70-Year-Old Songs: That’s All Right

Tweet

That’s right, it’s been seventy years now since the shot heard ‘round the world in music. We’ve heard the rumblings in other songs from 1954, but this was the musical atomic bomb. So sing along and enjoy the 70th anniversary of the first release from the truck driver from Tupelo. That’s All Right - Elvis Presley In 1946, a Mississippi Delta blues singer named Arthur “Big Boy” Cardup wrote and recorded “That’s All Right.” It was the first R&B 45 that RCA released under that then-new format. Elsewhere in Mississippi, a kid was listening. Intently. Elvis later said, as quoted in the book Rockin’ in Time, “If I had any ambition, it was to be as good as Arthur Crudup.” Of course, you know Elvis’s name, while you’ve probably never heard of Crudup, who died in relative obscurity at the age of 68 in 1974. Twenty years later he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. We can never say we wouldn’t have rock and roll without this song, because (as you can hear in other songs from 1954), if not Elvis then somebody would have stopped homogenizing the blues for white audiences. Thanks, Elvis, and thanks, Big Boy. That’s All Right Written by Arthur Crudup Recorded by Elvis Presley Released as a single, 1954 Mama, she done told me: