"A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop, A-lop-bam-boom!"
Sixty-five years ago, "Little" Richard Penniman walked into J&M Studios in New Orleans and set about recording some new music for Speciality Records.
By this stage, he'd been in the business for four years, trying and failing to make hits for the rival labels RCA and Peacock. By all accounts, the session on 14 September 1955 wasn't about to reverse his fortunes.
After an unproductive morning in which five mediocre gospel songs were committed to tape, producer Bumps Blackwell called proceedings to a halt and, as legend has it, the musicians decamped to a nearby bar.
There, Little Richard spotted a piano and, more importantly, an audience. The 22-year-old sat down and played an old, slightly obscene ditty he'd often performed as filler when he played nightclubs.
"He hit the piano and hollered, 'A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-good-God-damn!'" Blackwell later recalled. "And those were the cleanest words of it".
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