Elvis Didn’t “Steal” a Darn Thing from Arthur Crudup!

[Private Presley]

https://medium.com/elvis-thats-the-way- ... 35011e5b8f

Elvis Didn’t “Steal” a Darn Thing from Arthur Crudup!
But he certainly owed the old bluesman a debt or two

ELVIS DID NOT “STEAL” ANYTHING and especially not Arthur Crudup’s royalties. For decades, I have read articles that mention Crudup’s being cheated of his royalties, both as a recording artist and as a songwriter, while also mentioning that Presley made millions of dollars as if the two situations are somehow connected. They are not.

[Note: When discussing creative endeavors — here any form of writing words or recording music — if it isn’t outright plagiarism, the loaded term stealing should be avoided. But I am discussing financial matters in this article.]

Arthur Crudup is back in the news because of two recent events, primarily the huge success of Baz Luhrman’s movie Elvis. Several scenes feature a 12-year-old Elvis peeking in on Crudup singing and playing in a tiny juke joint in Mississippi. The other recent event was the release of the report by a (long overdue) state-appointed task force to study reparations for African-Americans.

Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup established himself as a rising star in the blues field in the mid-1940s. Then his star stopped ascending. Due to what appears to have been a saga of never-ending financial woe, Crudup gave up recording in 1954 and turned to manual labor for an income.

That same year, Elvis Presley released Crudup’s “That’s All Right” as his first single, and the rest, as they say, is history. But because he was a financially successful white artist, Presley has been ceaselessly linked to, if not blamed, for the financial woes of Crudup, a Black artist.

This article presents something for everybody who likes a few facts to go along with their opinions.

Four questions
This article will address four questions:

1. Did Elvis’ recordings of Arthur Crudup’s songs negatively affect Crudup’s career as a hitmaker?

2. Did Elvis’ recordings of Arthur Crudup’s songs negatively affect Crudup’s legacy as a recording artist?

3. Did Elvis have anything to do with depriving Arthur Crudup of royalties he was due as a songwriter?

4. Did Elvis have anything to do with depriving Arthur Crudup of royalties he was due as a recording artist?

The answers to these questions will be summarized at the end of the article.

Arthur Crudup’s legacy forgotten
There was another recent event that triggered interest from non-record collectors in Arthur Crudup: on June 1, 2022, California’s Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans issued its interim report. While discussing how Black creators have been cheated in the music industry, the task force authors label Presley an imitator and a (cultural) appropriator while mentioning exploitative contracts in the same sentence.

It is relatively easy to infer that the task force authors believe that Elvis had a hand in depriving Crudup and others of income. I wanted more information on Crudup to see if there was anything in his story that would lead a historian to such a conclusion.

The more I dug into Crudup’s life, the more I realized that there is not a lot of historical or biographical data to dig into. So my article about the task force’s interim report turned into an article about Arthur Crudup.

Crudup was a modest figure in the record industry who enjoyed his fifteen minutes of fame when he placed five sides from his RCA Victor singles on Billboard’s national rhythm & blues chart in 1945–1946. RCA Victor kept releasing his records to apparently dwindling returns.

[Note: At the time that Crudup was a hitmaker, the Billboard chart for black music was called Race Records and only surveyed jukebox play, so we don’t know Crudup’s sales figures.]

Here are a few key releases:

In early 1947, “That’s All Right” was released as the B-side to “Crudup’s After Hours”; neither side made the Billboard chart.
In early 1951, “My Baby Left Me” was released as the B-side to “Anytime Is The Right Time”; neither side made the Billboard chart.
In late 1951, “I’m Gonna Dig Myself A Hole” reached #10 on Billboard’s R&B Best Sellers in Stores survey.
[Note: By the early ’50s, Billboard had changed the name of their chart for black music from “Race Music” to “Rhythm & Blues.” There were also two surveys: “Best Sellers in Stores” and “Most Played in Juke Boxes.”]

And that was Crudup’s last big hit. Despite recording for several companies for a few more years, Crudup’s career as a hitmaker was effectively “erased” by the radio stations that stopped playing his records and the listeners who stopped buying his records.

[Note: Crudup released records on Checker, Trumpet, Jewel, Champion, and Ace under his own name and as Percy Lee Crudup, Elmer James, and Elmo James.]

