Arthur Crudup wrote the song that became Elvis’ first hit. He was barely paid

FRANKTOWN, Va. (AP) — Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup was co-inventor Rock’n’roll.

His 1946 song “That’s All Right,” a casual shrug to a lover, became the first single Elvis Presley ever released. Rod Stewart would sing it on a chart-topping album. Led Zeppelin would play it live.

But you wouldn’t have known it if you had seen Crudup living out his retirement on Virginia’s eastern shore, dressed in overalls and leading a crew harvesting cucumbers, tomatoes and sweet potatoes.

Although Crudup was called the “Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” he received little royalties as a songwriter during his lifetime because his recording contract funneled the money to his original manager. Crudup died 50 years ago, leaving behind one of the most blatant examples of artist exploitation in the 20th century.

“Of course, material things aren’t everything,” says Prechelle Crudup Shannon, a granddaughter. “But they took so much more than just money. They left him with all the burdens of a poor black man. And even more so because they left him with a broken heart.”

In recent years, Crudup has received some recognition. He was briefly coached by Gary Clark Jr. in the 2022 Film biography “Elvis” and was mentioned last year by a California reparations task force that the long history of discrimination against African Americans.

Friday marks the 70th anniversary of the recording of “That’s All Right” — many historians consider July 5 a cultural milestone — and the state of Virginia plans to install a road marker. in honor of Crudup.

“Among others who covered Crudup were the Beatles, BB King and Elton John,” the sign will read. “Crudup received few royalties and supported his family as a laborer and farm hand.”

“A completely new thing”

Born in Forest, Mississippi, in 1905, Crudup began singing blues at about age 10, he told Blues Unlimited magazine. By age 14, he was working in a foundry. He didn’t start playing guitar until he was 30. Self-taught, he played at parties and nightclubs. in the Mississippi Delta.

In search of a better job, he busked in Chicago and slept in a box under a subway station. One evening, on a street corner, Crudup met Lester Melrose, a white sales representative for Bluebird Records.

“He put a dollar in my hand and asked me to play,” Crudup told High Fidelity magazine.

There is much debate about who wrote the first rock’n’roll song, but “That’s All Right,” a mix of blues and country, is clearly a hit.

“It doesn’t sound like country, it doesn’t sound like blues, although I can hear that in it,” says Joe Burns, a professor of communication 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 these songs.

His original manager had them.

“I wouldn’t record with anyone unless they gave me all the rights to the songs,” Melrose once said, according to Alan Lomax’s book “Mister Jelly Roll.”

Crudup spent several years in Chicago, recording songs and taking the bus south to work in Mississippi, one of which was as a garbage collector for $28.44 a week.

“I had to support my family, pay off a car loan, a gas bill and an electric bill,” Crudup said. In his early 50s, he gave up music to work on farms.

“A kind of hillbilly record”

In 1954, Presley took a break during his Trial training at Sun Studios when “this song that I had heard years ago came to mind,” Peter Guralnick’s Book “Last Train to Memphis”.

Sam Phillips, the the legendary founder of the studio, recognized Crudup’s song immediately. Phillips was amazed that the 19-year-old knew it and thought his version “came across as fresh and lively.”

A radio station in Memphis, Tennessee, broadcast Presley’s recording shortly thereafter. The reaction was “immediate”: There were phone calls and telegrams asking for the recording to be played again, Guralnick wrote.

“It was by far Elvis’ biggest seller on the Sun label and paved the way for what would soon become his almost unimaginable path to fame,” Guralnick told the Associated Press.

Although Crudup is often quoted as saying Presley’s rise, the singer has mentioned the songwriter publicly.

“Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup banging on his box like I do today,” Presley told the Charlotte Observer in 1956, “and I said if I ever got to the point where I could feel everything old Arthur felt, I’d be a music man like nobody’s ever seen.”

Crudup himself liked Presley’s interpretation.

