Music artist Art Roop, whose Specialty Records was a leading label during the years of rock and roll formation and helped launch the careers of Little Richard, Sam Cook and many others, has died. He was 104.
Rup, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011, died Friday at his home in Santa Barbara, California, according to the Arthur N. Rup Foundation. The foundation did not say the cause of death.
Born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, he was a contemporary of Jerry Wexler, Leonard Chase and other white business producers who helped present black music to the general public. He founded Specialty in Los Angeles in 1946 and gave early breaks to artists such as Cook and his evangelical group Soul Stirrers, Little Richard, Lloyd Price, John Lee Hooker and Clifton Chenier.
“The growth of Specialty Records parallels and perhaps defines the evolution of black popular music, from ‘racing’ music from the 1940s to rock’n’roll from the 1950s,” music historian Billy Vera wrote in notes to The Specialty Story, a set of five CDs. which came out in 1994
Roop’s most lucrative and important signature was Little Richard, a rhythm-n’blus performer and gospel from his teenage years who struggled to break through commercially.
In a 2011 interview with the Hall of Fame archives, Rupee explained that Little Richard (the professional name of the late Macon, Georgia, née Richard Peniman) learned about the Specialty through Price, sent a demonstration and called for months to find out if anyone had listened. He finally wanted to talk to Rupe, who pulled his tape out of the pile of discarded goods.
“There was something in Little Richard’s voice that I liked,” Roop said. “I don’t know – it was so exaggerated, so emotional. And I said, “Let’s give this man a chance and maybe we can make him sing like the BBC King.”
The initial recording sessions were not inspiring, but during a lunch break at a nearby Little Little Inn, Richard sat down at the piano and pushed a song he had performed at club meetings: Tutti Frutti, with her immortal opening shout: “Awopbopaloomopawopbambo!”
Released in September 1955 and one of the first big hits of rock and roll, Tutti Frutti was a manic but purer version of the rough original, which included such rhymes as “Tutti Frutti / good booty”. Rupe noted that Little Richard’s performance changed when he was accompanied on the piano.
“So far, Bumps (producer Robert Bumps Blackwell) has made Little Richard just a vocalist,” Roop said. “The neck bone is connected to the knee bone or something like that; his voice and his playing somehow lifted him. “
Critic Langdon Wiener would liken Little Richard Specialty’s recordings to Elvis Presley’s Sun Records sessions as “models of singing and music that have inspired rock musicians ever since.”
Little Richard’s other hits with Specialty included rock classics such as Long Tall Sally, Good Golly Miss Molly and Rip it Up, before he abruptly (and temporarily) retired in 1957. Specialty was also home to Price’s Lawdy Miss Clawdy. with Fats Domino on piano); The Farmer of Don and Dewey John; Larry Williams’ Dizzy Miss Lizzy, later portrayed by the Beatles; and music from leading gospel artists such as Dorothy Love Coates, Swan Silvertones and Pilgrim Travelers.
Rupe was known for how little he paid his artists and engaged in exploitative practices common among label owners in the early rock era: forcing performers to sign contracts, leaving much or all of his royalties and publishing rights. Little Richard will sue him in 1959 for a refund and settle out of court for $ 11,000.
Around the same time, Rupe became increasingly frustrated with the payola system for bribing television operators to play recordings and distanced himself from the music business. He sold Specialty to Fantasy Records in the early 1990s, but continued to make money by investing in oil and gas. In recent years, he has headed the Art N Rupe Foundation, which supports education and research to shed light on “the light of truth on critical and controversial issues.”
Rupe’s survivors include his daughter Beverly Rupp Schwartz and granddaughter Madeleine Cahan.
He was born Arthur Goldberg, the son of a Jewish factory worker whose passion for black music began with listening to singers at a nearby Baptist church. He studied at the University of California, Los Angeles, briefly considered a career in film, and instead chose music by studying, buying “racing records,” and listening with a metronome and stopwatch. He co-founded Juke Box Records in the mid-1940s, but soon left to start Specialty. He also changed his last name to Rupee, the family name.
Rupe’s pretentious taste made him successful, but it cost him at least one big hit. In the mid-1950s, Cook sought to expand his appeal beyond gospel and recorded some pop songs in Specialty, including the standard ballad, You Send Me. Rupe found the song soft and was horrified by her white backing singers. He allowed Cook and Blackwell, who had become Cook’s manager, to buy the copyrights and release them through RCA.
“I didn’t think You Send Me was that great. I knew there would be some intrinsic value because Sam was good. “I never dreamed he would be a multimillion-dollar seller,” said Rupe, who added: “A wonderful genius blow on my part.”
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