Little Richard’s version of hometown hospitality had its kinky edge.

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Phil Walden accompanied Otis on this trip to New York.  As part of his ongoing “education” in African American culture, Phil marveled at the backstage scene at the Apollo. “It was like a shopping center. Slick-looking black guys would pull in clothes racks with merchandise from the best shops in New York. They hired junkies to steal the goods. If you didn’t like what they had on the racks, you could place an order, ‘I want a pair of such and such alligator shoes in a size 9.’ Two hours later you’d have them.” 

“Shout Bamalama can safely be described as the low point of Otis Redding’s recording career.” ?????!!!!!!!?????

Little Richard sang harsh and wild, so I played honkin’, wild sax.

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The Blues Ramblers was about the most popular band in Houston during this time, and the women was pretty crazy about us. There was one night when a policeman caught me over in French Town in Houston. This was after a gig, and I had this girl with me. I always knew how to find me a dark street. Sometimes we’d do it in the front seat, and sometimes I’d get comfortable and get in the back seat. I had this girl in the front seat when the police drove up behind us, got out, and flashed that light on us. He said, “Boy, let me see that hair between your teeth!”

Hot and loud and vulgar music, non-stop for five hours

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To the older generation rock 'n' roll came to mean Teds and violence. There was a riot in Berlin. Some countries banned rock 'n' roll altogether. In Singapore police were called in to stop British soldiers jiving in a cinema foyer after a midnight premiere of Rock Around The Clock. The Rev. Albert Carter of Nottingham denounced rock 'n' roll from his pulpit: 'The effect of rock 'n' roll on young people is to turn them into devil-worshippers; to stimulate self-expression through sex; to provoke lawlessness, impair nervous stability, and destroy the sanctity of marriage.' In Miami, Florida, the head of the local censorship board described rock 'n' roll dancing as 'nothing more than shoving boys and girls around' and 'vile gyrations'! Racialist Asa Carter of the North Alabama White Citizens' Council was scared too: 'Rock 'n' roll is a means of pulling down the white man to the level of the 'Negro'. It is part of a plot to undermine the morals of the youth of our nation. It is sexualistic, unmoralistic, and the best way to bring people of both races together.' Many older musicians hated rock 'n' roll: 'Viewed as a social phenomenon, the current craze for rock 'n' roll material is one of the most terrifying things ever to have happened to popular music ... Musically speaking of course, the whole thing is laughable ... Let us oppose it to the end.'

Big Mama chasing Little Richard with a butcher knife

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Boy, oh boy, the action started. Every conceivable avenue of pleasure was rampant at this center of activity, a drunken man being dragged home by a good Samaritan, a couple of painted lilies standing in the corner smoking and indulging in that favorite West Dallas pastime—profanity. I paused to hear the deluge of obscene language coming from everywhere. A boy, apparently twelve years of age, walked up and asked for a cigarette. I gave him one on his nerve. He took two out of the package. A nickel Victrola started playing “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home?” Couples dancing, couples drinking, some talking in tones that I could not understand. A woman walked up and asked me to put a nickel in the Victrola. In obedience to her command, I placed a nickel in the slot and she requested that I play “Baby Don’t You Stay All Night.” The earthworm wiggling that started with the music was below my dignity, so I moved on down the avenue of “good times.”

Vince Taylor was black leather and chains, the final rocker.

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From the start, Pepsi has been based on a single age-old precept: it's fun to be a freak. And it is, of course. It's fun to get stoned and float on giant cushions, to stay up past your bedtime. And it's fun to visit Hair, to go up on stage and dance with the kids, belonging, and believe that you've had access to secret knowledge, revelations that the straight world doesn't even suspect. It is even fun to be misunderstood, to feel yourself martyred, a rebel and outsider. What isn't much fun, though, is to be punched in the face and thrown into jail. Not at all, it isn't and, therefore, the political and philosophical basis of the movement has been more or less forgotten. In the heart of the Pepsi Rock fan, there lurks a secret shame at the blatancy and vulgarity of the music's past, Elvis in his gold lame suit, Little Richard jumping on the piano and Jerry Lee Lewis so greasy, all those wild and orgiastic exhibitions. Just like the jazz fans of 1960, who preferred Dave Brubeck to John Coltrane, they want it both ways: they want to be hip, to be in the game and yet, in the end, they don't want to get their feet wet.

irresponsible, reckless, adolescent shenanigans of rock ‘n’ roll artists

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By 1958, her persona as a smoky, smoldering jazz dame had hardened into cliché. The Lee arrangement of “Fever” is stripped down to just upright bass and drums, but it also involves a husky, heavy breathing vocal, massively overdubbed finger snaps and newly written (by Lee), cutesy lyrics about Captain Smith and Pocahontas. Was she “hipping it up with Beatspeak,” or laying it on a little thick, like a “square” actor gluing on a goatee to play a beatnik on television?

“Peggy Lee couldn’t sing like Little Willie John. Everybody in the (Hotel) Theresa and all over Harlem were talking about how those white producers who came uptown sneaking around the Apollo Theater recording black material and then you’d hear a white singer on the radio singing the same song. That would put anyone on junk.” Faye Pridgon says she laughed when she heard Lee’s version, and she claims Willie did too. “That song had gotten a hell of a play in the ’hood long before that girl came along. When Pat Boone or whoever covered a song, it was a joke to us.”

We always called him Bad Boy. He used to drive a milk truck.

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I'll tell you who really started out with me: Tina Turner. She was waiting tables, wore on her little short dress; she wanted to sing. I say, 'You can sing if you want'. She would jump up there and she'd sing and she'd always throw her leg over. Well, see that run a lot of customers away - if a man got a wife and Tina comes by and you watching her, and your wife say, 'I see you watching that woman with that short dress on', she's looking so hard and, if the woman don't say nothing, she watch her and then she watch her man and a man can't be still when she starts wiggling. His wife might say something, like, 'Get me another beer' and he don't hear, he's so busy watching. 'You can't hear me for watching that woman', you know, ‘I won't come here again.' I said, 'Tina, you drive my customers away.'

They used to call him 'Groundhog' because he had some dirty ways

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a story involving saxophonist Evelyn Young. The band would often cross into Mexico to visit a favoured bordello when they had some time off in Houston, and on one occasion Evelyn, who liked to dress in men's clothing, insisted on joining the pilgrimage. The bordello was a rather informal affair: lacking actual rooms it had curtained-off areas each equipped with a bed for the patron. Evelyn. undetected as a woman by the girls, had made her selection along with the others and things were proceeding swimmingly for everyone until a scream and a lot of Spanish expletives came from Evelyn's 'room’ and her girl went tearing through the cubicles, breaking down the ropes and curtains and jumping over beds and bodies.

Crazy about titty ‘cause I sucked my mother’s titties so long

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Over the past ten years I’ve been doing home improvements, laying rugs, building furniture. I like to go down to Atlantic City, have a good time and come back. Who cares … I’m a cook at the Blarney Rock restaurant, that’s 267 Madison Avenue. We got corned beef, roast beef, daily specials … I was workin’ at the pop factory – Old Dutch pop factory that was on Homan and 13th somewhere around the ABC club … I had a good job at Ford motor factory – at that time I was bringing home $377 every two weeks. I was on one of the hardest jobs in the plant … Being good in this business doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to make it. That’s life …