Art Rupe

Arthur Newton Rupe (born Arthur Goldberg; September 5, 1917 – April 15, 2022) was an American music executive and record producer. He founded Specialty Records, known for its rhythm and blues, blues, gospel and early rock and roll music recordings, in Los Angeles in 1946.

Early years Rupe was born Arthur Goldberg. He was born to a working-class Jewish family on September 5, 1917, in the Pittsburgh suburb of Greensburg, Pennsylvania and grew up in nearby McKeesport. He attended college at Virginia Tech, Miami University, and University of California, Los Angeles. Along the way, he changed his surname from Goldberg to Rupe, which was an ancestral name.

He and Ben Siegert first established Juke Box Records in 1944 and after a few hits, he broke with his partners and started a new company, Specialty Records. The label soon thrived with Roy Milton, Percy Mayfield, and Jimmy Liggins, along with a very successful gospel catalog. The major producers for the label were Rupe, Robert "Bumps" Blackwell, and J.W. Alexander. Johnny Vincent was a sales representative for the company.

Rupe had a love of gospel music, and in 1947 he began recording gospel quartets such as the Soul Stirrers, the Swan Silvertones, the Pilgrim Travelers, Alex Bradford, Dorothy Love Coates and Sister Wynona Carr. His taste for gospel carried over into secular music and influenced his choice of artists to record, such as Guitar Slim, Don and Dewey, Lloyd Price, Larry Williams, and Little Richard. "(Everytime I Hear) That Mellow Saxophone", by Roy Montrell; "Drunk" by Jimmy Liggins; and the rock & roll "Moose on the Loose", by Roddy Jackson.

The contracts that Specialty Records gave the artists to sign left Rupe and others at the label with full ownership and publishing rights of the music. Little Richard signed a contract with Specialty in 1955, and reportedly gave the label full ownership of all the music he recorded with them in return for 50% of the royalties earned. In his authorized biography, he states that he sold his publishing rights to "Tutti Frutti" for fifty dollars, leaving him with a small half-cent royalty rate per record sold. In 1959, Little Richard left the label and filed a lawsuit claiming he never received his royalties. He settled for $11,000

During the 1960s and later, Rupe became increasingly involved in oil and gas investments. He died on April 15, 2022, at his home in Santa Barbara, California. He was 104 years old.

Honors Rupe was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2007. In 2011, he (along with former Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman) was awarded the Ahmet Ertegun Award by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. According to the citation, Rupe "brought R&B and soul into the mainstream and launched Little Richard's career. Rupe's fastidious work ethic and uncanny musical intuition shaped the evolution of rock."