LITMIR.BIZ

      What might be the essence of, shall we say, “protoprogressive rock,” that is, the trend that led to the emergence of progressive rock in the late sixties? I would identify two elements in particular.

      First, there is a continuation, or perhaps a continual restatement, of what might be considered to be the “underground” element in rock music. This might be contrasted to the “pop” element, even if both aspects are sometimes found in one and the same song. A very good example of this combination is Little Richard’s brilliant “Tutti-Frutti” (1956). Obviously there is a pop side to this song, which was isolated to sickeningly sweet perfection in Pat Boone’s lily-white version. In a “pop” world, our ears become accustomed to hearing only this bleached and starched aspect of the song, even when we are listening to Little Richard. Turn your head a little bit, however, and this song becomes quite weird and even a little scary. As with many of Little Richard’s creations (and indeed his whole persona),⁷ “Tutti-Frutti” drips with both the charismatic Black church (especially as a Southern institution) and a raw, polymorphous eroticism. My thinking on this question, incidentally, is rather at odds with Professor James F. Harris’s in Philosophy at 33 1/3 rpm. Harris uses “Tutti-Frutti,” and in particular the memorable “word,” “Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom,” as examples of a period in rock music when, “[f]or the most part, the lyrics were irrelevant.”

      These memorable lines are memorable just because they are so completely insignificant. The lyrics are, at best, superficial and shallow, and, at worst, silly and meaningless. It is the beat which is important, and you can substitute almost any words or sounds for the original lyrics without losing very much. (pp. 3–4)

      Harris is interested in the “themes of classic rock music,” as he puts it, mainly from the sixties. His notion of a “theme” has exclusively to do with the lyrics, whereas I am more interested in understanding the intermotivations of sounds and lyrics. With its manic religious eroticism, “Tutti-Frutti” may push the envelope of meaning, of “sense,” but this “nonsense” is hardly insignificant.

      The most important thing is that Little Richard has chosen to speak a “secret language” here. In order to get a glimmer of the significance of this language, we have to place “Tutti-Frutti” in at least three overlapping contexts: those of race, sexuality, and spirituality. I will not presume, here, to give an ordering to the relative importance of each of these contexts; however, in each case there is something like a language of resistance at work. It perhaps goes without saying that a Black person who finds him- or herself in the midst of an “American century” where everything the least bit weird is suspect⁸ and where the attack on rock music is openly conducted as an attack on “race-mixing” (and where the specter of miscegenation is continually invoked), might be interested in speaking a language that is both unknown to the dominant white culture and in fact quite unsettling to it.⁹ Indeed, everything that still unsettles defenders of the King’s English (never mind for the moment that most of these defenders would be hard put to speak it themselves), that is, attackers of the various forms of Black English, is present in “Tutti-Frutti”—and not just in its “words,” but in its raucous tone and manic beat. In like fashion, the song conjures images of unchained, polymorphous sexuality. There is a fluid, to say nothing of completely queer, set of identities at work here, the sort of thing that drives those with a fascist and racist cast of mind completely nuts—this is what Judith Butler calls “gender trouble.” The “authoritarian personality” (as Adorno put it) demands stability of identity (and, if your identity is not stable, you’d better at least pretend that it is). The worst danger is that of “mongrelization,” the contaminating element that disrupts racial and sexual “hygiene” (the Nazi term). The suspicion is that “Tutti-Frutti” is rubbing mongrelization right in the faces of those who fear identity disruption—and getting some of the youngsters, white and Black, to dance along with it.

      Perhaps it goes without saying that there is also a playful rebelliousness to lyrics that, to the extent that they can be recontextualized into “standard English,” seem to be saying that it is “all righty” (“all-a-rootie”) to be “all fruity.”

      Finally, in a paradoxical twist, there is the obvious connection of “Tutti-Frutti” with the charismatic practice of glossolalia, also known as speaking in tongues. Although it would be stretching things a bit to see “Tutti-Frutti” as “sacred” music, it’s not entirely “secular” either—this is, in fact, another way in which the song trangresses boundaries that some would prefer to remain fixed. Especially with the signature “awopbopaloobopalopbamboom” (which is perhaps the antidote to “supercalifragilisticexpialadocious”—or is it the other way around?), there is clearly the sense of something “coming through” from some “other side,” something welling up from unknown depths.

      The genius of the song is that all three of these secret languages are inextricably intertwined—and the underground code that is thereby generated is, I would argue, a thread that stretches from the early days of rock and roll to the time of progressive rock. “Tutti-Frutti” is not in the least superficial or shallow, but is instead an invitation to an intense engagement with love (and sex) and mortality. Certainly it is a feast for Freudian analysis and analysis in the terms of contemporary cultural theory—and the fact that the song is also fun to listen and dance to does not negate its significance in the least.

      Perhaps, too, out of this complex intertwining, one can map two basic possibilities for rock music, one more “sensual” (or outright sexual), the other more “spiritual.” But even in the case where progressive rock (especially at its most “undanceable”—though I would argue that the critics who focus primarily on danceability simply lack imagination, as both critics and dancers) seems to go almost entirely in the latter direction, as perhaps most outstandingly in the music of Yes, there always remains the element of eros—of the embrace.

      Little wonder that this underground, threatening movement has always been countered, at every step, with a “normalizing” movement—the queer Little Richard countered by Pat Boone and the famous (p)Elvis that ultimately shook itself into the U.S. Army and then Las Vegas.

      The other key element of the protoprogressive trend—also connected to an underground sensibility as well as countered by “pop” normalizations—was the idea that the music should “go somewhere.” In other words, even in the beginnings of rock music, or before the beginning with Ray Charles and Louis Jordan, there was the idea that this music, which already transgressed boundaries of race, gender, and class, should also reflect new possibilities in its form.

      Again the triumvirate of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis is important, but I especially want to highlight the innovations of Mr. Bo Diddley (Ellas McDaniel, b. 1928). Of the early synthesists of rock, Diddley was, in my view, the most visionary. This is true even when, as was often the case, his music was harmonically simple. Famously, Jerry Lee Lewis said of Diddley, “[i]f he ever gets outta the chord of E he might get dangerous.”¹⁰ (The context makes it clear that Lewis said this affectionately.) For that matter, Diddley is even better known for his chugging, “shave and a haircut” rhythm (think of the song, “Bo Diddley,” or “Who Do You Love?” or “Not Fade Away”). Obviously, the lines that one initially expects to extrapolate from Bo Diddley’s music seem to lead more directly to hip-hop than to progressive rock—just as Little Richard’s music and performance approach leads more directly to Prince or Michael Jackson. However, and this is important, both Little Richard and Bo Diddley influence this more recent music by way of the psychedelic blues that were an integral part of the milieu—especially in England—out of which progressive rock developed in the late sixties.

      In any case, it is certainly true that Diddley built his innovations on the terra firma of roots rock—but,

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