Art Rupe

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Art Rupe started Specialty Records in Los Angeles in 1945. Specialty is noted for the rhythm & blues, blues, gospel and early rock & roll music recorded by the label. The major producers for the label were Rupe, Robert "Bumps" Blackwell, Johnny Vincent and J. W. Alexander.^[1]

[edit] Career

Rupe was born in Greensburg, Ohio in 1917 near Canton and lived among black people in ghetto surroundings growing up. He attended college at Miami of Ohio and UCLA in Los Angeles in 1939, then decided to get into the entertainment industry. After losing money he had invested in a small record company, he spent $200 on what were called "race records" at the time to systematically analyze them and determine the formula for records that would sell. He decided that the secret lay in a big band sound with a churchy feel. He found the recording talent he needed in the many after-hours clubs in the Watts district.^[2] He started Specialty Records and soon was successful with Roy Milton, Percy Mayfield, Louis Jordan and Jimmy Liggins along with a very successful gospel catalog.^[3]

Rupe had a love of gospel music, and in 1947 he began recording gospel quartets such as The Soul Stirrers, the Swan Silvertones, Alex Bradford, and Sister Wynona Carr. His taste for gospel carried over into secular music and influenced his choice of artists to record such as Guitar Slim, Don and Dewey, and Little Richard. It led him to value feeling over technique in the recording studio.^[4] However, it also resulted in his refusal to made a pop record for gospel singer Sam Cooke because of the gospel community's sensitivity to secularization of religious music, thus turning down the two hits "You Send Me" and "Summertime".^[1]

In 1952, Rupe first traveled to New Orleans because of his attraction to the gospel sound of Fats Domino who played piano in the band of Dave Bartholomew, a former trumpeter with Duke Ellington. It was on this trip that he auditioned and then recorded Lloyd Price.^[2]

Rupe obtained his most successful artist when an unknown performer who called himself "Little Richard" sent Rupe a demo record. Art sent Blackwell to New Orleans to do a recording session. During a recording break Little Richard sang an obscene song while playing the piano. Blackwell sensed that it was a hit and after cleaning up the lyrics there was not time to teach the song to a piano player. So Little Richard both played and sang the only song to emerge out of that first session done in just three takes, "Tutti Frutti", one of the most significant rock and roll records ever made.^[3]. Rupe also recorded Guitar Slim produced by a young Ray Charles out of New Orleans.^[1]

When asked why Specialty was so successful, Rupe credited his own ability to produce rather than his business skills and his ability to hire good producers, enabling him to spread out and recruit talent in places like Houston, Dallas, Shreveport, Jackson and New Orleans while a company like Atlantic Records was more firmly located in New York City. In 1960 he got out of the music business, having grown tired of its many problems, and became engaged in other businesses. He returned during the fifties revival period in the late 1960s but only to reissue landmark recordings of the R&B era.^[2] Rupe sold Specialty to Fantasy Records in 1991.

[edit] Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c Gillett, Charlie (1996). The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, (2nd Ed.), New York, N.Y.: Da Capo Press, p. 86, 139-140, 170. ISBN 0-306-80683-5.
^ ^a ^b ^c Shaw, Arnold (1978). Honkers and Shouters. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, p. 179-194. ISBN 0-02-061740-2.
^ ^a ^b Specialty Album Discography. Retrieved on 2006-11-25.
^ Art Rupee's Specialty Records. history-of-rock. Retrieved on 2006-11-24.