Lew Chudd was born Louis Cudnofsky in 1911 in Toronto, Canada. He was the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. The family moved to the USA when he was a child. He grew up in Harlem, New York, surrounded by music of Black origin. In 1934, he joined NBC as an advertising salesman, promoting Swing Bands, and then helped to create the radio programme Let’s Dance, which featured Benny Goodman and his orchestra. Prior to World war ll he was promoted to lead NBC’s office in Los Angeles. During the war, Chudd worked at the Office of War Information, producing radio programmes, during which time he was granted U.S. citizenship.
Lew Chudd
At the end of the war, in 1945, he set up his first record company, which he named Crown Records, with the intention of creating a Jazz label. During the first year of Crown’s operation, Chudd began to realise that the Jazz market was well-served already and breaking into that field would be difficult and expensive. He was an astute businessman, so he looked around at other possibilities. What he saw was a growing population of Black and Hispanic communities who were arriving in California from the cotton-growing areas of the Southern states, part of the Great Migration, or were crossing the border from Mexico. After the war, the economy of the USA was booming and there was a demand for labour. Many of the new arrivals found well-paid jobs, compared with what they had left behind. There were, then, two markets, one Black and one Hispanic, neither of which were being served by the majority of the then current record companies. So Chudd decided to record music for both.
He sold Crown and founded Imperial in 1946. He searched out Jump Blues artists for the Black market and Mexican Dance Bands for the Hispanic market. The early signings on the Jump Blues front included Dick Lewis And His Harlem Rhythm Boys, Charlie Davis, and “Poison” Gardner & His All Stars.
One of Chudd’s key attributes was his eye for talent; another was his relentless energy as he travelled around the states. Put these two factors together, and you have the secret to Imperial’s success. It is claimed that he spent up to twelve hours a day, speaking to distributors and DJs, choosing songs for the Imperial artists and supervising recordings. He travelled far and wide in search of talent, averaging one hundred thousand miles a year, according to one source (Cash Box, June 6th 1953). Chudd explained the reasoning behind his many field trips in his typical style: “It’s safe to say that I have been in every club in the country that plays acts. In those days, it was virtually unheard of for a name singer to sign with an independent label. I had to build my own stars, and small clubs were the best source for talent.”
In 1949, on one of his many trips, Chudd met Dave Bartholomew in Houston, Texas. He recognised Bartholomew as someone who could open the door to the talent that was so abundant in and around New Orleans, so he signed him as Head of A&R and Imperial’s producer in New Orleans. Together, they later went around the city, where Bartholomew knew everyone in the music sector, and Chudd assessed the artists on show in the clubs and bars. The plan was to sign artists and record them in the Crescent City. Bartholomew wrote songs, arranged them, produced them, and he had his own orchestra. Cosimo Matassa, who owned a recording studio in the city that Bartholomew knew well, was also a competent sound engineer. All the plan needed to succeed was a group of talented performers.
In 1949, Bartholomew introduced Chudd to a young 21-year-old pianist called Antoine Domino, whose style was just what Chudd was looking for. In December, Bartholomew was in the studio recording “The Fat Man” / “Detroit City Blues” with Domino. The results were explosive. Imperial claim that the song sold ten thousand copies in New Orleans over the first ten days of issue. By February 18th 1950, the single was at number two on the new Billboard R&B Chart. Imperial was suddenly a label mattered. “The Fat Man” went on to sell over a million copies and it was no flash-in-the-pan. Fats Domino had four more golden discs by 1955 and then “Ain’t That A Shame” entered the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart. His songs had crossed over, and there were ten more top ten hits by 1960. Four of Domino’s songs have been added to the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Domino’s first hit was swiftly followed by Jewel King’s “3×7=21”, also recorded in New Orleans, which climbed to number four on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart. That was followed by a stream of hits created in New Orleans by Imperial’s New Orleans roster, including Smiley Lewis, Chris Kenner, Roy Brown and Jewel King. (A detailed account of the New Orleans R&B developments can be found in Volume 1 of the Icons series, Icons of New Orleans).
Lew Chudd left Bartholomew in charge in New Orleans while he went off on further travels, seeking out artists from the fields of Gospel, Blues, Jazz, and Country music. T-Bone Walker, Slim Whitman, Smokey Hogg and Lightnin’ Hopkins were added to the Imperial roster.
In 1957, Chudd signed a young White Pop singer, Ricky Nelson, in the hope of finding a new Elvis Presley. His first single for Imperial, “Be-Bop Baby”, sold over a million copies, and his first album went to number one. Lew Chudd had done it again! Despite those successes, Imperial remained strongly focussed on R&B, buying Aladdin Records in 1961 and then Minit Records, New Orleans company, in 1963.
Things were looking good, but suddenly the weather changed for Imperial. Fats Domino left to join ABC and Rick Nelson left to join Decca. Chudd decided that it was time for him to leave the recording industry. Before the end of 1963, he had sold Imperial to Liberty Records. The Imperial label was assimilated into United Artists, which was later acquired by EMI. The current owners of the catalogue and Imperial brand are Universal Music Group.
Chudd went back to radio, where he had started his career, buying several stations. He retired to enjoy life in Los Angeles and died aged eighty-six in 1998.
Chudd’s innovative approach to artist development and genre diversity set a precedent for independent labels, proving that smaller companies could compete with major players in the industry. Imperial was one of the first independent labels to issue albums in stereo in 1958.
