Imagine Little Richard screaming across the stage, A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom! That's the perfect description of the arrival of Spring in Toronto. Winter drags on for months, then - kaboom - an explosion of Spring colour, as everything bursts into bloom all at once.
Little Richard's 1955 release, Tutti-Frutti takes its name from tutti i frutti, Italian for "all fruits". With Spring in full bloom here in Toronto, ice cream shops are reopening their doors, and tutti-frutti ice cream is an ever popular choice.
These photographs remind me of cherries, lemon peel, grated orange, lime - and dollops of whipped cream! Searching through recipes, tutti-frutti ice cream is often made with dried and fresh cherries, raisins, candied citrus, papaya and pineapple. There are as many variations as there are ice cream shops around the world.
500 ml (2 Cups) peaches, apricots, and/or cherries chopped into small pieces
175 ml (3/4 Cup) sugar
350ml (12 oz) evaporated milk
250 ml (1 Cup) whipping cream (35% MF)
15 ml (1 Tbsp) lemon juice
45 ml (3 Tbsp) orange juice
5 ml (1 tsp) vanilla
2.5 ml (1/2 tsp) almond extract
500 ml (2 C) mashed raspberries, and/or strawberries
If you haven't already, remove all the pits from the peaches, apricots, and cherries (otherwise, you'll find out the hard way why they're called stone fruits). Also, remove the skins from peaches, and apricots by blanching them in boiling water, and peeling the skins off.
Puree all of the ingredients, except for the berries. Chill. Churn in the ice cream machine. Pour into a large bowl, and stir in the mashed berries. If you like soft ice cream, get a spoon NOW! If you plan to scoop the ice cream into cones, then it has to harden in the freezer.
What's with the derogatory word "wop", all through Little Richard's Tutti-Frutti? The word has been around since the early 1900's in America. Many think it stands for "without papers", or "without passports", and described illegal Italian immigrants to the US. Impossible, since not having immigration papers wasn't an issue until the World War I era. Actually, the word originates from the Sicilian, guappo, which means a swaggering thug. That in turn, came from the ancient Romans, who described a worthless man as vappa, meaning sour wine.
As far as I've been able to determine, lyrically speaking, wop is just a sound, like sha-boom. Don't read anything into the lyrics. Little Richard described the wop-bop-a-loo-bop line as the drum beat sound inside his head. Boom!
With the exception of the song title, nothing in the song Tutti-Frutti has anything to do with Italian ice cream. The original lyrics - which might not be approved by today's censors, let alone censors back in the mid 1950s - had to do with gay sex.
Little Richard's original song was "cleaned up" by a woman he referred to in a Rolling Stone interview, as, "some chick". Dorothy LaBostrie used to like going to the neighbourhood drug store to buy ice cream. One day she and her girlfriend, went into the drug store and discovered a new flavour, Tutti-Frutti. "Right away I thought, 'Boy, that's a great idea of a song'. So I kept it in the back of my mind until I got to the studio that day." Years later, all through the 1980's, that "chick" made ten to twenty thousand US dollars a year in royalties from the song. Aw rooty is slang for, all right!
A musical genre that works with Italian ice cream (besides authentic Italian music) is Doo-wop (sometimes called Do-wop). It wasn't created by Italian-Americans, but they certainly made it their own. Think of urban street corner and subway acappella groups in the late '50s and early '60s. Just Google, Denise by Randy and the Rainbows, or, A Teenager in Love, by Dion and the Belmonts, Hushabye, by The Mystics, Juke Box Saturday Night, By Nino and the Ebb Tides, or the Capris hit, There's a Moon Out Tonight, to get a sense of the Italian influence on the genre.
There's a lot to be said for a full multi-sensory experience...sights, sounds, tastes, fragrances. If you're going to venture out to photograph this Spring's lovely blossoms, bring music with you, and perhaps pick up some ice cream cones on the way!
Photographs Copyright of: Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.
No comments:
Post a Comment