Arthur Alexander: Lonely Just Like Me

ARTHUR ALEXANDER: LONELY JUST LIKE ME (1993)

1) If It's Really Got To Be This Way; 2) Go Home Girl; 3) Sally Sue Brown; 4) All The Time; 5) Lonely Just Like Me; 6) Every Day I Have To Cry; 7) In The Middle Of It All; 8) Genie In The Jug; 9) Mr. John; 10) Johnny Heart­break; 11) There Is A Road; 12) I Believe In Miracles.

It is not quite clear what exactly drew Alexander out of bus-driving retirement: some people men­tion a «renewed interest in his legacy», but surely such an interest could only have very limited distribution anyway. Perhaps it took him fifteen years to understand that, by now, it was perfectly all right for people to record music the way they would like to record it without an obligation to seek mass commercial appeal. Or, more probably, it just took him fifteen years to find a record label that would want him in the first place.

The label was Nonesuch (not yet under the roof of Warner Bros.), and the album — one of the most delightful small-scale comebacks of the 1990s. Apparently, Alexander took the bus-driving business quite seriously: only half of the album is comprised of new material, written God knows when, with the other half (as befits most of the blues, jazz, and R&B comebacks from the «real old days») consisting of re-recordings of old hit material — and it is, of course, debatable whe­ther we really need a fourth version of 'In The Middle Of It All'. But in the end, it doesn't matter at all. What matters is how classy it all sounds.

First, it is almost impossible to date these recordings to 1993. The drums have a slightly «proces­sed» feel to them, and the electronic piano sound and synthesized strings constitute another mil­dly unpleasant giveaway, but, other than that, the record seems to have been made exactly the way Arthur would have it. The man drove his bus through the Eighties without noticing a single thing going around, and thank God for that — Lonely Just Like Me sounds like good old school R'n'B / country-soul. Melodies, guitars, catchy choruses, human feeling, the works.

Actually, some of the new material is terrific. 'If It's Really Got To Be This Way' is gorgeously written and sung, with some nice slide playing attenuating the pain and grace in Arthur's voice, a lost classic totally on the level of 'Anna' and 'You Better Move On'. 'Genie In The Jug' bounces, delights, and saddens all at the same time; the "doo-doodley-doo"s of 'All The Time' are unusual­ly deeply felt for a doo-doodley-doo; 'There Is A Road' is built upon an overwhelming vocal cre­scendo — one that could have been performed in a much more technical manner by the likes of a Neil Diamond, but benefits far more from Arthur's trembling sincereness; and 'I Believe In Mira­cles' is a tender, lovingly naïve conclusion.

Moreover, I don't feel one bit of a difference between Arthur's early singing and his vocal powers on here — perhaps the voice got just a trifle deeper with age, but you'd really have to use serious acous­tic equipment to prove your point. The important thing is that his simple magic has not gone anywhere: Lonely Just Like Me fully justifies its title — few people could ever sing about bro­ken hearts with the kind of simplicity and adequacy that Alexander introduced back in the early 1960s, and, strange as it is, it still holds true in 1993.

I mean, people like Al Green came along and took the whole thing to an entirely new level of depth — making songs that mixed joy with pain directly, playing psychological torment with quasi-Shakesperian standards — but there is something to be said for holy simplicity as well, and especially for being able to move a heart without overplaying it. Most of these twelve cuts focus on that ability, making Lonely the only Arthur Alexander LP that is truly, to some extent, con­cep­tual in its nature.

It is nothing short of a mini-miracle, either, that Alexander had just enough time to put out this sole LP before, a few months later, succumbing to a fatal heart attack that finally put him out of his loneliness. Without it, I would still be tempted to classify him as a two-hit wonder; with it, his career got a suitably humble and elegant finale that confirmed it as, well, an actual career. And it seems that the record label people understood that as well: fourteen years later, the album was re-released on CD as Lonely Just Like Me: The Final Chapter, adding several guitar-only and ac­capella demos recorded for the album and, more importantly, a small live promotional perfor­mance played be­fore a well-receptive audience. They do not add much artistic or historical im­portance, but they do a good job of bringing out the vulnerable human side of Arthur to an even bigger extent.

