Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup - That's All Right (Mama): The Fire Sessions - Extended Liner Notes

Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup - That’s All Right (Mama): The Fire Sessions

It had been eight long years since bluesman Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup had been inside a studio when Fire Records boss Bobby Robinson invited him to New York in 1962 to resume his recording career. In one long night, Big Boy brushed off the cobwebs and cut everything on this collection, 12 selections of which comprised his very collectible Fire album Mean Ol’ Frisco (its front cover pictured someone that clearly wasn’t Big Boy from behind, electric guitar slung over his back, gazing down an endless railroad track).  

Despite the long layoff, Crudup was in fine shape, his vocals just as resonant and striking as when he first recorded for Bluebird in 1941. He revisited his classics “That’s All Right,” “So Glad You’re Mine,” “Katie Mae,” and “Rock Me, Mama” in crystal-clear stereo in front of a sympathetic and gently swinging small rhythm section, the persuasive results underscoring why Elvis Presley adopted him as one of his early musical role models. The title track hurtled along like the locomotive it paid tribute to, while the deep catalog gems “Too Much Competition,” “Death Valley Blues,” “Coal Black Mare,” and “Standing At My Window” were as impressive and confident as the familiar titles. He sure didn’t sound like he’d been gone for so long.

A genuine fan of vintage blues (his Fire/Fury label roster also included Houston guitarist Lightnin’ Hopkins, Chicago slide master Elmore James, and whooping harpist Buster Brown, all of them scoring hits for the firm), the Harlem-based Robinson, whose 125th Street record shop just down the road from the Apollo Theatre was a must-visit destination for R&B record buyers and label owners alike for decades, logically concentrated on revisiting Crudup’s Bluebird and RCA Victor triumphs when producing the album. 

“Dig Myself A Hole” underwent a slight lyrical adjustment--now the guitarist was digging himself a cave, no easy task--and a ribald stanza was added to “That’s All Right” (“Soon as my back was turned, you were diddlin’ in my bed”) that would have made Presley blush. The outtakes that were unearthed decades later included the unfamiliar “Angel Child” and “I Love Her Just The Same,” expanding Big Boy’s voluminous songbook just a little bit more. A more modern lead guitarist was added for “Looka There, She Got No Hair,” which Crudup first recorded in 1954 at his last session for RCA’s Groove subsidiary.

Born August 24, 1905 (Social Security insists it was 1909) in Forest, Mississippi, Arthur spent a decade living in Indianapolis beginning in 1916 before returning to Mississippi to toil at all manner of  hard labor. Crudup’s massive physique meant that he could work in a foundry when he was only 14, but he suffered from a lack of formal education that left him dependent on menial jobs throughout his life. Farming, railroads, sawmills, road work—Big Boy did it all to stay afloat, and not just during the Depression. 

Amazingly, it was 1937 before Crudup acquired a guitar. The instrument barely qualified as such—its neck had been broken and wired back together and was badly warped to boot, so Arthur was forced to clamp a capo somewhere on its neck to successfully play it. He took his time learning how to chord the battered axe, starting out with only two strings on it and putting them on one at a time from there. Big Boy never had any tutelage from anyone, crafting his basic but extremely effective technique all by his lonesome.

  Once he was comfy picking all six strings, Crudup rambled about the Delta, playing dances around Silver City and other towns outside of Belzoni as he honed his craft as best he could. But opportunities were scarce, so in 1940 Big Boy hopped on a train bound for Chicago. Things weren’t any better in the Windy City at first; he lived in a pasteboard box under the 39th Street elevated station for a time, busking on street corners for spare change while trying to avoid the local cops who frowned on such practices.

