Music executive Art Rupe, whose Specialty Records was a premier label in the early years of rock ‘n’ roll and helped launch the careers of Little Richard, Sam Cooke and many others, has died. He was 104.
Rupe, 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 Rupe Foundation. The foundation did not disclose his cause of death.
A Greensburg, Pennsylvania native, he was a contemporary of Jerry Wexler, Leonard Chess, and other white businessmen and producers who helped bring black music to mainstream audiences. He formed Specialty in Los Angeles in 1946 and gave early breaks to artists such as Cooke and his gospel group Soul Stirrers, Little Richard, Lloyd Price, John Lee Hooker and Clifton Chenier.
“The growth of Specialty Records paralleled and perhaps defined the development of black popular music, from 1940s ‘race’ music to 1950s rock ‘n’ roll,” wrote music historian Billy Vera in the liner notes to The Specialty Story, a five-disc set released in 1994.
Rupe’s most lucrative and significant signing was Little Richard, a rhythm ‘n’ blues and gospel artist since his youth who had struggled to break through commercially.
In a 2011 interview for the Hall of Fame Archives, Rupe explained that Little Richard (the job name for the late Richard Penniman of Macon, Georgia) found out about Specialty through Price, sent a demo, and called for months to find out someone had been listening. Eventually he demanded to speak to Rupe, who dug his ribbon out of the refusal pile.
“There was something about Little Richard’s voice I liked,” said Rupe. “I don’t know — it was so over the top, so over-emotional. And I said, ‘Let’s give this guy a chance and maybe we can get him to sing like BB King.'”
The first recording sessions were uninspiring, but during a lunch break at a nearby inn, Little Richard sat down at a piano and banged out a song he’d performed at club dates: Tutti Frutti, with his immortal opening yell, “Awopbopaloomopawopbamboom!”
Released in September 1955, Tutti Frutti was one of rock ‘n’ roll’s first big hits. It was a wacky but cleaner version of the racy original, which featured rhymes like “Tutti Frutti/good booty.” Rupe noted that Little Richard’s performance changed when he accompanied himself on the piano.
“Up until this point, Bumps (producer Robert “Bumps” Blackwell) only had Little Richard on vocals,” Rupe said. “The neck bone that connects to the knee bone or something; his voice and his playing gave him a lift somehow.”
Critic Langdon Winner would compare Little Richard’s Specialty recordings to Elvis Presley’s Sun Records sessions as “models of vocals and musicianship that have inspired rock musicians ever since.”
Little Richard’s other hits with Specialty included rock classics like Long Tall Sally, Good Golly Miss Molly and Rip It Up before his abrupt (and temporary) retirement in 1957. Specialty was also home to Price’s Lawdy Miss Clawdy (featuring Fats Domino on piano). ; Don and Dewey’s Farmer John; Larry Williams’ Dizzy Miss Lizzy, later covered by The Beatles; and music by leading gospel acts such as Dorothy Love Coates, the Swan Silvertones and the Pilgrim Travelers.
Known for paying his artists little, Rupe engaged in an exploitative practice common among label owners in the early rock era: letting artists sign and giving him much or all of the royalties and publishing rights. Little Richard sued him for royalties in 1959 and settled out of court for $11,000.
Around the same time, Rupe became increasingly frustrated with the ‘payola’ system of bribing broadcasters to play records and distanced himself from the music business. He sold Specialty to Fantasy Records in the early 1990s but continued to make money from oil and gas investments. In recent years, he has led the Art N Rupe Foundation, which supported education and research to “shed the light of truth on critical and controversial issues.”
Rupe’s survivors include his daughter Beverly Rupe Schwarz and granddaughter Madeline Kahan.
He was born Arthur Goldberg, the son of a Jewish factory worker whose passion for black music began when he heard singers at a nearby Baptist church. A graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, he briefly considered a film career and decided to pursue music instead. He trained by buying “racing records” and listening with a metronome and stopwatch. He co-founded Juke Box Records in the mid-1940s but soon left to form Specialty. He also changed his surname to Rupe, the family’s first name.
Rupe’s discerning taste made him successful but cost him at least one big hit. Eager to expand his appeal beyond gospel in the mid-1950s, Cooke recorded a few pop songs on Specialty, including a ballad that became standard, You Send Me. Rupe found the song boring and was appalled at its white backing singers . He had Cooke and Blackwell, who had become Cooke’s manager, purchase the copyright and release it through RCA.
“I didn’t really like You Send Me. I knew it would have some intrinsic value because Sam was good. I never thought it would be a million-seller,” said Rupe, adding, “A wonderful stroke of genius on my part.”