Crudup’s entire musical legacy was effectively forgotten — except, perhaps, by blues aficionados and record collectors.

And Elvis Presley.

Arthur Crudup’s legacy restored
In July 1954, a few months after Crudup hung up his guitar, Elvis Presley was looking for a song for his first record for Sun Records. Sun’s owner and in-house producer Sam Phillips had legendarily claimed, “If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars!”

Phillips wanted something from Presley that would jump off the record and grab white people’s attention. Elvis remembered the B-side to an old record by Big Boy Crudup and started goofing around with the song with his musicians, Bill Black and Scotty Moore. They turned that B-side into the A-side of his first single and, while it was only a local hit in the Memphis area in 1954, That’s All Right became one of the cornerstones of the “rock & roll revolution.”

Two years later and Elvis had signed with a major record company and was being fêted by that company as “the most talked-about new personality in the last ten years of recorded music.” During his first sessions for RCA Victor, he pulled a few other forgotten records from his memory and cut two more Crudup compositions.

“My Baby Left Me” was coupled with “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” and released as a single. It quickly became his second million-seller of 1956! Later that year, “So Glad You’re Mine” was included on an EP album and an LP album. These three recordings appeared on several Presley singles and albums that sold more than 3,000,000 copies in the US in the ’50s alone.

And — Voila! — just like that, Arthur Crudup’s music was heard by millions of people around the world who would never have heard his music otherwise. Without those Presley recordings, Crudup might have remained forgotten to everyone but blues aficionados and record collectors.

[Note: Hundreds of blues artists had been forgotten until their reputations were resurrected and their music circulated by Elvis, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, the Yardbirds, etc. But that’s another story for another time.]

By the end of 1956, Elvis had restored Arthur Crudup’s legacy.

Arthur Crudup’s royalties stolen
Writers that mention Crudup and Presley in the same breath tend to (consciously or not) make it appear that Elvis was somehow responsible for not disbursing songwriting royalties to Arthur for those three songs. For example, the interim report of California’s Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans made these statements (and these three sentences ran consecutively in the same paragraph on page 300):

“During the 1920s and 1930s, Black musicians were subjected to contracts where the copyright for their work would be assigned to their employer, while being paid less than white musicians who had similar contracts. (1)

For example, Elvis Presley imitated Black blues and R&B singers, and due to these exploitative contracts, the original song creators whose work he appropriated were not even paid for the use of their music. (2)

One of Elvis’ hit songs, That’s All Right Mama (sic), was originally written and recorded by Arthur Crudup, a Black man who was paid so little for his recordings that he had to work as a laborer selling sweet potatoes.” (3)

The three sentences above are numbered like footnotes for ease of referencing my comments about each sentence, which follow below.

My comments
1. The terms employer and paid sound like the task force authors are discussing the hiring and use of session musicians, or sidemen, not the disbursement of royalties due to a recording artist. Those session musicians would have been doing what is currently referred to as “work for hire” and would not have had any right to any form of copyright on the finished recording, regardless of their skin color.

2. The example the task force chose to illustrate unfair practices in the record business during the 1920s and 1930s (mentioned in their previous sentence) refers to Elvis Presley and Arthur Crudup, neither of whom was recorded in the ’20s or ‘30s.

The task force authors also appear to be switching topics: first, from the salary given to hired employees to the royalties earned by creative artists; then, to royalties due to songwriters. Either way neither has anything to do with the royalties due to recording artists.

[Note: The term cultural appropriation is the denigration du jour in some circles.]

I am confused by the statement that “the original song creators whose work he appropriated were not even paid for the use of their music.” As the task force authors have switched to plural here, do they mean that Kokomo Arnold, Roy Brown, Ray Charles, Richard Penniman, and Jesse Stone were not paid for the use of the songs they wrote that Presley recorded in the first years of his career?

3. This is a confusing statement: when the task force authors say that Crudup “was paid so little for his recordings,” are they saying that he was paid so little for his own record in 1947, or are they saying he was paid so little for Presley’s recording of 1954?

Or are they comparing what Presley made as an artist from his recording of “That’s All Right” to what Crudup made for his recording of the same thing?

The amount of money that Presley earned via his contracts with his record companies (Sun and RCA Victor) and his publishing companies (Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music) has nothing to do with the amount of money that Crudup earned via his contracts with his record company (RCA Victor) and his publishing company (Wabash Music).

