A great-grandchild of Delta Blues legend Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup (“crew dup”) is searching for people who can give her insight into this legendary man who put the Eastern Shore on the music world map.
The original request was sent to Connie Morrison at the Eastern Shore Post:
My name is Jarnicia Bush and I wanted to get more information on my great grandfather. I do not know any of my relatives closely from the Crudup family. The only Crudup I closely knew was my Grandfather, Jonas “J.C.” Crudup. He died of cancer when I was 13 years old. The time I spent with him was not much either. I just want to talk to some people who actually knew my family so I can, I guess, feel connected. Know myself. I want my children to know their family history so that we can be active in keeping their legacy, and their works of art alive. When I think of my family’s history, all I feel is sadness. I know there were happy times, right? Were there good times to remember. I want to know their personalities, what they did for fun, where did they hang out? Did they have friends? Real friends. Did everyone my Great Grandfather dealt with during his time in the music industry use him? Or did he make some lifelong friends who actually loved HIM and not just the works of art he created for them? I just want to know my family’s history, uncut. Just how it was. As if I knew them myself. I hope to get a response for you or from anyone who can help me obtain the information I seek. Thank you for listening.
If you can help Jarnica, please contact her via email at: jarniciabush@gmail.com.
After touring England, Arthur Crudup wound up on the shore. He died in Nassawaddox in 1974. In the 1970s, Dynamite Custis owned and operated the Dynamite Custis Record Shop from 1955-1976. Arthur used to wait for the bus across the street at lloyd’s drug store and quickly became friends with Arthur, who then frequented the record store nearly every day.
History Notes: Elvis Presley acknowledged Crudup’s importance to rock and roll when he said, “If I had any ambition, it was to be as good as Arthur Crudup”. Presley recorded and made famous Crudup’s “That’s Alright, Mama”.
Arthur Crudup was born on August 24, 1905 in Forest, Mississippi. His father was a farmhand/musician and Arthur, by the age of ten, was singing in church choirs and Gospel quartets. Arthur was large, even as a child, and acquired his nickname early in life. For most of his early life he worked on the farm or as a labourer in lumber and levee camps.
In 1940 he travelled to Chicago as a member of the Harmonizing Four – a Gospel quartet. After breaking with the group Crudup sang on street corners for change and lived in a wooden crate. His music came to the attention of Lester Melrose, a Blues producer who got him a recording contract on (RCA)Victor’s Bluebird label.
He made his first recording with Bluebird in 1941, at the age of 36. His guitar technique was primitive, using only a few basic chords, but it was enough to express his simple but plaintive songs.
Crudup continued to record on the Bluebird label until 1952, but ended his relationship with Melrose in 1947 over royalty disputes. Lack of income from his songs forced Crudup to keep returning to the labour camps after each recording date.
He knew his Blues classics like “Rock Me Mama,” “Mean Old Frisco,” and “My Baby Left Me” were earning royalties because they were being performed by the likes of B.B. King, Big Mama Thornton and Bobby “Blue” Bland. “I was making everybody rich,” Crudup complained, “and here I am poor!”
Did everyone my Great Grandfather dealt with during his time in the music industry use him?
What a strange question that is.
Does she really expect an answer to that from anyone living today?
She needs to hold a seance to find out that information.
I must agree. strange way to ask for “information” with automatically assuming anyone who dealt with him treated him badly. The true people of the Shore are not like that, still aren’t today.
Get to know the people of the Shore, evidently, Mr. Crudup felt respected and most people respected him. He stayed here, didn’t he?
The Shore is full of wonderful, helpful, honest people. I know from experience.
Speaking as an older person in here, God knows there is already enough in our lives going on right now to make us miserable, if we choose to make ourselves miserable, without searching back through our ancestors to see if they were “used,” which they probably were depending on their ethnicity and whether they were poor or not, but why on earth do it?
When there is already plenty to make us miserable today, why search out stuff from yesterday to add to the list?
Why not be thankful we have life today and make all of it that we can, while we can, and simply be thankful that our ancestors chose to pass life down to us to make of it what we can.
As you say, evidently, Mr. Crudup felt respected and most people respected him.
Why not leave it at that and be happy for the man?
I don’t know what stories you have read , but this man felt unacknowledged overlooked & taken advantage of. He wrote a1 of many hits which should been able to generate generational wealth for his family. I find it disturbing and what plagues America today. So His family should just accept respect while record companies and: or the thieves who criminally took advantage of him families continue to reap the benefits of his hard work and the money it Generates?
