& roll owes something to this Mississippian who began playing the blues when he landed in Chicago in the late 1930s. Elvis Presley’s total reworking of his “It’s All Right, Mama” was the start of the King’s career (and caused a grateful Elvis to pay for an RCA Records session for Crudup after he became a star), but several other of Crudup’s songs also found their way into the rock repertoire, including “My Baby Left Me,” which showed up on Creedence’s album Cosmo’s Factory. Crudup, in common with many artists on RCA’s “race” subsidiary Bluebird, overrecorded like crazy in the 1930s, but he was a popular performer in Chicago clubs, playing to transplanted Southerners like himself, and as blues styles in the Windy City changed, he moved back home, where he was a successful bootlegger by the time Elvis brought his name back into public recognition. He died in 1974, having seen his career revived by a younger generation.
Absolutely The Best
Artist: Lead Belly
Release Date: 2000
Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter was also a powerful influence on rock & roll, but he entered through a different door from most blues singers, having been part of the first American folk revival of the late 1940s, and contributed the first big urban folk hit, “Good Night, Irene,” to the Weavers. The story of his discovery by folklorist Alan Lomax, his subsequent release from prison, and his adoption by the folkies around the left-wing scene which also included Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie is well-known, and this led to his making dozens of records of his music, most of which, it must be said, isn’t really classic blues. Creedence included two of his best-known songs,