Sarah Haas, Nederland.  At 6:30 p.m. on Friday, October 19, the documentary This is Love was set to make its US debut at the Tall Grass International Film Festival in Wichita, Kansas. The 1922 built Orpheum theater was ready for the show: its neon marquee lit, its historic interior primped and ready, its 1,200 velvet seats awaiting a full house. But the crowds didn’t come in, at least not yet, they knew the real show was outside as they awaited the arrival of the movie’s star, Rudy Love.

By 7 p.m. the stretch limousines began to arrive, each carrying a group of the numerous Love family to the venue. Car after car, the doors would open, elegant legs extending out and stepping into the crowd as each group walked the red carpet, waving to their home town Wichita crowd.

Last to arrive was Rudy Love and as he walked down the aisle the crowds were overshadowed by photographer’s flashbulbs hoping to capture this, the biggest moment of the 70 year old man’s life. Which begs the question: who is Rudy Love?

Even though he recorded at Caribou Ranch a time or two, you may not have heard of Rudy Love, but you should have. The musician hasn’t just left an impression on music during his 50 years in the industry, he helped to define it and give it soul. Or rather, he he’s helped to give soul away.
The thing with Love is that he isn’t known for the songs he’s written so much as he is for his songs being taken away and accredited to other musicians. The list of examples is depressingly long and here are just a few: “Happiness” (attributed to Isaac Hayes), “I’ve Just Got to Tell Somebody” (recorded by Gloria Lynne, Betty Everett, The Soul Searchers, The Whispers), and the classic, “Your love is so dog gone good (first recorded by The Whispers, then Ray Charles, Isaac Hayes). And so, while Love was busy keeping odd jobs and trying to make ends meet in Wichita, his songs helped carry soul music into the mainstream.

It’s tempting to describe Love’s fate as tragic, as if he was living under some sort of curse. His father, Robert Love, befell a similar fate when his song, “Good Morning Little School Girl,” was ripped off to become the 2nd most recorded rock and roll song in the world. And, like his son, Robert Love never received money from his work, a wrongdoing his 17 children say isn’t just a story about a song, but a story about slavery.

“Slavery is still fresh on the human conscious and it definitely is for those who have been more directly affected by it, like the Love family,” says the film’s director John Alexander. “It adds insult to injury to know Rudy has been at the mercy of an unfair, unjust, and often racist music industry.”

But Rudy Love’s story is not a tragedy, it isn’t just a mess made by dubious industry men with cigars. It’s a life lived according to the values Love always esteemed most highly.

“For Rudy, I think success has almost nothing to do with money or fame. It has to do with love and family,” Alexander says. “Rudy turned down every imaginable big name because he wanted to make music with his family. But I don’t think it’s something Rudy consciously chose, it’s just the way he is.
This is Love, showing at the Nederland International Film Festival on November 17, is an attempt to set the record straight.

After the movie’s world premiere in London, a woman in the crowd asked Love how it felt to have the movie chronicle his life, to finally put him at center stage. For a moment, Rudy sat silently, seemingly stunned.

“And then he just started bawling,” Alexander says. “After all these months of trying to get him to open up and get emotional, it was the first time I ever saw him cry. It’s a really big deal to Rudy and his family to finally get credited for their contributions and creations. It’s not about the money or the fame, its about letting people know what the history really is. It’s about finally getting the recognition for his life’s work.”

And, at this time more than ever, Alexander thinks it’s important to tell these stories of the underdog.

“We are so inundated with values based in money and material success, where people are more concerned with how many twitter followers they have than they are with where they are leading people.”

Rudy Love’s story offers a different perspective on what it means to measure success just like it offers a different way of looking a music, as distinct from the music industry and separate from celebrity. It offers a new way to look at the world and what it means to make art, to be a family, all of that made possible by asking: who is Rudy Love?

(Originally published in the November 8, 2018, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)