A very natural thumbs up here, and a big thank you to the man for having stayed exactly the same through all these years, and also to producer Ben Vaughn who gave him a chance to show that to us before it was too late. Trust me, this is not a trifle here; this is soul food as essential as any of the man's greatest hits compilations, even if it may take a while to understand that.

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Arthur Alexander: Rainbow Road

ARTHUR ALEXANDER: RAINBOW ROAD (1972-1973; 2001)

1) Rainbow Road; 2) Down The Backroads; 3) I'm Comin' Home; 4) In The Middle Of It All; 5) Call Me Honey; 6) Lover Please; 7) You Got Me Knockin'; 8) It Hurts To Want It So Bad; 9) Love's Where Life Begins; 10) Come Along With Me; 11) Burning Love; 12) Go Home Girl; 13) They'll Do It Everytime; 14) Mr. John; 15) Thank God He Came.

This disc collects most of the stuff that Arthur recorded during his brief stint with Warner Bros. in the early 1970s — although, what with all the commercial non-success he'd had in the previous six or seven years, it is amazing they even let him into a studio: Muscle Shoals, no less. The re­sults were a couple of singles and a self-titled LP, all of which except for one song is reproduced here. It all sold about as much as usual — i. e. from very little to none — and Alexander soon found himself on the streets again.

Way too bad, because the Muscle Shoals stint gave the man the best backing he ever had, while at the same time the quality of his songs continuously remained the same: another bunch of modest, likeable country-soul that does not aspire to much except sounding friendly, touching, and very human. Not a single misfire all around; perhaps trying to promote 'Burning Love' as a single was a rash decision — no one messes with the King even in his Vegas-y state of mind — but no one can accuse Arthur of botching this hot pop-rocker, either (after all, 'A Shot Of Rhythm And Blu­es' had already secured his potential as a rock'n'roller).

The third re-recording of 'In The Middle Of It All' is a bit limper, less stately than the original version, and there is also an updated version of 'Go Home Girl' that is equally unnecessary, but, apparently, Arthur was struggling for material. Still, the album is worth locating for two tracks at least: 'Rainbow Road' is a humbly beautiful prayer that could have been a blue-eyed soul hit for Van Morrison (it was eventually picked up by Percy Sledge instead), and 'Mr. John' simply revels in darkness and paranoia, accentuated by wah-wah guitars and chain gang backing vocals.

These two stand out a bit over everything else, but not by much: regardless of personal fortunes, at all times in his career Arthur Alexander was nothing less than the perfect working man, never demanding genius from the songs he sang, but always demanding melody and emotional force. Even the little country-gospel number at the end is moving in its own gentle way, despite the fact that technically, you could hardly find a less qualified singer for gospel than Mr. Alexander. Then again, if we do not consider the ability to break glass and cover everyone within a half-mile ra­dius in one's spit the necessary prerequisites of singing good gospel, I suspect that's subjective.

Arthur's last, faintest smudge of success came two years later on Buddah Records, for whom he recorded a minor hit version of 'Every Day I Have To Cry Some', but even that did not help his career to recover, and eventually he just switched to bus driving — all for the better, perhaps, be­cause even with all that perfectionism, who knows what degrees of lameness could he have been driven to in the disco and synth-pop eras? This way, I can simply award him another respectful thumbs up, and then we can move right on to the very last chapter of his career, and life.

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Arthur Alexander: The Monument Years

ARTHUR ALEXANDER: THE MONUMENT YEARS (1965-1972; 2001)

1) (Baby) For You; 2) The Other Woman (In My Life); 3) Stay By Me; 4) Me And Mine; 5) Show Me The Road; 6) Turn Around (And Try Me); 7) Baby This, Baby That; 8) Baby I Love You; 9) In My Sorrow; 10) I Want To Marry You; 11) In My Baby's Eyes; 12) Love's Where Life Begins; 13) Miles & Miles From Nowhere; 14) You Don't Love Me (You Don't Care); 15) I Need You Baby; 16) We're Gonna Hate Ourselves (In The Morning); 17) Spanish Har­lem; 18) Concrete Jungle; 19) Taking Care Of A Woman; 20) Set Me Free; 21) Bye Bye Love; 22) Another Place, Another Time; 23) Cry Like A Baby; 24) Glory Road; 25) Call Me Honey; 26) The Migrant; 27) Lover Please; 28) In The Middle Of It All.

