Some class-reductionist Jacobin readers might roll their eyes when they hear a grad student claim that rock music has its roots in Afro-queer sexuality. Well, sorry comrades, at least when it comes to Little Richard, they’re right on the money. The original lyrics to “Tutti Frutti” were: “Tutti frutti, good booty / If it don’t fit, don’t force it.” Ironically, older millennials mostly remember Little Richard as the occasional surprise guest star on sitcoms like Full House. Many early radio stations would only play Pat Boone’s cover versions of Richard’s songs, hoping to cleanse them of impure sentiments.

“Elvis the pelvis,” they say. The man knew how to shake it! Censors were so scandalized by all the below-the-belt movement that, on Presley’s final appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, the camera made sure to keep the shot mostly zoomed in on his torso. Who can blame them? We can’t let this Presley fella go around impregnating our youth through the TV screen. But really, much of the Elvis panic was likely rooted in the truly unspeakable norms of the 1950s: the fact that he was a Southern white boy playing “black music.”

This was a case where, hey, maybe those riled up parents had a point. Not only are the lyrics obviously about sex. Lewis really sent the media into a panic that year when he married his third wife, who just so happened to be his cousin  . . .  who just so happened to be 13 years old. And yes, this was a scandal even in the 1950s. Lewis would go on to marry four more times and was implicated in the death of his fifth wife by a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter.