Art Rupe, pioneering record executive who launched Little Richard, dead at 104

nypost.com:

Little Richard (the professional name for the late Macon, Georgia, native Richard Penniman) had learned of Specialty through Price, sent a demo and for months called trying to find out if anyone had listened.

He finally demanded to speak to Rupe, who dug out his tape from the reject pile.“There was something in Little Richard’s voice I liked,” Rupe said. “I don’t know — it was so exaggerated, so over-emotional.

And I said, ‘Let’s give this guy a chance and maybe we can get him to sing like B.B. King.’”Initial recording sessions were uninspiring, but during a lunch break at a nearby inn Little Richard sat down at a piano and pounded out a song he had performed during club dates: “Tutti Frutti,” with its immortal opening shout, “A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-wop-bam-boom!”Released in September 1955 and one of rock n’ roll’s first major hits, “Tutti Frutti” was a manic, but cleaner version of the raunchy original, which featured such rhymes as “Tutti Frutti/good booty.” Rupe noted that Little Richard’s performance was transformed when he accompanied himself on piano.“Up that up to that point Bumps (producer Robert “Bumps” Blackwell) was having Little Richard just be a vocalist,” Rupe said. “The neck bone connected to the knee bone or something; his voice and his playing sort of gave it a lift.”Critic Langdon Winner would liken Little Richard’s Specialty recordings to Elvis Presley’s Sun Records sessions as “models of singing and musicianship that have inspired rock musicians ever since.”Little Richard’s other hits with Specialty included such rock classics as “Long Tall Sally,” “Good Golly Miss Molly” and “Rip it Up” before he abruptly (and temporarily) retired in 1957.