Arthur Alexander did not manage even one single hit since at least 1964, and switching labels did not help out any — it's a wonder that Sound Stage 7 and, later, Monument even bothered keeping him throughout the rest of the decade (granted, they did not bother a lot: he was never even offer­ed one chance to record a full album during all that time). Lack of promotion and overall misma­nagement were a key factor, but, it must be said, most of these twenty-eight tracks (about half re­present actual 45s released in between 1965 and 1972, the other half is taken from the vaults) are certainly devoid of hit potential.

One reason is that, having found the kind of sound that pleased him most — the modestly orches­trated, moderately sentimental country-soul of 'You Better Move On' and its heirs — Alexander, regardless of the circumstances, refused to budge one inch away from it. Perhaps he simply felt that this was his niche in which he was, if not king, then at least an established master of the art, and that further experimenting would be the death of him (he may have been right, too). But he took it way too far by paying virtually no attention to anything. All across The Monument Years, musical genres and directions came and went in bunches, yet you certainly couldn't tell by this compilation — in the early Seventies, Alexander sounded exactly the same way as he did in the early Sixties. In a time period dominated by the likes of the Beatles, how could that ever be a re­cipé for critical success and commercial recognition?

Today, though, when grand-scale experimentation has pretty much expired in favour of little niches with musical ant-workers doing their little schtick over and over again, it is perhaps high time we all grabbed this compilation and evaluated it on its own terms. Because most of this is lo­vely, enjoyable pop music, with pretty, if not tremendously catchy, hooks and Arthur's personal seal of quality all over them. Very few tracks approach such peaks as 'Anna' and 'You Better Move On', but the arrangements are tight, the singing is always on the level, and the soul is al­ways on the line. It doesn't really seem for a moment as if the man were trying real hard to come up with a crowd-pleaser — he just enjoys singing and, occasionally, writing this kind of material, and, in the long term, it does him a great service.

The discerning eye will quickly discover that he is doing 'Spanish Harlem', but you'd be wrong to focus on his interpretations of classic hits — they add little, if anything, to the originals. Much more juicy are his own songs, such as 'We're Gonna Hate Ourselves (In The Morning)', a catchy, toe-tapping pop tune on a rather risky subject (adultery, on the matter of which, so it seems, Ar­thur was quite an expert). 'Turn Around (And Try Me)' is totally infectious with its inventive vocal harmonies and mad trombone blasts; 'I Want To Marry You' strolls on for five minutes in a rarely witnessed humorous mood; 'You Don't Love Me' is a beautiful example of how to combine anger and pleading in a desperate love song; and there's quite a few more little observations like these in my backpack that, combined, make sitting through these twenty-eight selections a sincere pleasure rather than just a reviewer's chore.

Perhaps the best way to immediately ascertain that Arthur Alexander was more than a coinciden­tal one-hit wonder, and to get yourself to sympathize with his plight, is to move straight over to the last track. 'In The Middle Of It All' borrows its major transition from verse to chorus from 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother', and the rest of the song is no world wonder of songwriting, but Alexander's vocals, almost from the first notes, stimulate that sensory receptor that is responsible for our «epic-tragic» mode — beautiful, gracious bit of acting.

Considering how fine an impression it all gives — the Ace label people have done a great job not just finding this long-lost material, but remastering it in near-perfect sound quality — I definitely recommend this for any serious soul music collection, and it still makes both good party music and a useful soundtrack for one's lonely evening. Thumbs up.

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Arthur Alexander: The Greatest

ARTHUR ALEXANDER: THE GREATEST (1961-1965; 1989)

1) Anna (Go To Him); 2) You're The Reason; 3) Soldier Of Love; 4) I Hang My Head And Cry; 5) You Don't Care; 6) Dream Girl; 7) Call Me Lonesome; 8) After You; 9) Where Have You Been; 10) A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues; 11) Don't You Know It; 12) You Better Move On; 13) All I Need Is You; 14) Detroit City; 15) Keep Her Guessing; 16) Go Home Girl; 17) In The Middle Of It All; 18) Whole Lot Of Trouble; 19) Without A Song; 20) I Wonder Whe­re You Are Tonight; 21) Black Night.

