BIG BOY : SMALL PAY. By Bryn Fortey

“Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup

bang his box the way I do now, and I said: If I ever got to the place

I could feel all old Arthur felt, I’d be a music man like nobody saw.”

(Elvis Presley)

“I was born poor, I live poor, and I’ll die poor.”

(Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup)

Presley’s legendary first Sun single

Was an Arthur Crudup song

And when RCA bought his contract

Elvis picked two more to record

And other Chart Acts followed suit

Old Arthur should have been

Piling up the royalties, but...

He’d been living in a packing case

And barely surviving in Chicago

When a&r man Lester Melrose

Heard him street singing

And got him a record deal

Melrose paid Arthur a small fee

For each recording session

But published his compositions

Himself, never paying royalties

With others getting rich

While he remained poor

Crudup turned to manual labour

And bootlegging booze for finance 

Being rediscovered in his sixties

And playing the college circuit

Then cracking major league shows

As opening act for Bonnie Raitt

Over the years, many people tried

To help him get the royalties

He had never received

But most ended in failure

One small payment was secured

Not many years before his death

But he died still owed a fortune

Bryn Fortey is a veteran writer from Wales. He has had two

collections published by The Alchemy Press: MERRY-GO-
ROUND (2014) and COMPROMISING THE TRUTH (2018),
both featuring short stories and poems. He has been well
published over the years, both in print and on the internet.