If Crudup held the songwriting and publishing rights to his songs and did not receive the royalties due to the holder of the songwriting and publishing rights for the sales of Presley’s recording of his songs on Sun and RCA Victor, then Crudup was, in fact, cheated. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that he held these rights (see below).

Also, Elvis had nothing to do with the disbursement of the money that his records made for his record company, whether it was tiny Sun Records or worldwide giant RCA Victor! Royalties due to songwriters were paid by the record companies to the songwriter or the songwriter’s legal representative or the songwriter’s publisher, depending on whatever contracts the songwriter had signed with his manager and his publisher.

Arthur Crudup’s royalties restored
A little research into what little information about Crudup exists led to a particularly non-momentous discovery. Most, if not all, of Arthur Crudup’s financial problems can be laid at the feet of the bane of countless recording artists and songwriters: his manager. This is addressed in a brief biographical entry about Lester Melrose by the editors at the All About Blues Music website:

“It was the accepted custom at that time for the producer to claim some or all of the publishing rights for the records they worked on, and Lester took this to extremes with thousands of tunes to his credit. When this body of work was plundered by big-selling white artists in the following years, like Elvis covering ‘Big Boy’ Crudup’s songs, Lester made a fortune and the musicians made very little. He had retired by then, relocating to Florida in the early ’50s.”

This statement is mirrored in a longer article, “Blues Law: Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup vs. Lester Melrose” by Brian Lukasavitz on the American Blues Scene website. The body of indented text below is paraphrased from Lukasavitz’s article:

“Lester Melrose was working as a talent scout and producer for RCA Victor’s Bluebird Records when he stepped into the role of manager for Arthur Crudup. Melrose arranged a publishing contract for Crudup with Melrose’s own Wabash Music Publishing Company. As was common at this time, Melrose listed himself as well as Crudup as publisher and received a publishing royalty from the music.

Crudup’s royalty checks rarely amounted to more than an occasional $10-$15 check. After unsuccessful attempts to obtain royalties from Melrose, Crudup turned to manual labor. [A]

In 1968, Dick Waterman befriended Crudup and convinced him to perform again. Serving as Crudup’s manager, Waterman was instrumental in registering Crudup with the American Guild of Authors and Composers (AGAC).

Before retiring from the music business, Melrose sold Wabash Music to Hill & Range Publishing Company. After Crudup’s death in 1974, Waterman spoke with an attorney who said that they needed to ‘shut off the money spigot’ from the record companies to Hill & Range. [C]

In 1975, Hill & Range began negotiations to sell their catalog to Chappell Music. When Chappell found out about the dispute between the Crudup estate and Hill & Range, they refused to move forward with the deal until it was resolved. Hill & Range now had the motivation to settle with Crudup.

According to Waterman, the first check signed over to the Crudup estate from Hill & Range was for $248,000. Waterman estimates that the Crudup estate has received over $3,000,000 in royalties over the last several decades.”

Three of the sentences above are numbered like footnotes for ease of referencing my comments about each sentence, which follow below.

My comments
A. If Crudup’s royalty checks rarely amounted to more than $15, then Melrose not only assigned the lion’s share (or all) of publishing rights and royalties to himself but apparently also assigned the bulk (or all) of the songwriting rights and royalties to himself.

In “Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup: A Forefather of Rock’n’Roll” on The Audiophile Man website, the author notes that with the huge success of Presley’s recording so of Crudup’s songs in 1956:

“Crudup never experienced the riches that should have followed, though. They flowed in the direction of a certain Lester Melrose, Crudup’s own A&R man who published Crudup’s own music through his own Wabash Music company. After the completion of each recording session, Melrose would dismiss Crudup with a small fee as payment but no more.”

B. Apparently, Melrose hadn’t bothered to sign Crudup with AGAC, ASCAP, or BMI when he first signed him as a client in the ‘40s.

C. Hill & Range was the parent company of Elvis Presley’s two publishing companies, Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music. Accounting for and disbursing royalties from one client to another should not have been all that difficult for Hill & Range.

Four questions summation
Here is a summary of the answers to the four questions asked at the beginning of this article (above):

1. Did Elvis’ recordings of Arthur Crudup’s songs negatively affect Crudup’s career as a hitmaker?

No. Crudup’s last substantial hit record was released in late 1951. He quit the recording business in 1954, several months before Elvis recorded his first single.