There is little need to explain why this compilation, bypassing the actual chronological order in which Arthur Alexander recorded all these singles, starts with 'Anna (Go To Him)': nowadays, this is pretty much the only song in existence that may make the average listener aware of the man's former presence on Earth in the first place — due to the Beatles covering it for Please Ple­ase Me. The slightly more informed part of the population will also recognize 'Soldier Of Love' and 'A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues' — the Fab Four used to play them live quite a bit in the early days, with recorded versions surfacing on BBC Sessions — and 'You Better Move On', recorded by the Rolling Stones for one of their early EPs.

In the dark forests of pretentious mystery, closed and barred to regular mortal men, dwell occasi­onal supernatural beings that swear by Arthur Alexander's name and consider him to be a soul great on the level of Ray Charles and Otis Redding, unjustly overlooked by the PR industry. I do not know that I would go that far. But Arthur certainly was a sincere, dedicated, talented artist who lived, worked and died all in the line of duty, and there is no question that he deserves a page all his own in the big book of XXth century music soldiers.

To begin with, he actually wrote both 'Anna' and 'You Better Move On', and the former's rolling piano hook, stuck somewhere in between melancholic and hipster-cool, is one of the finest pop hooks to come out of the American industry in the early 1960s. (Them Liverpudlians had good ta­ste, after all — and their guitar-based recreation of that hook took good care to carry over the same atmosphere). 'You Better Move On', in comparison, does not exactly beg for the question «where did that come from?» — its debt to generic country is obvious — but it still creates a sta­tely-romantic formula of its own, and its hit record prompted Alexander to record a couple other «sequels», none of them anywhere near as successful.

Whether he was a fabulously great singer — that is debatable. Technically efficient, melodically sweet, but not saccharine, a fine, but not outstanding or completely unmistakeable tenor, in which department he could compete with Ben E. King and the like. It is probably the lack of «that parti­cular extra something» that stalled his commercial success: the songs had to be extra catchy to compensate for the non-uniqueness, and few of them were. It takes a little time and effort to un­derstand, though, that his personal life was a rather troubled one, and to discern the subtle smell of real-world paranoia and insecurity that runs through his shakey deliveries. Once you under­stand that, great or not great, Arthur was «the real thing», it gets easier.

For the most part, Alexander seems to have been taking his cues from the «country-soul» style pioneered by Ray Charles (although it must be noted that 'You Better Move On' came out almost a year before Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music — although it must be noted that Charles started experimenting with mixing country and soul way before Modern Sounds — although enough already). Some of the songs on this compilation are straightahead country, play­ed and sung by non-country musicians; some offer a good mix, like 'Detroit City', which starts out all Motown-esque, then quickly takes a country turn. Most importantly, all of them sound really, really fine, adding a certain «earthiness» to the soul elements and removing the redneck whiff from the country ones.

Arthur could also rock out a little bit, but, apparently, was not a big fan of these wild teenager sounds: 'A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues' was not appropriated by Johnny Kidd and the Beatles for nothing, it's a fun, catchy party-rocker in its own right, yet there is nothing else here that would even remotely approach it in terms of energy. There are a few delicious pop-rockers, though: 'Whole Lot Of Trouble', with its ska-derived punch, barroom boogie piano, and wicked strings flourishes at the end of each chorus, is a total classic — and it actually remained in the vaults un­til the release of this compilation in the late Eighties!

The Greatest compiles most of Arthur's singles, released on the Dot Records label in the first half of the Sixties, before he switched to Sound Stage 7; missing is his debut single, 'Sally Sue Brown', for Judd Records, as well as the bulk of his first, and only LP, on Dot, recorded as a has­ty follow-up to the commercial success of 'You Better Move On', predictably given the same title and consisting, so they say, mostly of throwaways. None of these were as successful as 'You Bet­ter Move On', and most of the tracks from 1963-65 didn't chart at all, but still, the whole compila­tion is consistently listenable if the idea of «country soul» appeals to you in the first place. Obvi­ously, a thumbs up from the hidden country depths of the soul.

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