Crawdaddy (magazine)

Crawdaddy
Former editors
Total circulation
(1976)		160,000[1]
FounderPaul Williams
First issueFebruary 7, 1966 (1966-02-07)
Final issueMay 1979 (1979-05)
CountryUnited States
Based inSwarthmore, Pennsylvania, Cambridge, Massachusetts, New York City
LanguageEnglish
Websitepastemagazine.com/crawdaddy
ISSN0011-0833

Crawdaddy was an American rock music magazine launched in 1966. It was created by Paul Williams, a Swarthmore College student at the time, in response to the increasing sophistication and cultural influence of popular music. The magazine was named after the Crawdaddy Club in London and published during its early years as Crawdaddy! (with an exclamation point).[2]

Preceding both Rolling Stone and Creem, Crawdaddy was the training ground for many rock writers just finding the language to describe rock and roll,[3][4] which was only then beginning to be written about as studiously as folk music and jazz.[4] According to The New York Times, Crawdaddy was "the first magazine to take rock and roll seriously",[1] while Rolling Stone acknowledged it as "the first serious publication devoted to rock & roll news and criticism".[5] The magazine spawned the career of numerous rock and other writers. Early contributors included Jon Landau, Sandy Pearlman, Richard Meltzer and Peter Knobler.[6]

After Williams left Crawdaddy in 1968, the magazine was edited by Knobler from 1972 until its last issue in 1979.[3] From 1993 to 2003 Williams self-published a Crawdaddy reincarnation. In 2006 it was sold to Wolfgang's Vault and later resurrected as a daily webzine.[7] Effective August 5, 2011, visits began redirecting to the music website Paste, which announced that Crawdaddy "relaunches as a blog on Paste, where we'll share stories from the Crawdaddy archives and publish new content on legacy artists".[8]

  1. ^ a b Rockwell, John (June 9, 1976). "Crawdaddy Party Mirrors Magazine". The New York Times. Retrieved March 22, 2022.
  2. ^ Vitello, Paul (March 31, 2013). "Paul Williams, Father of Rock Criticism, Is Dead at 64". The New York Times. Retrieved August 16, 2016.
  3. ^ a b Knobler, Peter (August 2, 2009). "Peter Knobler — Crawdaddy". The Beat Patrol.
  4. ^ a b Thomas, Pat; Gurk, Christoph (September 27, 2007). "The Godfather of Rock Criticism: Paul Williams". RockCritics.com. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007.
  5. ^ Fricke, David (April 30, 2009). "Rockers Reach Out to Pioneering Music Critic". Rolling Stone. No. 1077. p. 26. Cited in "Crawdaddy Founder Paul Williams Asks for Help". rollingstone.com. April 21, 2009. Archived from the original on April 27, 2009. Retrieved June 1, 2015.
  6. ^ "Crawdaddy back issues. Archived version of issue #8". March 1967. p. 3. Archived from the original on May 8, 2009. Retrieved May 20, 2009. Issue #8 from March 1967. See page 3 for Table of Contents, showing authors. Also issue #19, page 3.
  7. ^ Crawdaddy.com Archived December 19, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  8. ^ Jackson, Josh (August 5, 2011). "Crawdaddy! Comes to Paste". Paste. Archived from the original on October 19, 2011.