02/25/2026
She wrote the song on Elvis Presley's debut album that launched his career—but she couldn't afford an apartment and sometimes slept in the Brill Building where she had the only office given to a Black woman.
Her name was Rose Marie McCoy. And she wrote approximately 850 songs that made other people rich and famous while she struggled to pay rent.
Elvis sang her songs. So did James Brown, Nat King Cole, Ike and Tina Turner, Johnny Mathis, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Aretha Franklin, and Ray Charles.
She earned a Grammy nomination. She got hit after hit on the charts. She was one of the most prolific and successful songwriters of the 1950s and 60s.
And until 2009, when NPR finally did a documentary about her work, almost nobody knew her name.
This is the story of a Black woman who wrote the soundtrack to an era and died in near-poverty, forgotten by an industry that built fortunes on her words.
Born in 1922 in Oneida, Arkansas, Rose Marie McCoy grew up poor in the segregated South. But she had a gift—she could sing, and she could write songs that captured something universal about love, heartbreak, hope, and struggle.
At 19 years old, Rose Marie moved to New York City with a dream: she wanted to be a singer. She was talented enough. Her voice was strong, soulful, capable.
But the music industry in the late 1940s had very specific ideas about who could be a star, especially for Black women. You could be a blues singer in certain venues, a jazz singer in certain clubs, but breaking into mainstream success was nearly impossible.
Rose Marie was realistic. She understood the barriers. So she pivoted to her other talent: songwriting.
She started writing songs and pitching them to performers and record labels. And people started buying them.
In 1955, Rose Marie wrote "Tryin' to Get to You." The song was recorded by several artists, but when Elvis Presley included it on his self-titled debut album in 1956, it became a hit.
Elvis Presley's debut album. One of the most important records in the history of rock and roll. And Rose Marie McCoy wrote one of the songs on it.
Elvis became a superstar, one of the biggest stars in music history. Rose Marie McCoy remained unknown, getting songwriter royalties that were a tiny fraction of what Elvis earned performing her words.
But she kept writing.
In the early 1960s, Rose Marie accomplished something remarkable: she got a private office in the Brill Building.
The Brill Building in New York City was the epicenter of American popular music in the 1950s and 60s. Songwriters worked in small offices, churning out hits for performers. It was like a factory for pop music—writers worked on assignment, collaborated, competed, and produced the songs that dominated the radio.
Getting an office in the Brill Building meant you'd made it as a songwriter. You were legitimate, professional, successful.
Rose Marie McCoy was the only African-American woman with a private office in the Brill Building during this era.
Think about that. One of the most prolific and successful songwriters of the era, in a building full of songwriters, and she was the only Black woman with her own office.
That office was both a triumph and a symbol of how isolated she was in an industry dominated by white men.
Sometimes, when she couldn't afford rent on an apartment, Rose Marie slept in that Brill Building office. She was successful enough to have a professional workspace in the most prestigious songwriting building in America, but not successful enough to consistently afford housing.
This is the economics of songwriting for most writers, especially Black women: you write the hits, other people get rich performing them, and you survive on royalties that are never quite enough.
Rose Marie kept writing. Her productivity was staggering.
She wrote "I Think It's Gonna Work Out Fine," recorded by Ike and Tina Turner in 1961. The song was nominated for a Grammy Award.
She wrote for James Brown, Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis—some of the biggest names in music.
She wrote for Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor in the 1970s as musical tastes changed.
She wrote commercial jingles performed by Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles—the unglamorous but financially necessary work that kept songwriters afloat between hit songs.
In total, Rose Marie McCoy wrote approximately 850 songs.
850 songs.
Think about that number. Most songwriters would be thrilled to write a dozen songs that got recorded. Rose Marie wrote 850, many of which became hits or were recorded by major artists.
And most people have never heard her name.
Throughout her career, prominent record companies approached Rose Marie, wanting to sign her as an exclusive songwriter. These deals would have provided financial security—a regular salary, benefits, stability.
She refused all of them.
The reason? Those exclusive contracts would have meant giving up control of her songs, signing away rights, and potentially being trapped in exploitative deals that benefited the record companies far more than they benefited her.
Rose Marie had seen what happened to Black artists who signed away their rights. She'd seen songwriters exploited, their work taken, their royalties stolen through creative accounting and one-sided contracts.
She chose to remain independent, which meant she retained more control over her work but also meant she never had the financial security those deals might have provided.
It was a gamble born of hard-won knowledge about how the music industry treated Black artists, especially Black women.
The tragedy is that even retaining control of her songs didn't make Rose Marie wealthy. Songwriter royalties in that era were structured to favor publishers and performers. Writers got a fraction of the money their songs generated.
Rose Marie McCoy wrote songs that made millions of dollars. She died having struggled financially for most of her life.
In 2009, NPR produced a documentary about Rose Marie McCoy's work, finally giving her recognition. The documentary featured her most famous songs, interviewed her about her career, and brought attention to a woman whose contributions had been largely erased from music history.
