Tell me about New Orleans, why do you think it was that Art Rupe wanted Little Richard to record at Cosmo's New Orleans? What was so special about that?

Well they tell me that was one of the most, ah, I don't know how you would place it but that was one that where everybody came even from overseas to record. He had, ah, all kind of equipment and it was, I don't know, looked like a barn but it was, you know, it was well, the sound, the acoustics you didn't have that to worry about. And people that came there to record they liked it and so when they came to New Orleans and they got in touch with Cosmo said that they wanted to use his studio and that's how it came about.

Did they have a really special group of musicians that worked out of that studio where the sound they got was so unique?

Well, I tell you they had guys who knew what they were doing like Edgar Blanchard, one that was on the lead guitar, they had Red Tyler, Lee Allan and whoo, I'm telling you when they got together you had something. They only make noise today, you know, you don't know whose doing what. But, ah, they had, ah, those guys who would stay around a studio. Now if you brought your own in it was alright but they would wind up with Lee Allan and them because they really knew what they were doing. And today I don't know if he's yet working but the last time I was in California he was still out there with the Nevada tour.

Let me ask you about the influence of the church in rhythm and blues music. With Little Richard, could he sing the way he does if he hadn't been raised up in the church? Doesn't a lot of his style come from there?

Well, he's, a lot of style came from the church but, ah, ... this is my scene that when God give you a talent, look at it. You can do whatever you want to do. But those songs that were being sung then most times was related to people because they had such a hard time living. You know, I, and then in love that, but, you know, they didn't get out and get a gun and go shoot you 'cause I fell in love with him and he got somebody else. But, ah, songs like, when Johnny Adams, I wrote "I Want To Cry" sitting under a tree. I was very upset with my boy friend, and…

What about "Tutti Frutti"?

Yeah, but I'm going back to "Tutti Frutti". Now songs like that were songs that was soul stirring. Little Richard sang soul stirring songs like from, ah, they used to have a gospel choir and I think Little Richard used to lead in this and the young man could really sing. And a lot of that was taken from the church and placed into rock and roll. But I never did take the songs from the church and place into rock and roll, it only came because of what I heard when I wrote.

It seemed like there's a lot of similarity in music between Saturday night and Sunday morning, the energy was so much the same. Do you think?

Not exactly, you mean in those days? Well, not to me, not exactly. Like I said they wrote songs that were with the feeling as how they lived in that day, you see. Now today, you compare yesterday with today and you find out you don't have to worry because you make six and seven hundred dollars and think nothing of it. But when you made a dollar and a half a week honey you, you were doing something. My dollar and a half took me more than where you would take twenty-five dollars today and go spend it for a whole month 'cause I knew how to maneuver, take that dollar and a half and make it go a long ways.

You were starting to tell me about how "Tutti Frutti" got started. Little Richard was singing a lot of songs with nasty lyrics?

Yes, nasty, nasty, nasty.

Tell me about it.

He would sing a dirty blues that would make your hair curl and I couldn't take it. So, ah, I began to tell them about some of the songs that, ah, you know blues songs as far as "Tutti Frutti" it was already done. But, ah, I wrote a lot of love songs.

Tell me about how Richard came to record "Tutti Frutti".

I told you in 15 minutes I sat down and wrote "Tutti Frutti" in the corner. I asked him what he'd like, I listened to his voice and I sat down and I wrote it. In other words, I already had the, the title of it because like I said, when my girl friend and I went to the drugstore and I wanted vanilla ice cream, she said, they got a new one. So I said tutti frutti, I said oh rootie, I said, oh, I got a song. And I throwed it on back in my mind I went on. But when the time came and I went to the studio, like I said, I went into the room by myself in a corner and I wrote "Tutti Frutti" when I came back out and he stood at the piano, he never sat down to play, never, not that I've ever seen him sit down. He went to banging, banging, hollering and then I took the song up and began to sing - wamp poma luma poma lump, bam boom, tutti frutti, see I can sing the whole song completely through. So he couldn't take me a word from mine. And when I come to find out they said two or three people had written "Tutti Frutti" I said they couldn't. But then Art Rupe, when Cosmo had called him 'cause they had told Cosmo that I didn't write it. And Cosmo was the one that calls me today to be where I'm at, Cosmo called Art Rupe in California and Art Rupe got in touch with me and my mother had had a stroke and I said to him, he said, you need some money? He said I heard you wrote that song I listened to. I said, yes, I said, - how much money would you want? And I thought 50 dollars was a whole lot of money. I said, I could use 50 dollars. No, he say, you look for 500 dollars in the morning and he sent me 500 dollars and the next week he sent another 500 when he sent me the big check I got two thousand four hundred fifty-four dollars and seventy-eight cents. Ask me and I'll tell you the same thing all over and that's been years. That was my first big check that I got from "Tutti Frutti".

