Throwback Thursday: Frankie Lymon – “Little Bitty Pretty One” (Live)
Fifty-four years after his passing — and 24 years after the movie of about his life, Why Do Fools Fall in Love, was released — everything about Frankie Lymon seems iconic. However, he actually had a very brief run of commercial success. After he left The Teenagers, his popularity declined significantly.
By 1960, Lymon was now years removed from his days as a teenage star. That being said, he was still a heck of a performer. On August 13 of that year, he performed his cover of “Little Bitty Pretty One” at the Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show. Originally written and recorded by Bobby Day, the song was made famous by Thurston Harris, whose cover of a song was a top 10 hit in 1957.
If you’re like me, you’ve seen this live performance many times and probably assumed that the white girls the camera keeps panning to are mean-mugging because they’re racist. Yes, they are, but there’s more to it: For whatever reason, they thought Frankie Lymon was white. This hilarious fact makes this amazing performance that much more interesting, and serves as a reminder of just how challenging it was to be Black recording artist in the early days of the rock & roll era.
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