Well, Dee, sounds like a cause you can really sink your teeth into with a massive lawsuit against all those perpetrators that will make them hollar for mercy at which time they will hand over millions of dollars in “generational wealth,” a progressive Democrat term if there ever was one, as if generations down the road have some right or expectation that those who preceded them in life were supposed to leave them a fortune, which is patent BULL***.
And Arthur Crudup, who died in Nassawaddox in 1974, felt unacknowledged, overlooked & taken advantage of?
Do tell, and when did he share that with you, before he died, or after?
And how many people in America have felt unacknowledged, overlooked & taken advantage of, Dee, in the history of this nation?
Quite a few, wouldn’t it be?
And if you listen to blues, Dee, don’t you notice an underlying theme of being unacknowledged, overlooked & taken advantage of?
Isn’t that what makes it the blues?
And consider that several blues singers spent time in prison, Dee, which could be considered the high point of being unacknowledged, overlooked & taken advantage of (they call me by a number, not a name, lordy, lordy) including Robert Pete Williams, a blues guitarist from Louisiana sentenced to life for murder, and Lead Belly, a blues singer and songwriter who served time in prison on multiple occasions whose songs included “Goodnight Irene”, “Midnight Special”, and “The Rock Island Line,” and Lightnin’ Washington, an incarcerated musician who sang with his group in the woodyard at Darrington State Farm in Texas in 1934.
Dee, you not only sound nice, but you are so very obviously social justice oriented as well, and socially conscious, and you raise some real very important issues here which should have us all thinking, like it has me thinking, which goes to show just how powerful words can be, as Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and maybe AOC and Nancy Pelosi have all said when they said words have meanings, like you saying Mr. Crudup wrote many hits which should been “able to generate generational wealth for his family.”
As I think I might have said maybe a hundred times now, if not more, that concept of yours and the Progressive Democrats that Mr. Crudup had some type of social or societal duty “to generate generational wealth for his family” is an interesting one.
And it is very much “entitlement oriented,” as if young people today, yourself included, have an expectation that their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had an obligation to them to be out there pulling the plow to generate some generational wealth for them in the form of money given to offspring so they won’t have to work, typically called an “inheritance” or “early inheritance,” where parents provide a large sum of money to their children, often with the intention of allowing them to live comfortably without needing to pursue traditional employment.
As I say, an interesting concept and wouldn’t it be nice if we all had these inheritances from our rich parents so we too did not need to pursue traditional employment.
But we don’t, so we just have to suck it up and endeavor to persevere, which takes us to your statement that you find it disturbing and what plagues America today.
Which is what, exactly?
Why have you left us dangling here?
Why can’t you come out and say in plain terms what you find it disturbing and what plagues America today?
Personally what I think plagues America today is pretty much every warped and twisted policy of the Democrat party, this DEI crap and identity politics, and men being women, and on and on and on, including this concept of generational wealth and thank goodness we are going to be shut of them, soon, now that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Timmy and Gwen Walz have been sent packing by the sane and rational portion of the American people!
And then you say, “So His family should just accept respect while record companies and or the thieves who criminally took advantage of him families continue to reap the benefits of his hard work and the money it Generates?”
Why are you asking me, Dee?
Seems it would be their decision to make, not mine, especially as I have no standing or legal right to step in here to do anything about any record companies and or thieves who criminally took advantage of him continuing to reap the benefits of his hard work and the money it Generates.
Paging Billy S!
Yeah, right!
Good luck with that!
Last time I saw him he was drinking beer and playing out of tune at some festival somewhere.
Thank you, Wayne for the background and the outreach on behalf of Jarnicia…nice work!
Some things never change. Take Puff Daddy and Young Thug for example.
They also feel underappreciated and neglected.
Years from now their families will be asking many of the same questions.
‘Puff Daddy and Young Thug’ ???
America doesn’t have a race problem so much as she has a problemed race.
Some things never change.
Take the Young Thugs who broke into and stormed the Capital a few years ago for example.
They also feel neglected and unappreciated.
Years from now their families will be asking many of the same questions.
Here we go again……
How about the Young Thugs who Broke into and Stormed our Capital a few years ago for example.
They also feel sad,neglected and unappreciated.
In the future their families will be asking many of the same questions.
They will all be pardoned in a few weeks… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czcGECxfqQo