Arthur Alexander

I have Rick Cornell at WXDU to thank for this one. I subbed a couple times for his show on Saturdays nights which was one hour of "Border Radio" followed by one called "Soul City." The latter concentrated on the old 60s soul sound, and probably due to his influence the station has a strong collection of early soul and funk from all the bands you never heard of, especially from North Carolina.

While I enjoyed doing these shows and found plenty of great material to fit the themes, this genre really doesn't do much for me. There's something missing to me from most very early soul or country music. I was talking with Sarah recently about the difference between Bob Wills and Milton Brown and posited that Brown was just too primitive a sound for my modern sensibilities. But that's not it, because I can listen to Charlie Patton's "Hang it on the Wall" all day and all night long and that's about as primitive as you can get. Haven't quite figured out what that is yet, and I'm not all that concerned.

Arthur Alexander is easily my favorite of that early 60's soul sound. Like a lot of southerners making soul records before Motown, there's a big dollop of country in there too. Just counted, I have precisely four albums of artists I would put in the same class. The other three are by Percy Sledge, Bettye Swann, and Archie Bell and the Drells. So yeah, cream of the crop, even haters like me love Rainbow Road.