J&M Recording Studio

On September 14, 1955, Little Richard recorded "Tutti Frutti" here in three takes and about fifteen minutes. Producer Robert "Bumps" Blackwell, working for Specialty Records, had brought him to New Orleans and put him with players from Fats Domino's band, among them Lee Allen, Red Tyler, Huey Smith and drummer Earl Palmer. Blackwell hired local songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie to clean up the song's raw original lyrics, and she is credited as a co-writer. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame later named the studio one of eleven landmarks nationwide.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Congo Square — steps away
  The 2.35-acre corner of Louis Armstrong Park where, from 1817, New Orleans confined Sunday dancing by enslaved people to one place, and where crowds of hundreds gathered to drum, dance and trade.
• St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 — 0.3 mi
  New Orleans' oldest surviving city of the dead, opened in 1789 after the fire of 1788 and the burial place of Homer Plessy, reachable only on a guided tour since March 2015.
• The Cabildo — 0.4 mi
  The Spanish town hall on Jackson Square, finished in 1799, where Louisiana changed flags in 1803 and where the state Supreme Court sat in the same room until 1910, Plessy v. Ferguson among its cases.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — 0.4 mi
  A French Quarter museum and research center founded in 1966, whose 2015 Purchased Lives exhibition took on New Orleans' place as the largest slave market in antebellum America.

More markers nearby

• First Recording Studio of Cosimo Matassa — steps away
• Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong — steps away
• New Orleans Marching Brass Band — steps away
• Charles "Buddy" Bolden — steps away