ART RUPE, 1917-2022
Art Rupe, founder of Specialty Records, the label that launched Little Richard, Sam Cooke and Lloyd Price, died Friday at his home in Santa Barbara. He was 104.
Over the course of eight years in the 1950s, Rupe’s independent label birthed rock 'n' roll from the R&B side, starting with jump-blues artists and ultimately capturing a raw side of R&B that had never been heard on record.
He moved to Los Angeles from his home in Pittsburgh in 1939, initially working on ships before co-founding Juke Box Records. He started Specialty two years later, and it immediately had hits with L.A. artists like Joe Liggins and Roy Milton.
In 1952 Rupe traveled to New Orleans to discover new singers, signing Lloyd Price, who hit #1 on the R&B charts with his first release, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy.” The label man also scored with Guitar Slim’s “The Things That I Used to Do.”
In 1955, he bought Little Richard’s recording contract from Peacock Records’ Don Robey. During a blues-oriented session, Richard broke into a tune that would become “Tutti Frutti,” which would play a key role in the development of rock.
Little Richard became Specialty’s biggest star with “Long Tall Sally,” “Good Golly Miss Molly,” “Rip It Up” and other landmark records of the 1950s.
The label’s other major hits included Don and Dewey’s “Farmer John” and Larry Williams’ “Dizzy Miss Lizzy,” along with gospel records by The Swan Silvertones, The Pilgrim Travelers and The Soul Stirrers, which featured Sam Cooke.
Hoping to launch a secular solo career, Cooke started working with Little Richard’s producer Bumps Blackwell. The surreptitious move angered Rupe, who fired Blackwell and gave him Cooke’s contract. They went to Keen Records with their song, “You Send Me,” and Cooke became one of pop music’s biggest stars in the pre-Beatles era.
Rupe despised the practice of payola, which had become rampant, and left the business in 1960, pursuing oil and real estate.
In 2011, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame bestowed upon Rupe the Ahmet Ertegun Award for Lifetime Achievement.