After Richard recorded "Tutti Frutti" then you get Pat Boone coming around singing "Tutti Frutti". Tell me about that. Was that something that you welcomed or did you feel that you wrote it for Little Richard and what's this Pat Boone guy doing?

No, not exactly because I'd been around the studio and talking with different people that come from all around the world. The said, girl, you got something any time Pat Boone want it and then Martha Raye and then here come Elvis Presley and here comes, who else now, I can call every one of them's name that, ah, had a part in it. And I just, right now I can't really recall just how many but I know quite a few dabbled in it but every time they sing it I got paid.

Did you feel something unusual was happening musically in the country when people like Elvis Presley started recording these rhythm and blues songs that used to be…

My question is, did you sense in those days in the mid Fifties when people like Pat Boone and Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, all these white guys started singing in a rhythm and blues way, that something was really changing in the country? Tell me about that.

Yes, there was a change and in the change, ah, I'm speaking from my point of view, that they wanted to do the black songs because that was what was hitting. At that time, you know, they used to have big bands and, ah, Glenn Miller and all of them, you know, so that, that was the rage, the young ladies singing all the love songs and the young men singing the love song. But that wasn't doing too much. So when they came over into the rock and roll area, ah, Pat Boone, well it wasn't too much. God bless him. But, ah, he knew that he was getting something over and that was money-wise. Elvis Presley was a big hit, so he knew he could do. Martha Raye was a comedian but she was out there so everything she did was a hit. So every hit it was, I was a hit.

Tell me about what you remember about Fats Domino in those days. Back in the early Fifties he had so many hits one after the other. What was so great about his music to you?

Well, his style. You, You have a style of your own and it took him over the world because of "Blueberry Hill" and, and all those songs that he sang. I've forgotten so many of them. And his style, nobody could do his style, you see, so that's how he made it to the top.

I wanted to ask you about Cosmo Studio. When you first went in there, who would you see and what was the atmosphere like? Was it a lot of energy or were people kind of laid back?

No, no, no, let go and let, and, you know, when you go in you could feel the warmth. See Cosmo is the type of person you could reach him from anywhere, any angle. You know if he was black, it's all right. He was white as steel all right, he just knew how to mingle and to make you feel warm, make you feel wanted, you know. I just loved him because he was a beautiful person. Always stayed the same.

What about Little Richard was he also warm in that way?

Well, Richard was warm in certain instances, you know. Yes, he was a great guy, let me put it that way, to me for music. Ahm hm.

Let me ask you one more thing, how do you think rock and roll music began? How did it start?

Well as far as I can relate to it and I was a young girl back in the hills of Kentucky, ha ha. Ah, I could hear some on the radio but it really wasn't rock and roll because mostly where, where I came from was hillbilly. And then when I left home and went to Alabama and would listen, now that's where you get your trend of rock and, I meant the blues from Alabama and Mississippi where I would go to Jackson, Mississippi, down in Meridian, Mississippi, those places where people had such a hard time as I said and they would, they would give out their vent in song. You couldn't fight what was going on down there so you get in the corner and make up a song, get a rub board, whatever it may be and it was sad but beautiful, and.

If you had to say who the first rock and roll musician you would really call rock and roll, who would you say that would be?

Roy Brown. That's that.

Could you tell me that in a whole sentence.

Well to me Roy Brown was the first of rock and roll that I felt that really had rock and roll to, ah, a point where the young people really got together and had a good time with the jitterbugging. This was one of the dances the jitterbug. Then when Little Richard came along, see, it was another environment, the womp pomaloo mopalomg bam boom. It didn't come in with Roy Brown's but it was beautiful but this was original. Yeah, I remember another, I can't think right now, it hit me just now when you was talking it had passed off. But this guy wrote a, he wrote a song and sold it for 50 dollars and then made 50 million rock and roll. And I can't think exactly what the song is now. If I really could get it together I could tell you it's been so long. And they, they worked Frank Penny's.

Out of the Dew Drop?

Out of the Dew Drop, yes indeed.

Did you go to the Dew Drop at all?

Well in my later years and young, being young I didn't go there when Little Richard and them was there but later I would go to the club and sit down. I never was a drinker but, ah, I would go and listen to like Big Mama Thornton and Etta James and all of those big singers would come there. Frank Penny was a hit in that day. Frank Penny was something in that day at the Dew Drop.