Bear Family Records A Music Man Like Nobody Ever Saw (5-CD Deluxe Box Set)

Whether it was reissue producer Don Schlitten or one of his minions in the RCA Victor marketing department that came up with the title of Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup's first reissue album in 1971, there was no denying its symbolic impact. The handsome gatefold cover proudly proclaimed Crudup 'The Father of Rock and Roll.' A bold and rather controversial statement without question. If Elvis Presley, then in the midst of his triumphant comeback on RCA, had been in charge of making the final decision confirming rock and roll's parentage, there's little doubt Big Boy would have worn the golden crown. Elvis was the hottest young performer in the U.S. in the summer of 1956, setting stages ablaze night after night with his galvanizing performances while dodging throngs of swooning, screaming young ladies that wanted a piece of him for their very own. Yet he graciously found time to pay enthusiastic tribute to Arthur when interviewed by journalist Kays Gary in a June 27 'Charlotte Observer' article: "Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now, and I said if I ever got to the place I could feel all old Arthur felt, I'd be a music man like nobody ever saw." You can't ask for a more heartfelt testimonial than that. Big Boy's name was no doubt totally foreign to the great majority of Presley's newly won fans in 1956. But if Elvis hadn't cut loose with an impromptu revival of Crudup's That's All Right at his first session for Sam Phillips' Sun Records in July of '54, the handsome young singer might never have seen a release from Phillips at all. Hearing Presley attack the Crudup anthem and Bill Monroe's bluegrass classic Blue Moon Of Kentucky side by side in his own unique style along with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Blackmaking two songs from two distinctly different idioms sound entirely of a piece in a style soon to be christened rockabilly--convinced Sam to issue Elvis' debut single and make his somewhat unclassifiable new discovery a high priority. Elvis was such a devoted fan of the veteran Mississippi bluesman that he grabbed hold of Arthur's My Baby Left Me and So Glad You're Mine shortly after he landed at RCA Victor in 1956, imbuing each with the same swivel-hipped carnality that made his Sun rendition of That's All Right so compelling. Considering the mammoth sales figures that Elvis racked up during his initial years at RCA, you'd think Crudup would have become a wealthy man off his compositional royalties once Elvis was crowned the king of rock and roll and went gold on everything he touched. You'd be wrong. Arthur's longtime A&R man Lester Melrose published Crudup's RCA compositions through his Wabash Music. Melrose wasn't inclined to pay royalties to his artists, preferring to hand Big Boy a small fee for his efforts after each session and send him on his merry way. If anyone was going to get rich off That's All Right and My Baby Left Me and all the rest of Arthur's voluminous catalog (he wrote nearly everything he recorded), it would be Melrose. Essential as he was to Presley's early development and a steady seller for Victor in his own right during the postwar era, Crudup didn't have a whole lot of luck over the course of his lengthy but intermittent career until near the very end. Music remained largely a sideline for the guitarist as the decades progressed. He didn't manage to tour off the hits that he did enjoy, and the thriving club scene that later overspread Chicago's South and West Sides hadn't fully taken hold during the war years, when Crudup was in the Windy City. A show at the Indiana Theater on East 43rd Street in Chicago was the only remotely high-profile appearance Crudup could even recall from his early heyday when interviewed many years later. After his recording sessions ended, manual labor and bootlegging booze was basically Arthur's humble lot in life until he was past 60, when he finally managed to crack the college festival circuit and eventually do some major league shows as Bonnie Raitt's opening act. Key to Big Boy's belated resurgence were the efforts of Bob Koester, who signed him to his Chicago-based Delmark label and released a couple of well-received albums on him, and Dick Waterman, whose keen managerial expertise had Arthur on the verge of seeing some of those long-elusive royalties when the veteran bluesman died after suffering a stroke in 1974. Let's pin down the pronunciation of Arthur's surname. It's crould-up (rhymes with 'would'), and there's nothing cruddy about it. He was born August 24, 1905 (U.S. Social Security files insist it was 1909) in Forest, Mississippi. Arthur started singing the blues when he was ten or so. His father was a musician and his mother sang, but not professionally. Young Arthur sang in church quartets and the choir during his youth. In 1916, Crudup and his mother and sister relocated to the Indianapolis, Ind. area for a decade, where he was privileged to sing classic blues chanteuses B