Arthur Alexander

Country-soul vocalist Arthur Alexander wrote and recorded the 1962 hit "You Better Move On." He began singing in church as a child, and during his teens belonged to an a cappella group called the Heartstrings. In 1961 he was working a day job as a bellhop and recording occasionally. Early the next year, his song "You Better Move On" hit #24 on the pop chart. Not only was it Alexander's first and most successful single, but the first hit to come out of Rick Hall's Muscle Shoals studios. Dot Records unwisely attempted to market Alexander as a pop singer, and such followup releases as the Barry Mann–Cynthia Weil composition “Where Have You Been (All My Life)” and his own “Anna (Go to Him)” (both 1962) were well sung but commercially unsuccessful.

His records had more impact in England, and his songs were later recorded by the Beatles (“Anna”), the Rolling Stones (“You Better Move On”), Bob Dylan (“Sally Sue Brown”), Elvis Presley (“Burning Love”), and Otis Redding (“Johnny Heartbreak”). In 1972 Alexander’s eponymous album on Warner Bros. drew critical kudos but low sales. A few years later he reentered the pop chart with “Every Day I Have to Cry” (#45, 1975), but then he quit the music business, tired, as he said, of “the rip-offs.” After 1981 he drove a bus for a Cleveland social-services agency. He remained popular in England, where three of his albums (Shot of Rhythm and Soul, Soldiers of Love, and Arthur Alexander) were reissued through the ’80s. Following the 1991 murder of his eldest son, he returned to music.

Alexander was on the verge of a commercial comeback in 1993, with the release of his first LP in two decades, Lonely Just Like Me. Unanimously praised by critics, the album featured backing by such Muscle Shoals mainstays as guitarist Dan Penn and keyboardist Spooner Oldham. Sadly, just a few months after its release and on the eve of a summer tour, Alexander died of heart failure.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)