Rose Marie McCoy died in 2015 at age 92.
By then, most of the artists who'd become famous performing her songs were dead too. Elvis had died in 1977. Nat King Cole in 1965. Ike Turner in 2007. Tina Turner would die in 2023.
These artists are remembered, celebrated, enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Grammy Hall of Fame. Their names are known worldwide.
Rose Marie McCoy, who wrote the words they sang, remained largely unknown until the final years of her life.
This is the pattern of erasure that Black women in the music industry have faced for generations:
They create the work. They write the songs, develop the sound, innovate the style. Then white performers or male performers take that work, perform it, become famous and wealthy, and the original creators are forgotten.
Rose Marie McCoy's story fits this pattern perfectly:
She wrote "Tryin' to Get to You," which helped launch Elvis Presley's career. Elvis became the King of Rock and Roll. Rose Marie remained unknown.
She wrote hits for James Brown, but James Brown is remembered as a genius performer and innovator. Few people know Rose Marie wrote some of his material.
She had the only office for a Black woman in the Brill Building, a symbol both of her success and of how few opportunities existed for women who looked like her.
She wrote 850 songs—a productivity rate that should have made her legendary—and died largely forgotten.
The economics of songwriting have always been exploitative, especially for Black artists. Publishers took advantage of writers who didn't understand contracts. Record labels used creative accounting to minimize royalties. Performers got rich while songwriters struggled.
And Black women were at the bottom of this already exploitative hierarchy.
Rose Marie McCoy understood this. That's why she refused exclusive contracts. She knew the industry would exploit her if given the chance.
But staying independent meant financial instability. It meant sleeping in her Brill Building office when she couldn't afford rent. It meant writing 850 songs and never achieving the wealth that white male songwriters with far fewer credits managed to accumulate.
Today, there's increasing recognition of the songwriters who created the American popular music canon. Documentaries, books, and retrospectives are finally telling their stories.
But most of this recognition comes too late. The songwriters are dead. The money they should have earned went to others. The fame they deserved was given to performers.
Rose Marie McCoy got an NPR documentary in 2009, six years before she died. Better late than never, but still—she spent 60+ years as a professional songwriter before receiving significant public recognition for her work.
Compare that to the artists who performed her songs:
Elvis Presley was famous by age 21. He died wealthy and celebrated, one of the most famous people in the world.
James Brown was called "the Godfather of Soul," celebrated for his innovation and influence.
Nat King Cole was a beloved superstar.
Ike and Tina Turner earned Grammy nominations—for performing Rose Marie's song.
All of them benefited from Rose Marie McCoy's words, melodies, and creative vision. All of them are far more famous than she ever was.
When we talk about the music of the 1950s and 60s, we talk about Elvis, about James Brown, about the British Invasion, about Motown.
We rarely talk about Rose Marie McCoy, who wrote 850 of the songs that defined that era.
That's not an accident. That's the deliberate erasure of Black women's contributions to American culture.
The music industry—like most industries—has systematically undervalued and underpaid the labor of Black women while profiting enormously from that labor.
Rose Marie McCoy's 850 songs generated millions of dollars in revenue. Record companies made money. Publishers made money. Performers became stars and made money.
Rose Marie sometimes slept in her Brill Building office because she couldn't afford rent.
That's not a failure of talent or work ethic. Rose Marie was extraordinarily talented and prolific.
That's a system designed to extract value from Black women's labor while denying them equitable compensation and recognition.
When Rose Marie died in 2015, obituaries appeared in major publications. Finally, at the end of her life, people acknowledged her contributions.
But imagine if that recognition had come in 1960, or 1970, or 1980, when she was still actively writing, when she could have benefited from the fame and opportunities that recognition brings.
Imagine if the Grammy nomination for "I Think It's Gonna Work Out Fine" had gone to Rose Marie McCoy as songwriter, not just to Ike and Tina Turner as performers.
Imagine if history books about 1950s and 60s music featured Rose Marie's name alongside Elvis, James Brown, and Nat King Cole.
Imagine if she'd been paid fairly for the 850 songs she wrote.
She would have died wealthy, celebrated, secure—instead of struggling financially, largely unknown, remembered primarily in a 2009 NPR documentary.
Rose Marie McCoy wrote one of the songs on Elvis Presley's debut album—the album that launched one of the biggest careers in music history.
She wrote 850 songs total. Many became hits. Many were recorded by legendary performers.
She had the only private office for a Black woman in the Brill Building during its golden age.
She earned a Grammy nomination.
And she sometimes slept in her office because she couldn't afford rent.
That's not just her story. That's the story of countless Black women whose labor built American popular culture while they remained poor and forgotten.
Remember Rose Marie McCoy's name. Remember that when you hear those classic songs from the 50s and 60s, a Black woman probably wrote the words—and she probably died without the recognition or compensation she deserved.
850 songs. A Grammy nomination. The only Black woman with an office in the Brill Building.
And most people never knew her name until six years before she died.
That's not history. That's robbery.