Fortunately for Crudup as well as the future of rock and roll, Lester Melrose happened by one fateful day in September of 1941 in the company of singer Doctor Clayton and caught one of Big Boy’s impromptu street corner concerts. Melrose had the Windy City’s blues recording industry sewn up tight. The well-connected A&R man supplied the great majority of Columbia and RCA Victor’s Chicago blues and R&B output (quite a feat, since the two major labels were fierce competitors) from 1934 to 1951. Melrose’s incredible talent roster included Clayton, Tampa Red, John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson, Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Minnie, Jazz Gillum, Washboard Sam, Roosevelt Sykes, Lil Green, Robert Lee McCoy, Walter Davis, Big Maceo, Memphis Slim, Tommy McClennan, the Big Three Trio, the Four Clefs, and the Cats and the Fiddle. 

After a quick listen, Lester invited Arthur to play at a party. He didn’t mention it would be held at Tampa Red’s home at 35th and State, or that most of his talent stable would be in attendance. Crudup knocked out a few of Broonzy and Tampa’s numbers and one of his own. When he took a break, Melrose asked him if he’d like to hear what he sounded like (the wily producer must have stashed a disc recorder somewhere). Big Boy didn’t mind that, but when he found out who comprised his all-star audience he became so nervous he couldn’t play anymore. 

Tampa gave him a pep talk that calmed him down, and Melrose scheduled a session for September 11, 1941 at RCA’s studios on the lakefront that would produce Crudup’s first two Bluebird 78s, the guitarist clamped in the unusual key of A-flat (once Arthur settled on a key to place his capo in, he tended not to fool with it anymore that session). Backed only by Kansas Joe McCoy’s one-string bass, Big Boy waxed four songs that day, including his debut offering, “If I Get Lucky.” Melrose had himself another blues star in the making. Arthur nixed his plan to move back to Mississippi, renting himself a room and snaring a day job at Firestone Tire and Rubber Company at 16th and Wabash that he held for the next four years. Crudup very seldom played gigs, so no money came in from live appearances.

Big Boy continued to record steadily for Bluebird, backed by a series of drummers that included Melvin Draper, who backed him on his first R&B charters in 1945, “Rock Me Mamma,” “Who’s Been Foolin’ You,” and “Keep Your Arms Around Me,” and Jump Jackson, timekeeper for Arthur’s two-sided ‘46 R&B hit “So Glad You’re Mine” b/w “Ethel Mae.” By then Crudup was commuting up from Mississippi on the bus whenever it was time to record for Melrose because he had returned to toiling at a sawmill and on a farm around Forest and Silver City, squeezing in a gig at a dance every now and then. Not exactly a typical existence for a performer with several national R&B chart entries to his credit, but Arthur had decided big city life just wasn’t for him.   

At the September 6, 1946 date at RCA’s Studio A in Chicago that included the epochal “That’s All Right” (which surprisingly wasn’t a hit), Melrose paired Arthur with bassist Ransom Knowling and drummer Judge Riley—the perfect rhythm section for Arthur, who was inclined to occasionally drop a couple of bars from a guitar solo or imply a chord change instead of actually hitting it. They possessed an inherent supple swing that made Big Boy’s music jump all the more, and Melrose obviously noticed their effortless interplay. Ransom and Judge would back Crudup at every one of his subsequent RCA sessions into 1951, including the ‘50 date that spawned “My Baby Left Me” as well as his last #9 R&B chart hit the following year, “I’m Gonna Dig Myself A Hole.”

Melrose’s iron grip on Chicago’s blues recording scene finally loosened at the dawn of the ‘50s with a plethora of feisty independent labels springing up to siphon off new talent. For the first time, Arthur’s January 15, 1952 RCA session was held somewhere besides Chicago. His new A&R man, Steve Sholes (who would bring Elvis onto RCA four short years later), called for a date in Atlanta with a local rhythm section, and the magic between Crudup, Knowling, and Riley was lost forever, though the masters that Sholes supervised on Big Boy were undeniably solid. But it likely wasn’t altogether coincidental that the guitarist contracted a serious case of itchy feet right after that date in Atlanta.

