Arthur Crudup

Arthur Crudup did not pick up a guitar until he was thirty-two. After a gospel quartet took him to Chicago in 1941 he was broke and homeless, until a talent scout heard him on a street corner and arranged an RCA contract. Over fifteen years he recorded more than eighty songs, but the contracts gave most of the royalties to the company. Elvis Presley's covers of three of his songs later earned him the nickname Father of Rock and Roll. Crudup died in Virginia in 1974, and some past royalties reached his estate.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Roosevelt State Park — 12 mi
  A Civilian Conservation Corps state park on 150-acre Shadow Lake beside Bienville National Forest, with rustic cabins the CCC built between 1935 and 1940.

More markers nearby

• James Oliver Eastland — 1.2 mi
• Choctaw Line — 15 mi
• Leake County Revelers — 17 mi
• Confederate Hospital — 19 mi