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 the cause of his death. The native of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, was a contemporary of Jerry Wexler, Leonard Chase and other white entrepreneurs who helped bring black music to the general public. He founded the 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 development of Specialty Records paralleled, and perhaps determined, the evolution of Black folk music, from ‘racing’ music of the 1940s to rock ‘n’ roll of the 1950s,” wrote music historian Billy Vera. of The. Specialty Story, a set of five CDs released in 1994. Roupe’s most lucrative and significant signature was Little Richard, a blues and gospel singer from his adolescence who struggled to make ends meet commercially. In a 2011 interview with Hall of Fame Records, Roupe explained that Little Richard (the late Macon, Georgia’s native name, Richard Penniman) had learned about the Specialty through Price, sent a demo and called for months. trying to find out if anyone had heard. He finally demanded to speak to Roupe, who dug up his tape from the pile of rejects. “There was something in Little Richard’s voice that I liked,” Rupe said. “I do not know – it was so much, so much emotional. And I said, “Let’s give this guy a chance and maybe we can make him sing like BB King.” The original recordings were not inspiring, but during a lunch break at a nearby inn, Little Richard sat down at a piano and played a song he had sung at the club’s appointments: Tutti Frutti, with his immortal opening scream: “Awopbop awop! “ Released in September 1955 and one of rock’n’roll’s first major hits, Tutti Frutti was a manic but clearer version of the spontaneous prototype, containing rhymes such as “Tutti Frutti / good booty”. Roupe noted that Little Richard’s performance was transformed when he accompanied himself on the piano. “Up to that point, Bumps (producer Robert” Bumps “Blackwell) was making Little Richard just a singer,” Rupe said. “The neck bone that connects to the knee bone or something. “His voice and his play strengthened it.” Critic Langdon Winner would liken Little Richard’s Specialty recordings to Elvis Presley’s Sun Records sessions as “song and music models who have inspired rock musicians ever since.” Little Richard’s other hits with Specialty included classic rock such as Long Tall Sally, Good Golly Miss Molly and Rip it Up before retiring abruptly (and temporarily) in 1957. Specialty was also the home of Price’s Lawdy Miss Clawdy (with Fats Domino on the piano); Don and Dewey’s Farmer John? Larry Williams’s Dizzy Miss Lizzy, which the Beatles later covered. and music from such top gospel acts as Dorothy Love Coates, the Swan Silvertones and the Pilgrim Travelers. Roupe was known for how little he paid his artists and engaged in an exploitative practice common among record owners in the early rock era: for performers to sign contracts leaving him with many or all of the rights and copyrights. Little Richard sued him in 1959 for back rights and settled out of court for $ 11,000. Around the same time, Roupe was increasingly frustrated with the payola system of bribing broadcasters to play records and distanced himself from the music industry. He sold Specialty to Fantasy Records in the early 1990s, but continued to make money by investing in oil and gas. In recent years, he has headed the Art N Rupe Foundation, which has supported education and research to shine “the light of truth on critical and controversial issues.” Rupé’s survivors include his daughter, Beverly Rupé Schwartz, and granddaughter Madeleine Kahan. He was born Arthur Goldberg, the son of a Jewish factory worker whose passion for black music began with listening to singers at a nearby Baptist church. He studied at the University of California, Los Angeles, thought about a career in film and decided to pursue a career in music, buying “racing records” and listening to a metronome and a timer. He founded Juke Box Records in the mid-1940s, but soon left to start Specialty. He also changed his surname to Rupe, the ancestral name of the family. Roupe’s demanding taste made him a success, but it cost him at least one major hit. In the mid-1950s, Cooke was looking forward to expanding beyond gospel and recording some pop songs on the Specialty, including a standard ballad, You Send Me. Roupi found the song bland and was terrified by his white backup singers. He let Cooke and Blackwell, who had become Cooke’s managers, buy the copyrights and release them through the RCA. “I did not think that You Send Me was so wonderful. I knew it would have a certain intrinsic value because Sam was good. “I never dreamed he would be a multi-million dollar seller,” said Roupe, who added: “A wonderful stroke on my part.”
