He wrote the songs. Elvis got the fame.Arthur "e;Big Boy"e; Crudup was a Mississippi bluesman who could stop a room with nothing more than a guitar, a voice, and a perfectly placed pause. In the 1940s he recorded a handful of songs built so soundly that they would go on to shape the course of American popular music — including "e;That's All Right,"e; the song a young Elvis Presley chose to record first, and the one that helped launch rock 'n' roll.Crudup never saw the fortune his music went on to generate. This is the story of how that happened: of an industry that could recognize genius through a studio wall while making sure the man behind it stayed poor — and of songs so durable they outlived the machinery built to exploit them.Drawing on years of research into Crudup's life, his recordings, and the world that shaped him, Simon Godfrey traces the full arc — from the juke joints of the Jim Crow South to a settlement that arrived decades too late to matter to the man it was meant for.A story of craft, injustice, and music that refused to stay forgotten.Know the story. Hear the blues differently.

He wrote the songs. Elvis got the fame.Arthur "e;Big Boy"e; Crudup was a Mississippi bluesman who could stop a room with nothing more than a guitar, a voice, and a perfectly placed pause. In the 1940s he recorded a handful of songs built so soundly that they would go on to shape the course of American popular music — including "e;That's All Right,"e; the song a young Elvis Presley chose to record first, and the one that helped launch rock 'n' roll.Crudup never saw the fortune his music went on to generate. This is the story of how that happened: of an industry that could recognize genius through a studio wall while making sure the man behind it stayed poor — and of songs so durable they outlived the machinery built to exploit them.Drawing on years of research into Crudup's life, his recordings, and the world that shaped him, Simon Godfrey traces the full arc — from the juke joints of the Jim Crow South to a settlement that arrived decades too late to matter to the man it was meant for.A story of craft, injustice, and music that refused to stay forgotten.Know the story. Hear the blues differently.

He wrote the songs. Elvis got the fame.Arthur "e;Big Boy"e; Crudup was a Mississippi bluesman who could stop a room with nothing more than a guitar, a voice, and a perfectly placed pause. In the 1940s he recorded a handful of songs built so soundly that they would go on to shape the course of American popular music — including "e;That's All Right,"e; the song a young Elvis Presley chose to record first, and the one that helped launch rock 'n' roll.Crudup never saw the fortune his music went on to generate. This is the story of how that happened: of an industry that could recognize genius through a studio wall while making sure the man behind it stayed poor — and of songs so durable they outlived the machinery built to exploit them.Drawing on years of research into Crudup's life, his recordings, and the world that shaped him, Simon Godfrey traces the full arc — from the juke joints of the Jim Crow South to a settlement that arrived decades too late to matter to the man it was meant for.A story of craft, injustice, and music that refused to stay forgotten.Know the story. Hear the blues differently.