{"id":354013,"date":"2026-07-27T19:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T19:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/354013\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T19:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T19:18:08","slug":"the-sweet-story-behind-freddy-cannons-tallahassee-lassie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/354013\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sweet Story Behind Freddy Cannon’s “Tallahassee Lassie”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Freddy Cannon<\/a>, the rock and roll star who rose to fame in the 1950s, died at the age of 89 on July 24, 2026. The musician was always adamant about his devotion to rock and roll, as opposed to the poppier, more clean-cut figures many of his peers cut in the mid-20th century. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not any of those,\u201d he said <\/a>in a 2011 interview. \u201cI\u2019m a rock \u2019n\u2019 roll act. I don\u2019t have a great voice, but I\u2019ll tell you something right now, I\u2019ll rock with the best out there live onstage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cannon released a total of 16 albums across his career. At one point, he played guitar for the R&B group the G-Clefs, and he was known for the intense drums that often accompanied his songs, as well as his emotive vocals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cannon released a number of hit singles in his lifetime. The earliest was 1959\u2019s \u201cTallahassee Lassie,\u201d which hit No. 6<\/a> on the Billboard pop charts that year. That song, it turns out, was a collaboration between Cannon and his mother, Antoinette (Rosetti) Picariello.<\/p>\n

How a Poem Became \u201cTallahassee Lassie\u201d<\/p>\n

In the late 1950s, a young Cannon was an aspiring musician looking to make a name for himself as a rock act. At 19, he was reportedly working for a costume jewelry company in Boston and playing in rock clubs by night, but according to Forgotten Hits \u201860s<\/a>, he still found time to come home and have lunch with his mom. That fateful day, his mother\u2014who went by the nickname Mimi\u2014showed him a poem she had written called \u201cShe\u2019s My Rock and Roll Baby,\u201d and asked him to write some music to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe middle of that poem that my mother wrote was destined to go into the song exactly the way she composed it,\u201d Cannon told Forgotten Hits. \u201cHer exact words went on to become the centerpiece of the song: \u2018Well, she’s romping to The Drag; The Cha-Cha, Rag-A-Mop; Stomping to The Shag; Rocks The Bunny Hop.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It took some more time and experimentation by Cannon\u2019s band to shape the idea into a rock song. It also took a loan from Cannon\u2019s mom, who spotted him the $35 he needed to rent studio time.<\/p>\n

When the band made it into the studio to record their first demo, they happened upon a \u201ckid\u201d in the hallway named Kenny Paulson, Cannon said, who laid down the guitar solo for the track.<\/p>\n

Later that year, Cannon signed <\/a>a management contract with local disc jockey Jack McDermott. He brought the song\u2014then called \u201cRock and Roll Baby\u201d\u2014to producers \u00a0Bob Crewe and Frank Slay.\u00a0Together, the team reworked the song, and what they created was called \u201cTallahassee Lassie.\u201d The final version still featured a guitar solo by Paulson, and included a songwriting credit for none other than Mimi Picariello.<\/p>\n

\u201cTallahassee Lassie\u201d Takes Off<\/p>\n

\u201cTallahassee Lassie\u201d was initially rejected by all the record labels it was shared with until it caught the attention of Dick Clark, a major music industry player who hosted the show American Bandstand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clark offered a few suggestions, and the song was soon released on the label Swan Records to great commercial success. At Swan\u2019s president Bernie Binnick\u2019s suggestion, the young Freddy Picariello changed his artist name to Freddy Cannon, and a star was born.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cannon went on to release a number of other hits, including \u201cWay Down Yonder in New Orleans\u201d and \u201cPalisades Park,\u201d which incorporated sound effects recorded at the amusement park it was named after.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The musician continued recording songs right up until his death, but \u201cTallahassee Lassie\u201d remains one of his signature songs, and its impact has continued to reverberate. Over the years, it has been covered by dozens of artists, including Fleetwood Mac, the Beach Boys, and The Rolling Stones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Stones\u2019 tribute made a particular impact on Cannon. \u201cTo have influenced that band with a little song that I wrote with my mother 50 years ago is beyond my wildest dreams,\u201d the artist said of the cover. In 2012, the still-rocking Cannon\u2014then in his mid-\u201970s\u2014released<\/a> a song called \u201cCovered By the Rolling Stones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWay back in \u201859 in a third-floor apartment, my mom and I were writing this song,\u201d Cannon sings <\/a>in the rollicking tune. \u201cNow little did we know that 50 years later, we\u2019d be covered by the Rolling Stones!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Stones aren\u2019t the only major rock band that Cannon\u2019s \u201cTallahassee Lassie\u201d has influenced; none other than Mick Jagger has said<\/a> that Led Zeppelin used to play jam versions of the song during their formative years, and also claimed<\/a> that the song inspired the groove for the Stones’ \u201cBrown Sugar.\u201d Not bad for a kitchen-table collaboration with Mom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read More:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Freddy Cannon, the rock and roll star who rose to fame in the 1950s, died at the age…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-354013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}