A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop, a-lop-bam-boom.
When Little Richard wailed those syllables in a tiny recording studio in New Orleans in 1955, David Kirby writes, "suddenly, to quote the Book of Genesis, there was a firmament in the midst of the waters. It's a huge song musically, but it's also a seminal text in American culture, as much as Uncle Tom's Cabin, Song of Myself, and the great documents of the Civil Rights era.
