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Atlanta’s Magnolia Ballroom in 1956. In addition to the campus gigs he was a
disc jockey on Radio WAOK, a job he left, when, under his new name of Dr.
Feelgood (source for the British group) he started having hits for Okeh. His
good-time, knocked out style of playing later found favor at Muhlenbrink’s, a
tourists’ club in Underground Atlanta where he played between occasional
foreign tours and LP sessions until his death in 1985.
Arthur Crudup was as successful as Piano Red but even older, having been
born in Mississippi in 1905. His early life was a grinding round of itinerant
farm labour, playing music in his spare time. Eventually he reached Chicago,
reputedly so poor that he lived in a cardboard shelter beneath the El. A limited
guitarist but a great song-writer with a beautiful, affecting voice, his first records
in 1941 found great favour amongst blacks. He became one of RCA’s most
important blues singers and had the two first blues 45s ever released. They
were heard by Elvis Presley who covered
That’s All Right
for his own first
single and later recorded his
My Baby Left Me
and
So Glad You’re Mine.
That
alone should have made Crudup a rich man but his authorship was usurped and
he died in penury in 1974. He earlier skipped out of his RCA contract to record
for Trumpet, Checker and Ace but returned to the fold to record
She Ain’t Got
No Hair
at Radio WGST in Atlanta. Seemingly based on Professor Longhair’s
anthem to bald-headed women, it’s a lovely, bouncing performance with a
country-dance feel.