New Excerpt from Bob Dylan's new book: 'Little Richard, Tutti Frutti'

"He started speaking in tongues under the stuffy awnings and got all the way to commercial radios, and he was shouting just like a holy preacher, which is what he was."

"Little Richrad is the master of the 'double entendre,' Tutti Frutti is a good example. A fruit is a homosexual.

And Tutti Frutti mean all fruit. It's also an ice cream. A girl named Sue and another girl named Daisy, and they're both cross-dressing."

"Have you seen Elvis sing Tutti Frutti on the Ed Sullivan Show? Do you know what he's singing? Do you think Ed Sullivan knows this? That they both know? Of all those who sang Tutti Frutti, Pat Boone was perhaps the only one who knew it. And Pat knows what it's like to speak in tongues, too."

"There are a lot of people in Little Richard's songs. All stereotypical characters: Uncle John, Long Tall sally, Mary and Jenny, Daisy Sue and Melinda. They slip into the murky world of sex and dreams by surprise and give you no escape. Little Richard wasn't 'little' at all He says that something is up. the world is about to fall apart. He's a preacher. Tutti frutti is the alarm bell."

Bob Dylan also recalls playing shows with the late pioneer and reflects on his legacy as ‘the original spirit that moved me’Little Richard died  at aged 87 on May  2022.

"He was my shining star and guiding light back when I was only a little boy. His was the original spirit that moved me to do everything I would do."

He continued: "I played some shows with him in Europe in the early Nineties and got to hang out in his dressing room a lot. He was always generous, kind and humble. And still dynamite as a performer and a musician and you could still learn plenty from him."

"In his presence he was always the same Little Richard that I first heard and was awed by growing up and I always was the same little boy. Of course he’ll live forever. But it’s like a part of your life is gone."

In Dylan’s high school yearbook in 1959, then-senior Robert Zimmerman famously wrote that his life ambition was “to join Little Richard.” As the Star Tribune reported, Dylan even attempted to emulate Little Richard’s imitable performing style during his first-ever public performance at a Hibbing High School talent show in 1957.