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Author Topic: Arthur Alexander...  (Read 807 times)

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Arthur Alexander...
« on: May 27, 2007, 10:33:59 PM »

Arthur Alexander Jnr. was born on 10 May 1940 in Florence, Alabama some five miles from the Tennessee River which separates Florence from Sheffield and Muscle Shoals. The rural community echoed to the sounds of down-home music. His mother and sister sang in church while his guitarist-father played gospel songs using the neck of a whiskey bottle for a slide. On Saturday nights, Alexander Snr. played the blues in the hot, dusty juke-joints around Sheffield.


In the sixth grade Alexander Jnr. joined a gospel group, The Heartstrings: the other members were older and so, apart from local dates, they usually appeared without him. On leaving high school, he worked as a bellhop in Sheffield's Holiday Inn. Everyone tells a different version of Arthur's first excursions into the studio. He spoke of being introduced to Tom Stafford, a Sheffield lyricist, by a friend: Rick Hall thought Alexander's mother worked for Stafford's family as a maid. Arthur supplied melodies to Stafford's lyrics and the pair worked from a room above a Florence drugstore owned by Stafford's father. Donnie Fritts who thought Stafford had auditioned the Heartstrings and picked out Arthur - played guitar and piano on the demos. Rick Hall used the same premises as an office: he and Billy Sherrill, members of a rock 'n' roll combo, The Fairlanes, dispensed advice and wisdom.


In 1958, Alexander and Henry Lee Bennett wrote "She Wanna Rock" which Stafford and Hall published under the now renowned banner of Fame, an acronym for Florence Alabama Music Enterprises. Stafford took the song to Decca in Nashville where it was recorded by the Manitoba-based C & W singer, Amie Derksen in April 1959 (it was released here on MCA's 'Rare Rockabilly' series in 1977). The following year, Stafford and Alexander wrote " Sally Sue Brown" which he recorded on a two track machine in Stafford's studio. On this occasion Stafford took the tape to Memphis where Judd Phillips released it under the name of June Alexander: Arthur was known to all as June, short for Junior.


The Judd record, a lowdown blues as gutbucket as Arthur would get, fired everyone's enthusiasm. Rick Hall bought a tobacco warehouse in Muscle Shoals, lined the walls with egg crates and installed a four-track recorder. It was he re, in the summer of 1961, that Alexander recorded 'You Better Move On'. The repercussions were enormous. Apart from being the finest record to come out of an admitted less than enthralling year, it featured the first of the piney woods' black singer/country band combinations which dominated the hey-day of late Sixties soul. The band, known as Dan Penn and the Pallbearers, (they traveled in a hearse), contained David Briggs (piano), Jerry Carrigan (drums) and 18 year-old Norbert Putnam (bass). According to Putnam,
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Re: Arthur Alexander...
« Reply #1 on: May 31, 2007, 10:45:12 PM »

Yes, VERY much so - I posted a few threads about him some time back. His is a very tragic tale.

Topic here: http://www.dmbeatles.com/forums/m-1077449307/s-0/highlight-arthur+alexander/#num0
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Re: Arthur Alexander...
« Reply #2 on: November 22, 2007, 10:12:44 PM »

great vocalist.....
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