Arthur Alexander – Lonely Just Like Me: The Final Chapter

Arthur Alexander’s Lonely Just Like Me: The Final Chapter ends with the singer essaying a verse of “Glory Road”, the Neil Diamond song Alexander had cut at Memphis’ American Studios back in 1969. “That’s all I can remember,” Alexander explains, and Lonely Just Like Me gives us blues, drama, wounded dignity, and remembrance that avoids nostalgia.

Alexander’s big, hovering voice, with its honeyed yet astringent timbre, had always been able to express bluesy languor, as on his 1967 Sound Stage 7 single, “Turn Around (And Try Me)”. This disc’s “Sally Sue Brown” finds Alexander equally effective a quarter-century later. He sounds like some amalgam of Bobby Bland and Earl King, but his distrustful indifference is oddly self-negating, even for a blues singer. His suavity conceals the hunger for glamour that seems to have been Alexander’s professional downfall, and led to erratic behavior, arrests and rehabilitation attempts during the period of his greatest strength.

In fact, the Alabama-born Alexander was once a star; early-’60s recordings such as “Anna (Go To Him)”, and “You Better Move On” — both of which he wrote — sold well. Alexander dutifully lip-synched on “American Bandstand” and listened as the Rolling Stones and the Beatles covered his songs.

On Lonely, you can hear the residue of that stardom in his voice, and in the ghostly impression of demeanor, pose and droop the singer carries. Using essentially the same musicians Alexander had worked with during his career, producer Ben Vaughn caught him in superb voice, and in touch with the sort of grace that often shadows those we deem failures.

From the sad, self-mocking and beautiful “Do-doodley-do” that frames “All The Time”, to the derisive way Alexander inflects the line, “We were happy, as I recall,” Lonely sounds like the work of man who has managed to disentangle himself not simply from troubles but from life itself. In this, Alexander proves himself an exemplary, hybrid figure: the soul singer as secret shark and rock ‘n’ roller.

Remastered and resequenced from its 1993 Elektra release, Lonely sounds wonderful. Extra material comprises a Terry Gross “Fresh Air” interview with Alexander on May 7, 1993, five motel-room demos, and a performance of “Anna” recorded at New York’s Bottom Line. On “Fresh Air”, Alexander sounds at ease, and tells Gross, “When you make a hit record, you kinda like to get paid, you know?” Everyone laughs. A month later, Alexander died of heart disease in Nashville, just shy of a comeback.