That's All Right, Mama, the first rock and roll

[luisam]

 

There has been a long standing dispute among music historians as to which song is actually the first "rock and roll" record. The discussion is about the "definition" of pure rock 'n roll".

 

One of those songs is "That's All Right, Mama", written and originally performed by blues singer Arthur Crudup on 1946. It is best known as the first single recorded and released by Elvis Presley. Presley's version was recorded and released on July 1954 with "Blue Moon of Kentucky" as the B-side. It is #113 on the 2010 Rolling Stone magazine list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".

 

The origin of the song goes back to some traditional blues verses first recorded by Blind Lemon Jefferson in 1926. Crudup was quite popular by the mid 40's but "That's All Right" was less successful than some of his previous recordings. At the same session, he recorded a virtually identical tune with different lyrics, "I Don't Know It". Later  in early March 1949, the song was rereleased under the title, "That's All Right, Mama" as RCA's first R&B record on their new 45 rpm single format, on bright orange vinyl.

 

 

 

The label on Elvis Presley's version reads "That's All Right" (omitting "Mama" from the original title), and names the performers as Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill. Arthur Crudup was credited as the composer but even after legal battles into the 1970s, was reportedly never paid royalties. An out-of-court settlement was supposed to pay Crudup an estimated $60,000 in back royalties, but never materialized.

During an uneventful recording session at Sun Studios on the evening of July 5, 1954, Presley, Scotty Moore (guitar) and Bill Black (string bass) were taking a break between recordings when Presley started fooling around with an up-tempo version of Arthur Crudup's song "That's All Right, Mama". Black began joining in on his upright bass, and soon they were joined by Moore on guitar. Producer Sam Phillips, taken aback by this sudden upbeat atmosphere, asked the three of them to start again so he could record it. The recording contains no drums or additional instruments. The song was produced in the style of a "live" recording (all parts performed at once and recorded on a single track). The following evening the trio recorded "Blue Moon of Kentucky" in a similar style, and it was selected as the B-side to "That's All Right". They didn't do much engineering those times.

 

 

The recording session was Presley's fifth visit to the Sun Studio. His first two visits, the summer of 1953 and January 1954, had been private recordings, followed by two more visits in the summer of 1954.

 

Upon finishing the recording session, according to Scotty Moore, Bill Black remarked, "Damn. Get that on the radio and they'll run us out of town."

Sam Phillips gave copies of the record to local disc jockey Dewey Phillips to air it on his radio shows. On hearing the news that Dewey was going to play his record, Presley went to the local movie theater to calm his nerves.

 

Interest in the record was so intense that Dewey reportedly played the record 14 times and received over 40 telephone calls. Presley was persuaded to go to the station for an on-air interview that night. Unaware that the microphone was live at the time, Presley answered Dewey's questions, including one about which high school he attended: a roundabout way of informing the audience of Presley's race without actually asking the question. Looks that even after this implicit explanatory comment the radio station got calls asking to stop playing records by "that damned n***" because some people though he was black. 

After "That's All Right" was officially released on July 19, 1954, it sold around 20,000 copies. This number was not enough to chart nationally, but the single reached number four on the local Memphis charts.

 

As for Crudup, he stopped recording in the 1950s, because of disputes over royalties.He said, "I realised I was making everybody rich, and here I was poor". He returned to recording and touring in 1965. Sometimes labeled "The Father of Rock and Roll", he accepted this title with some bemusement. During all this time Crudup had to work as a laborer to augment the low wages he received as a singer; he was not receiving royalties. After a dispute with record producer Lester Melrose over royalties, he returned to Mississippi and took up bootlegging.

 

In an interview he said: "People ask me about Elvis Presley, how do I feel about him. Ought to be mad with him, they say. For what? ... That man have paid his royalty statement that I was supposed to get whether I got it or not." The person who ripped off Crudup was Lester Melrose.

 

He later moved to Virginia, where he lived with his family, including three sons and several of his siblings, and worked as a field laborer. He occasionally sang in and supplied moonshine to drinking establishments, including one called the Dew-Drop Inn, in Northampton County.

In 1968, the blues promoter Dick Waterman began fighting for Crudup's royalties and reached an agreement in which Crudup would be paid $60,000. However, Hill and Range Songs, from which he was supposed to get the royalties, refused to sign the legal papers at the last minute, because the company thought it could not lose more money in legal action. In the early 1970s, two Virginia activists, Celia Santiago and Margaret Carter, assisted him in an attempt to gain royalties he felt he was due, with little success.

 

Elvis was a way into the blues for many people. His records were close enough to the originals to be interesting and led many people to re-discover real blues.  While it's true that, weren't for the rock versions, all those blues would have never again be recorded and less even sold by millions, authors deserve the royalties and be recognized as the forerunners of rock and roll and the modern country music.

 

In July 2004, exactly 50 years after its first issuing, the song was released as a single in the United Kingdom, where it debuted and peaked at Number 3.

 

By the way, Elvis' version of the song Blue Moon of Kentucky, originally a modest B-side at the moment of the release, has got some really good ratings too and the way he sang it is considered a rock and roll classic.

 

 

 

 

[funkyy]

Yet another example of the "morally correct" music industry/executives stealing from an artist (Crudup)...notice he says that they were all getting rich while he remained poor. These are the same scum who use the laws to monopolize music, while they have no hesitation in stealing from the talented creators of the music. If "piracy is not a victim-less crime", then leeching an artist's earnings is even more so!!