“He made it into a sort of hillbilly record,” Crudup later told the Los Angeles Times. “But I liked it. I thought it would be a hit. Some people like blues, some people don’t. But the way he did it, everybody liked it.”

In the early 1960s, Crudup finally received a sizable royalty check—over $1,600. But Melrose refused to transfer the copyright.

Many black musicians have assigned their copyrights or been forced to pass them on, says Kevin J. Greene, a professor at Southwestern Law School.

“A lot of what we’re talking about in terms of exploitation is still subject to copyright,” says Greene, who testified before the California Reparations Task Force.

In 1971, Downbeat magazine estimated that Crudup probably earned over $250,000 from “That’s All Right” and “My Baby Left Me” – nearly $2 million today. Creedence Clearwater Revival recorded.

The American Guild of Authors and Composers even attempted to collect royalties on Crudup’s behalf, but then-executive director John Carter told High Fidelity in 1972 that Crudup received “at most $2,500” from the guild’s efforts.

Playing in a packing hall

By his mid-50s, Crudup had settled in Franktown, Virginia. His granddaughter says the experience broke his heart. But he didn’t wallow in his feelings.

“My father always emphasized that he was a man of the utmost principle,” Shannon says of Crudup, who embodied “the old country values” of working hard and providing for the family.

Etna Nottingham Walker, whose family owned the Virginia farm where Crudup worked, says, “If you didn’t know it was Arthur Crudup and that he was a musician, you wouldn’t have recognized him.”

Butch Nottingham, Walker’s cousin, also worked on the farm. During breaks, he says, Crudup would sometimes take out a guitar and sing in the packing house, where they washed and waxed cucumbers.

Crudup eventually returned to music, while the Blues revival of the 1960s. Music producers from two labels, Fire and Delmark, tracked him down. He released new albums, played at festivals and shared the stage with BB King, Taj Mahal and Bonnie Raitt.

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 toddler on his porch in Franktown, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

“He had these very, very long limbs,” Shannon recalls. “He just seemed like a giant to me.”

Tim Prettyman worked at the pharmacy where Crudup often bought insulin, coffee and Camel cigarettes. One time, Crudup arrived in a suit with a guitar case to take a bus to New York and a plane to England.

“He said, ‘I’m going to play music for the Queen,’ and winked at me and smiled,” Prettyman recalls.

“That shouldn’t happen”

Towards the end of his life, Crudup nearly received $60,000 in compensation, which would be over $400,000 today.

Melrose was dead. A deal had been agreed with Hill & Range, the company that had taken over Crudup’s Publishing rights.

But when Crudup and four of his children arrived in New York, they learned that the deal had fallen through, according to the book “Between Midnight and Day” by Crudup’s last manager, Dick Waterman.

They were told that a settlement would cost the company more money than a possible lawsuit would bring in. And suing would be like “going after an old white widow who lives in Florida,” Waterman wrote. “We wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“It’s just not meant to be,” Crudup told Waterman. “Naked I come into this world and naked I will leave it.”

In fact, no agreement was reached until after Crudup’s death in 1974. Chappell Music refused to proceed with the purchase of Hill & Range until the Crudup matter was resolved. The first check was for just over $248,000, Waterman wrote, and Crudup’s estate received about $3 million in the decades that followed.

Now Warner Chappell Music, The publisher declined to comment, saying that the events had happened so long ago.

Jeanette Crudup, the widow of Crudup’s son Jonas, says the payments to the musician’s children pale in comparison to what he should have received during his lifetime.

“They got the crumbs from it,” she says.

Crudup is still relatively unknown, even on the East Coast, says Billy Sturgis, a local resident who produced an album by Crudup’s sons. Sturgis hopes the historical marker will help. But, he says, Crudup belongs in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, alongside Presley and the many others who sang Crudup’s songs.

Crudup’s granddaughter agrees.

“It would be special if this story was unique,” Shannon says. “But it’s not. We know this has happened to black artists throughout time, especially back then.”