Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup helped invent the Rock and Roll Music.
His 1946 song “That’s All Right,” a quiet shrug of the shoulders to a lover, became his most famous song. Elvis Presley’s first single ever released.Rod Stewart was singing it on a chart-topping album, and Led Zeppelin was playing it live.
But you wouldn’t know it if you saw Crudup living out his final years on the East Coast of Virginia, dressed in overalls and leading a crew harvesting cucumbers, tomatoes and sweet potatoes.
Despite being called the “Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Crudup received scant royalties for his songwriting during his lifetime due to a recording contract that funneled money to his original manager. Crudup died fifty years ago, leaving behind one of the most shocking stories of artist exploitation of the 20th century.
“Of course material things aren’t everything,” says Brichel Crudup Shannon, a granddaughter. “But they took more than just money from him. They left him with all the burdens that a poor black man carries. And more than that, they left him with a broken heart.”
In recent years, Crudup has received glimpses of recognition. He was briefly portrayed by Gary Clark Jr. in Elvis Biography Movie 2022 This was reported last year by the California Compensation Task Force, which was examining Long history of discrimination against african americans
Friday marks the 70th anniversary of Presley’s recording of “That’s All Right” — and many historians consider July 5 a cultural milestone — and it comes as Virginia plans to erect a highway marker Crudup honored.
“Among those who covered Crudup’s work were the Beatles, B.B. King, and Elton John,” he would recall. “Since he rarely received royalties, Crudup supported his family as a laborer and farmer.”
“something completely new”
Born in 1905 in Forrest, Mississippi, Crudup began singing the blues when he was 10, he told Blues Unlimited magazine. By 14, he was working in a steel mill. He didn’t start learning to play guitar until he was in his 30s. After teaching himself to play, he began performing at parties and nightclubs. In the Mississippi Delta.
In Chicago, looking for a better job, he played on the street and slept in a box under the L Station. One evening, Crudup met Lester Melrose, an agent for Bluebird Records.
“He put a dollar in my hand and told me to play,” Crudup told High Fidelity magazine.
There are many arguments about who wrote the first rock and roll song. But That’s All Right, which blends elements of blues and country, has a strong claim to fame.
“It doesn’t sound like country music, it doesn’t sound like blues, even though I can hear it there,” says Joe Burns, a professor of communications and media studies at Southeastern Louisiana University. “It’s really something completely new.”
Crudup recorded about 80 songs for Bluebird between 1941 and 1956, including “That’s All Right,” “My Baby Left Me,” and “So Glad You’re Mine.” He did not own the rights to any of them.
His original manager had these things.
According to Alan Lomix’s book, Mr. Jelly Roll, Melrose once said, “I won’t record anybody’s song unless they give me all the rights to the tunes.”
Crudup spent intermittent years in Chicago, recording songs there and returning south by bus to work jobs in Mississippi, one of which was hauling garbage for $28.44 a week.
“I had to take care of the family, make car payments, gas bills, electric bills,” Crudup said. He left music in his early 50s to work on farms.
“kind of country record”
In 1954, Presley was on a break during Demo session at Sun Studios When “this song came to mind that I had heard years ago,” according to Peter Guralnik The Last Train to Memphis book.
Sam Phillips, Founder of the legendary studioPhillips recognized Crudup’s song immediately. He was amazed at the 19-year-old’s familiarity with the song and felt his version “came across with freshness and vitality.”
Soon a radio station in Memphis, Tennessee, aired Presley’s recording. The response, Guralnick wrote, was “immediate,” with phone calls and telegrams asking the station to replay the recording.
“It was Elvis’s best-selling album ever on the Sun label, and it launched what would become his unimaginable path to stardom,” Guralnick told the Associated Press.
Although Crodup is often deleted from accounts, The Rise of Presley, the Singer Publicly credit the songwriter.
“In Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup banging his box the way I do now,” Presley told the Charlotte Observer in 1956, “and I said if I ever got to the place where I could feel everything that old Arthur felt, I would be a music man like no one ever saw.”
Crudup himself was impressed by Presley’s interpretation.