2. Did Elvis’ recordings of Arthur Crudup’s songs negatively affect Crudup’s legacy as a recording artist?

No. Quite the opposite happened: Elvis’ recordings of “That’s All Right,” “My Baby Left Me,” and “So Glad You’re Mine” introduced millions of people to Crudup.

3. Did Elvis have anything to do with depriving Arthur Crudup of royalties he was due as a songwriter?

No. Again, the opposite happened: Elvis’ recordings of Crudup’s songs provided his estate with a fortune in songwriter royalties, if posthumously.

4. Did Elvis have anything to do with depriving Arthur Crudup of royalties he was due as a recording artist?

No. Elvis had nothing to do with withholding or disbursing Crudup’s royalties as a recording artist.

As no one seems to have any documentation about the contracts that Crudup signed as a recording artist and as a songwriter, the above may be as close to the truth of his history and situation as we are likely to have.

The truth is that Arthur Crudup was exploited and deprived of his financial rewards in the music industry.

It just wasn’t by Elvis Presley.

[ColinB]

Here's a post of mine from another forum:

Arthur Crudup received few royalties in his lifetime.

Even after some of his compositions were recorded by Elvis.

From 1968, he was managed by Dick Waterman, who strove to get him paid.

In 1973, the publisher Hill & Range Music who owned the songs, asked Arthur to attend their offices along with his two sons.

They said they had a cheque for $60,000 & needed him & his sons to sign that they accepted this as a final payment & would make no further claims.

They all attended, met with the Hill & Range lawyer & signed as asked.

The lawyer then left the room with the cheque to get it signed by their CEO.

After 15 minutes, he returned looking pale & shaken, saying
“He won’t sign the agreement. He said it gives more away in settlement than you could hope to get from litigation.”

At the last minute, the executive had refused to sign, & Arthur was getting nothing !

He took the news good-naturedly.

So, who was the soulless, hard-hearted executive who cheated him ?

Step forward, Julian Aberbach !

Arthur Crudup died in the spring of 1974, from heart disease & diabetes.

Dick Waterman continued the fight with the help of Warner Brothers.

Around the same time Chappell Music was moving to buy out Hill and Range but wouldn't close the deal until the royalties dispute was settled.

Arthur's estate was then given an initial cheque for $248,000.00 & over the course of the next thirty years, it would earn a further $3 million from owed royalties.

Justice at last, but a tad too late...

[Alan]

He could have gotten something before he died.
Nothing to do with royalties, but breach of contract or, if it existed in the US, breach of promise.

I dont get the phone call, the set up, the meeting, the cheque is there and....., "Oh, yeah, gotta get it signed."
It was almost like a cruel game.

To have the cheque written up is one thing, but to make that phone call before it was even signed, or even a conversation behind closed doors before making the call to come into the offices to get it. Awful.

They made a contract, you come in and we'll give you a cheque. Well someone kept their part of the deal....

Hindsight?
Well if he'd have accepted the cheque for $60,000 would that have helped his health in time, or would he have passed away when he did irrespective?
Versus,
His family being looked after for decades with the posthumous deal that was struck?

Sometimes things work out better than someone would, or could, ever know.

And Elvis? Well the 19 year old couldn't have foreseen that in the summer of '54.
I took one of them on line quizzes a few months ago and it asked, "What was the first song Elvis ever published?"
I got the answer wrong.
It said it was, "That's All Right" that was the answer. Published????
Elvis sure didn't get into music publishing until '56. Maybe they went for the back catalogue of Sun releases first.
But they wouldn't have gotten them all. So go figure.

If they did own the publishing on that song, why were they banding cheques about in 1973 anyway, irrespective of when they owned the publishing??
"Yep, I own that Ferrari but I'll let you drive it all the time because you built it." That doesn't add up.

Tin Pan Alley, the Jewish community and racism at the time towards, "No coloreds allowed here" meant that there was no law to protect everyone, and the incident, for want of a better name, in 1973 is just further evidence that it had spanned the decades and it was as rife as ever.

Bottom line, Elvis couldn't have had anything to do with it. The poor guy just liked music, every type of music.
I'm sure Arthur Crudup's family apreciates that now, even if only monetarily.