Crudup agreed to wax a session that May for Checker Records at a Jackson, Mississippi studio personally supervised by Leonard Chess. Arthur recalled that he was out plowing a field in Forest when someone approached him to do it. Big Boy later complained that Leonard browbeat him unmercifully in the studio, paying him a whopping 100 bucks for the session, which had a much more rural feel with Robert Dees’ harmonica added to a raucous rhythm section. Arthur had insisted that Checker issue the 78 under an alias, so they used the name of his son, Percy Lee Crudup, which couldn’t have fooled too many people.

Big Boy wasn’t done moonlighting. His next stop was Johnny Vincent’s short-lived Champion label. Vincent also tracked Crudup down while he was working in a field to inquire about his studio availability, bringing him into the studios of WRBC in Jackson for a similarly rough-edged date later that year. As with Checker, it only produced one 78 that hit the streets under the sobriquet of Arthur “Blues” Crump, though when Vincent rebounded with his Ace logo, he reissued the pairing in 1955, this time as by Big Boy Crudup.

Then in August of ‘52, it was Lillian McMurry’s turn to haul Arthur into a Jackson recording facility in behalf of her Trumpet logo. Harmonica wonder Sonny Boy Williamson #2 brought Big Boy by McMurry’s Record Mart to inquire as to whether she was interested in his services, and she naturally was. Lillian was as concerned about a possible outstanding contract with RCA Victor as Chess and Vincent had been, so she invented a third pseudonym for Crudup when she pressed up his “Gonna Find My Baby” with Sonny Boy on harp and Joe Willie Wilkins on modern-sounding lead guitar: Elmer James (she had Elmore James under contract, Trumpet enjoying a huge hit with his original “Dust My Broom” that spring even though he didn’t record a B-side for it and soon vamoosed to Chicago). McMurry also grabbed writers’ credit on both sides of Arthur’s platter for herself.

After that plunge into murky indie label waters, no wonder Crudup retreated to safer ground. He made two last sessions in 1953 and ‘54 for RCA and its new Groove subsidiary that were helmed by A&R man Danny Kessler with a more modern mindset in Atlanta, going so far as to have young tenor saxman J.J. Jones on the first one. The more urbane R&B-laced setting didn’t help restore Arthur to the charts, but it was an intriguing experiment. “She’s Got No Hair,” possibly inspired by Professor Longhair’s New Orleans anthem “Bald Head,” was half of his only Groove release and was revived eight years later for his marathon Fire session as “Looka There, She Got No Hair.”

Big Boy’s career was fast winding down. That last session for Groove was held in April of ‘54; a scant three months later Presley was in Sam Phillips’ Sun Records studio in Memphis, blasting out a joyous revival of Crudup’s “That’s All Right” that would ignite a rockabilly explosion as well as Elvis’ own rocket ride to superstardom. Presley never tired of singing Arthur’s praises any time a journalist inquired. 

“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,” Elvis famously told a reporter for the Charlotte Observer. Presley further confirmed his allegiance by reviving two more of Crudup’s classics in 1956 for his new label, RCA Victor: “My Baby Left Me” and “So Glad You’re Mine.” Those titles must have looked very familiar to veteran Victor employees.

Since Crudup virtually always wrote his RCA releases, all three of his songs that Presley remade should have raked in huge royalties that could have lifted the aging blues guitarist out of grinding rural poverty once and for all, but Melrose had sold his publishing company to Hill & Range Music in New York. Meanwhile, Arthur held down a job from 1954 on contracting migrant labor workers in his adopted hometown of Frankfort, Virginia, spending half of each year there and the other half in Orlando, Florida doing similar work. The days of making hit records must have frustratingly seemed a lifetime or two ago, even if he’d never profited from them. Gigs were still nonexistent.

