Search - Arthur Big Boy Crudup :: That's All Right Mama

This, here, is some good shout!

John Ellis | Princeton, NJ United States | 02/17/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"No "leavening sense of swing"? The only thing "preening" around these parts is Frank John Hadley's prose. But don't you keep your head where his is at. Instead take a listen to this crucial moment when the blues morph into somethin' rockin' in the hands of a guy just sittin' around strummin' his guitar with its amp cranked way past what its manufacturer intended while his buddy slaps his drums with a shufflin' beat that defies your toes to start tappin' and done caused one skinny white boy to start his pelvis to twitchin' so that none of us were ever the same again.



Listen, first, to "Shout, Sister, Shout." (Or maybe that should have been "Swing, Sister, Swing.") And think about how accelerated cultural evolution was becoming with the "information technology" of records and juke boxes. Why, in these very same years, Count Basie's sides were extending jazz's New Orleans/Chicago/New York journey to Kansas City where it got back a dose of the heartland and started boppin'. And while part of that was becoming the Bird/Dizzy/Miles/Trane lineage, other parts were becoming Louis Jordan ("Ain't Nobody Here but Us Chickens")...and Johnny Otis ("Willie and the Hand Jive")...and Winonie Harris ("Lovin' Machine")...why, even Nat Cole ("Route 66"). All of these stalwarts were consummate performers.



Not so Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. Just a guy playin' for himself. But so kinetic. So much channeling through nervy rhythm of what cannot be said through words that don't exist. You can just imagine how intoxicating this music must have been to teens, whether through jukeboxes or heard in the dark late at night over some 50,000 watt AM station booming out from big cities to small towns (Elvis) or indeed broadcast (in the Elvis rendition) from some ship off the eastern coast of England (John, Paul, George and Ringo).



So, check it out. Never mind the sniffing half-praise of Mr. Hadley. Your hips will be glad you did.

"

More Than All Right

Brian D. Hackert | Peterborough, NH | 10/14/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Worth buying if it was just "So Glad You're Mine" 22 times. As it is, the other 21 cuts are the icing on this cake, including the remarkable "I'm Gonna Dig Myself A Hole," the original version of the famous "That's All Right, Mama," and the first popular recording of the standard "Mean Old Frisco." Although occasionally briefly profound, as in "Cool Disposition," Crudup's music is mainly rockin' fun with a beat that will make you bounce and bop, as it did for the people who made these records juke box hits in their day. The tone of his groundbreaking electric guitar achieves what for many is the ideal blues sound, especially effective when accompanied by just drums. Although not considered essential in blues history terms, Arthur Crudup could easily become any blues fan's favorite singer."

One and one is two. Two and two is four.

Johnny Heering | Bethel, CT United States | 03/29/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup is probably best known today as the writer and original singer of Elvis Presley's first record, "That's All Right". But during his heyday, Crudup was a fairly popular blues singer in his own right. He rarely performed live, because he suffered from stage fright, but he did make a lot of records that sold pretty well. He played the country blues in a hard-driving style that was quite appealing. Most of his best known songs are included here. I would recommend this CD to all fans of old time blues."