unfortunately I can't find the clip on YouTube, but I can find this one from the mid-60s with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, again parodying over-serious attempts to interpret American roots music:


Link to video.

Presumably Petty is criticising genuine attempts of this kind.

In fact it's true that a lot of apparently nonsensical or incomprehensible songs, especially from the early days of rock and roll (and this would apply to later rootsy artists like Tom Petty, I suppose), are really about sex. This is because this music is rooted in the blues, and it's a general rule with the blues that if it's not immediately obvious what the song's about, it's about sex. The very term "rock and roll" comes from this: in blues, both "rocking" and "rolling" are euphemisms for ruder verbs. When Bill Haley invited everyone to "rock around the clock" he may have been talking about dancing, but the phrase originally meant something quite different.

Consider the following lyrics to "My Daddy Rocks Me" by Trixie Smith, from 1938:

Spoiler :

My man rocks me with one steady roll.
There's no slipping when he once takes hold.
I looked at the clock, and the clock struck one.
I said, "Now, daddy, ain't we got fun."
He kept on rocking with one steady roll.

I say, my man rocks me with one steady roll.
There's no slipping when he once takes hold.
I looked at the clock, and the clock struck three.
I said, "Now, daddy, you're killing me."
He kept rocking with one steady roll.

My man rocks me with one steady roll.
There's no slipping when he once takes hold.
I looked at the clock, and the clock struck six.
I said, "Now, daddy, you know a lot of tricks."
He kept rocking with one steady roll.

I say, my daddy rocks me with one steady roll.
There's no slipping when he once takes hold.
I looked at the clock, and the clock struck ten.
I said, "Glory, amen!"
He kept rocking with one steady roll.

This sort of language came to rock and roll via jump or jive blues, and the "blues shouters" of the 1940s such as Wynonie Harris who were even less subtle - witness Harris' "All She Wants To Do Is Rock" or "Good Rocking Tonight".

There's a bit of the Simpsons where Marge is showing Lisa the family quilt and Lisa asks what one patch means which says "Keep on trucking". Marge says, "I didn't know then - and I don't know now." That's another example - it's from the song "Keep On Trucking" by Blind Boy Fuller, which went, "Keep on trucking mama, trucking both night and day. Keep on trucking mama, trucking my blues away" - and you can see again that it's a euphemism. Things like this filtered into song lyrics and popular culture in general as apparently nonsense terms, but they did have meaning originally. It just wasn't very profound meaning.

 

[holy king]

like this 1957 record.:

Moderator Action: I'll cut that for being too far over the edge. I wasn't talking about risqué lyrics but about lyrics that use language that was once euphemistic, but lost that meaning - like those described in the OP. I don't want this to become a "share rude song lyrics" thread.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[sophie]

There's a bit of the Simpsons where Marge is showing Lisa the family quilt and Lisa asks what one patch means which says "Keep on trucking". Marge says, "I didn't know then - and I don't know now." That's another example - it's from the song "Keep On Trucking" by Blind Boy Fuller, which went, "Keep on trucking mama, trucking both night and day. Keep on trucking mama, trucking my blues away" - and you can see again that it's a euphemism. Things like this filtered into song lyrics and popular culture in general as apparently nonsense terms, but they did have meaning originally. It just wasn't very profound meaning.

Or it could have been a reference to the Grateful Dead song "Truckin'", which is more about drugs and the rock and roll lifestyle in general (there's a verse in there about the Dead getting busted in New Orleans for possession of Marijuana) in which case the joke takes on an entirely different meaning.

"Truckin', Got my chips cached in, keep truckin', like the doo-dah man, together, more or less in line, you just keep truckin' on."

or another line:

"Truckin', up to Buffalo, I been thinkin', you got to mellow slow, it takes time, you pick a place to go, and just keep truckin' on."

 

[holy king]

i like how "too edgy" regarding sexuality on this board seems to fit the definition of 1957. but then, somebody produced that record in 1957...

anyway, what about songs that everyone believes are a double entendre/have a "hidden" meaning, but actually were never intended to?

like...


Link to video.