Thus, when Bobby Robinson’s letter arrived after a roundabout route from Forest to Frankfort (Arthur’s cousin forwarded the missive), it’s little wonder that Crudup replied in the affirmative. Another bus ticket came his way, and Big Boy was on the comeback trail, albeit temporarily. He may have been a little too thrilled with the opportunity; Big Boy apparently got drunk on the first afternoon of recording and slept it off for two or three hours on a studio couch before resuming his playing.

With Robinson and his assistant Marshall Sehorn supervising, Arthur ran through much of his vintage repertoire, proving he hadn’t lost a thing during his long layoff. But there was no happy ending; despite the album and two 45s, Crudup wasn’t able to tap into the folk-blues boom that Lightnin’ and so many other veteran guitar-toting bluesmen were benefitting from, nor the urban blues market either. 

He receded back into the Franktown shadows until fellow bluesman Big Joe Williams, the king of the nine-string guitar, informed Delmark Records owner Bob Koester that Arthur still resided in Forest. Of course, Williams was in error, but Koester didn’t know that when he mailed a letter to Crudup in care of General Delivery in Forest. As before, the latter found its way to Big Boy in Franktown, and the ball was rolling once more.

Delmark was based in Chicago, so when the label brought Crudup up north for an album session there in May of ‘67, he was reunited with his trusty bassist Knowling (it would be Ransom’s last trip into a studio—he died five months later). While he was in town, Arthur appeared at the University of Chicago R&B Festival—an ultra-rare high-profile show that was a long way from rural Franktown. He came back later in the year to lay down more sides (this time Judge Riley was in the band). Highlights of the two sessions comprised his Delmark album Look On Yonder’s Wall, and he encored for the company not long after with the LP Crudup’s Mood.

It was finally starting to happen for Big Boy. He joined forces with manager Dick Waterman, at last performing at clubs and festivals nationwide that a bluesman of his stature should have been doing long before. Big Boy starred in New York’s Central Park, at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles, and in February of 1970 on a tour of England that lasted almost a month and included another LP, Roebuck Man, done with a British backing band for the U.K. division of United Artists.    

Meanwhile, Waterman investigated why Hill & Range still refused to send Arthur any of his writers’ royalties. A settlement of $60,000 was hammered out in 1972, and Big Boy headed for the Big Apple to sign the papers. To his and Waterman’s chagrin, Hill & Range backed out of the deal when they visited the firm’s offices, stiffing Crudup yet again. At least Crudup could still tour; he served as Bonnie Raitt’s opening act in late 1973.

When he wasn’t on the road earning those overdue bucks, Big Boy sat on his Franktown front porch or alongside a nearby creek fishing and dreaming of the proceeds from that really big hit that somehow eluded him. His last performance came at New York’s Hunter College on March 1, 1974. A massive stroke felled Crudup shortly thereafter, and he died at a Nassawadox, Virginia hospital that March 28. 

By the time that long-delayed royalty statement finally arrived, the check was way too late to help him. At least we have Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s recordings to remember him by. He didn’t sound like any other bluesman of his generation, much less any that have come along since. And if he hadn’t written “That’s All Right,” perhaps Sam Phillips might have turned Elvis away from his Sun Records door. 

Where would we be then?

--Bill Dahl

SOURCES

Blues Records 1943 to 1970, Volume One A to K, A Selective Discography, by Mike Leadbitter and Neil Slaven (London, UK: Record Information Services, 1987)

Blues Unlimited No. 37, October 1966: “Percy Lee & Big Boy Crudup,” by Mike Rowe

Blues Unlimited No. 75-77, September-November 1970: “Big Boy Crudup,” by Mike Leadbitter

Joel Whitburn’s Top R&B Singles 1942-1988, by Joel Whitburn (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research Inc., 1988)

The Billboard, March 5, 1955: “Aberbachs Get Wabash Catalog”

Trumpet Records—An Illustrated History with Discography, by Marc Ryan (Milford, NH: Big Nickel Pubs., 1992)