Artist: Arthur Crudup
Author: Arthur Crudup
Label: RCA Victor
Year: 1946
Original title: I Don't Know It. Three years later the first blues/R&B on a 45 (red vinyl). Slightly influenced by Son House's My Black Mama (see there), lyrically connected (slightly) with Blind Lemon Jefferson's That Black Snake Moan ('26), Little Brother Montgomery's Something Keeps A-Worryin' Me ('36 - RCA Bluebird) and Louis Jordan's It's A Low-Down Dirty Shame ('42). Arthur Crudup has always been exploited, as sharecropper in Mississippi, as bluesman under Lester Melrose in Chicago. Nothing changed when his contract was sold to Hill & Range, Elvis Presley's publishing company, who cut four of his songs.
Covers:
Elvis Presley [acting the fool as That's All Right Mama, immediately followed by Bill Black; recognised by Sam Phillips as the perfect synthesis of R&B, C&W, gospel and pop; less lyrics than Crudup]
Marty Robbins [just like Elvis; his version sold national and ranked higher]
Rockers [as C'est d'accord maman]
Beatles [BBC recording]
Jimmy Ellis [with Blue Moon Of Kentucky on the B-side and on Sun, freshly sold to Shelby Singleton; sounds like Elvis and was first released without any name on the label]
Hank C. Burnette [instrumental]
Jesse Garon [as Tout va très bien maman]
Paul McCartney [on his Russian lp]
Vince Gill [in film Honeymoon In Vegas]
Danny Gatton [in medley]
Guido Belcanto [as It's Alright Mama]
Cheyenne Jackson [in Broadway musical All Shook Up]
Tyler Hilton [in Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line]
Helmut Lotti [on Hellmut Lotti Goes Metal, using Motörhead's Ace Of Spades under the hood]
A-side of Presley's first Sun single, the song that convinced Sam Phillips and soon a whole babyboom generation with him. After all, this was the first non-ballad he sang in that tiny studio. Sam was utterly baffled when this white kid suddenly uttered this uptempo country-blues rendition of a song written by a black man from Belzoni, MS. Elvis who was raised in that same state, in a '56 interview: "The coloured folks been singing it and playing it just like I'm doing now, man, for more years than I know. They played it like that in the shanties and juke joints and nobody paid it no mind 'till I goosed it up. I got it from them. Down in Tupelo, MS I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now and I said if I ever go to the place I could feel what old Arthur felt, I'd be a music man like nobody ever saw".
If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:
Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)