Arthur Alexander is now a largely forgotten artist. He died in 1993 at age 53. In what may have been his "prime years," Alexander had left the music industry entirely, choosing to become a bus driver in his home town instead.
However, as a songwriter, Alexander was the only person to have his songs covered by The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan.
One of John Lennon’s favorite tunes was the Alexander track “Anna (Go to Him),” and The Beatles included it on their debut studio album, Please Please Me. As with all the choices on the album, it was a song the Fab Four regularly played in their sets at Liverpool’s Cavern Club.
In 1987, McCartney commented, "If the Beatles wanted a sound, it was R&B. That's what we used to listen to and what we wanted to be like. Black, that was basically it. Arthur Alexander."
Alexander’s music was an early product of the “Muscle Shoals Sound,” popularized by producer Rick Hall. Alexander’s own composition, “You Better Move On,” was the first hit to come out of Hall’s FAME Studios and was the song the Stones covered.
According to the AllMusic biography of Arthur Alexander, he and Rick Hall built their studio in Muscle Shoals, “transforming an abandoned tobacco warehouse into one of the most fabled facilities in popular music history.”
When Hall passed away in 2018, the New Yorker had this to say about Hall and his Alabama town:
"Muscle Shoals remains remarkable not just for the music made there but for its unlikeliness as an epicenter of anything; that a tiny town in a quiet corner of Alabama became a hotbed of progressive, integrated rhythm and blues still feels inexplicable. Whatever Hall conjured there—whatever he dreamt, and made real—is essential to any recounting of American ingenuity. It is a testament to a certain kind of hope."
Due to some machinations within the music business, Alexander’s collaboration with Hall ended soon after that first hit, but he kept recording.
In a 2022 compilation—Anna (Go To Him)—of some of Alexander’s early singles, we get to hear interpretations of “The Wanderer,” made famous by Dion and the Belmonts, Willie Nelson’s “Funny How Time Slips Away,” and the title track amongst others.
Yada-yada through the late-1960s and Alexander re-emerged as a songwriter for Combine Music in Nashville in 1971. Fellow songwriters included Kris Kristofferson and Dennis Linde.
In 1972, Alexander released a self-titled album with Warner Bros with a decidedly more “Memphis sound” than before. Nevertheless, the record included songs from a heavy-hitting roster of songsmiths with several of his own numbers and four Dennis Linde-penned tunes. The most notable, “Burning Love,” would become the last Top Ten hit for Elvis Presley later that same year.
Unfortunately, the record did not perform well commercially, and Alexander left the industry in the mid-1970s, emerging from retirement in the early-1990s with a critically acclaimed 1993 comeback album called Lonely Just Like Me.
Alexander fell ill on the tour in support of the album and passed away in June of that year.
Like I mentioned yesterday, the Linde story will be explored further throughout the week. I originally intended one simple email about Dennis Linde, but his story cuts across the lives and stories of many of our heroes. We’re gonna stretch it out for a while…
For more on Arthur Alexander, we created a page.
I’ve been listening to his music all morning. I’m in a great mood.
As always,
Brian
P.S.—On a day like this, remember the guy with an eye-patch and who is missing some fingers sells the best fireworks.