“He turned it into a kind of country record,” Crudup told the Los Angeles Times. “But I loved it. I thought it was going to be a hit. Some people like the blues, some people don’t. But the way he presented the song, everyone loved it.”
In the early 1960s, Crudup finally received a check for $1,600, but Melrose refused to hand over the copyright.
Many black musicians signed away copyrights or were forced to share them, says Kevin J. Green, a professor at Southwestern University School of Law.
“A lot of what we’re talking about in terms of exploitation is still copyrighted,” says Green, who testified before the California Reparations Task Force.
In 1971, Downbeat magazine estimated that Crudup probably earned over $250,000—roughly $2 million today—from “That’s All Right” as well as “My Baby Left Me,” which was one of his best songs ever. Credence Clearwater Revival registered.
The Authors and Composers Guild of America even tried to collect royalties for Crudup, but its then-managing director, John Carter, told High Fidelity magazine in 1972 that Crudup had gotten “$2,500 at most” from the guild’s efforts.
playing in the packing shed
By his mid-50s, Crudup had settled in Franktown, Va. His granddaughter says he was deeply hurt by the experience, but he didn’t give up.
“One of the things my father emphasized was that he was a very principled man,” Shannon says of Crudup, who embodied the “old country values” of hard work and family support.
“If I hadn’t known it was Arthur Crudup and he was a musician, I wouldn’t have targeted him,” said Etna Nottingham Walker, whose family owned the Virginia farm where Crudup worked.
Walker’s cousin, Butch Nottingham, also worked on the farm. He says that during breaks, Crudup would sometimes pull out his guitar and sing in the packing house where they were washing and waxing cucumbers.
Crudup eventually returned to music, while Blues Revival in the 60sHe was tracked down by music producers Fire and Delmark. He released new albums, played festivals and took to the stage with By the kingTaj Mahal and Bonnie Wright.
But Crudup continued to live on Virginia’s eastern shore, a narrow peninsula between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Shannon remembers her silver-haired grandfather holding her as a little girl on the porch of his Franktown home, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
“His limbs were so long, he looked like a giant to me,” Shannon recalls.
Tim Prettyman worked at the pharmacy where Crudup bought his insulin, coffee and Camel cigarettes. One time, Crudup arrived in a suit, guitar case in hand, heading for a bus to New York and a plane to England.
“He said, ‘I’m going to play music for the Queen,’ and then he winked at me and smiled,” Prettyman recalls.
“It wasn’t meant to be”
As his life drew to a close, Crudup nearly received a $60,000 settlement, which would be worth more than $400,000 today.
Melrose is dead. A deal has been made with Hill & Ring, the company that took over Crudup. Copyrights.
But when Crudup and four of his children arrived in New York, they learned the deal was off, according to the book “Between Midnight and Day,” written by Crudup’s last manager, Dick Waterman.
They were told that settling would cost the company more money than a potential lawsuit would generate. Filing a lawsuit, Waterman wrote, would mean “going after an old white widow living in Florida. We wouldn’t have a chance.”
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Crudup told Waterman. “I came into this world naked and I’m leaving it naked.”
In fact, a settlement was not reached until after Crudup’s death in 1974. Chappell Music refused to proceed with the purchase of Hill & Range until Crudup’s case was resolved. The first check was just over $248,000, Waterman wrote, with Crudup’s estate receiving about $3 million over the following decades.
now Warner Chappell MusicThe publishing house declined to comment because the events happened so long ago.
Jeanette Crudup, the widow of Crudup’s son Jonas, says the payments the musician’s children received were small compared to what he should have received during his lifetime.
“They got the crumbs from it,” she says.
Billy Sturgess, a local who produced an album for Crudup’s sons, says Crudup is still relatively unknown, even on the East Coast. Sturgess hopes the historical marker will help. But he says Crudup belongs to Rock and Roll Hall of FameAlong with Presley and many others who sang Crudup songs.
Crudup’s granddaughter agrees.
“It would be great if this story was unique, but it’s not,” Shannon says. “We know this has happened to black artists throughout the ages, but especially at that time.”
—Ben Finley, Associated Press
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