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Chanteur
Country US né Alsie Griffin, le 12 Août 1912 à Gadsden (Alabama). Rex Griffin est décédé le
11
Octobre 1959 à New Orleans (Louisiane).
As a
songwriter, performer, and recording artist, Rex Griffin bridged the gap between
Jimmie Rodgers and
Hank Williams — indeed, it can be said
that he bridged the gap between Rodgers
and Buddy Holly, and between
Rodgers and the Beatles. Griffin was
among the first country music stars to record using his own material almost
exclusively, and among the least of his accomplishments, one of his songs was
covered (albeit without proper credit) by the Beatles. Griffin is the author of
the original version of "Everybody's Tryin' to Be My Baby," which
Carl Perkins later adapted into his own
song, and the Beatles subsequently covered to the profit of all except Griffin,
who'd been dead about six years when all of this happened.
Griffin is one of those pre-war figures in country music whose legacy has been
unjustly overlooked. He had no hits of his own after 1939, although his biggest
hit from that year — "The Last Letter" — continues to get recorded at the end of
the century. He was also a direct inspiration to both
Hank Williams (whose recording of "Lovesick
Blues" was virtually a copy of Griffin's from ten years earlier) and
Lefty Frizzell. One of country music's
first singer/songwriters, Griffin was the model for figures including
Floyd Tillman,
Willie Nelson, and
Merle Haggard (and one could even throw
Buddy Holly in there). And, like
Williams, his personal demons in love
and substance abuse brought a premature end — albeit not as suddenly as
Williams' — to Griffin's performing
career and his life.
He was born Alsie Griffin, second of seven children of Marion Oliver Griffin and
the former Selma Bradshaw. He grew up without much formal education and spent
most of his early childhood on the farm that his family owned in Sand Valley. By
the 1920s, Ollie Griffin was working in Gasden at the Agricola Foundry, and
Alsie followed his father there. The family regarded music as a pastime to be
pursued after finishing one's real work.
Alsie felt differently, however, wanting no part of farm life or the factory if
there was any way of helping it. His first instrument was a harmonica, but it
wasn't long before he picked up the guitar. Gasden didn't offer a big future in
music, but Griffin took advantage of what was there, playing local parties and
dances.
If the guitar was the first instrument that Griffin felt strongly about, his
first love was the music of Jimmie Rodgers.
He quickly adopted Rodgers' style as
his own and never entirely abandoned elements of his music — especially the
yodeling — even once he had his own style nailed down.
Griffin made his first professional appearance on a bill at the Gasden Theater
in 1930, and not long after he moved to Birmingham, where better opportunities
awaited. He joined the Smokey Mountaineers, and it was there that he got his new
first name — the group's announcer had difficulty pronouncing Alsie, and simply
renamed him Rex. The name stayed with him and he moved from city to city across
the South, appearing on radio stations in Chattanooga, Atlanta, and New Orleans,
among other cities.
His recording career began in 1935, when Griffin was signed to the newly formed
Decca Record company, which already had the
Sons of the Pioneers, Tex Ritter,
Jimmie Davis, and
Milton Brown in their roster of country
artists. His first recording sessions were held in Chicago on March 25 and 26 of
that year, during which he recorded ten songs, accompanied by his own guitar and
Johnny Motlow on tenor banjo. All ten number were originals by Griffin, itself
an astonishing achievement in those days. All of the material, both in its style
and performance, recalled Rodgers —
Griffin's yodeling never let one forget who his inspiration was, although the
songs hold up well on their own terms. Also striking about the recordings is
Motlow's banjo playing which, with its trilling, sounds almost like a mandolin.
Griffin's first releases were successful enough to justify another session for
Decca nearly a year later in New Orleans. This time he provided the only
accompaniment on ten of the songs and did two additional songs backed by an
amplified steel guitar. Among the songs that came out of those sessions was "Everybody's
Tryin' to Be My Baby," which in this context sounds almost like a blues
composition, recalling works such as Tampa Red's "Tight Like That." The piece
was also a dazzling guitar showcase for Griffin, whose prowess on the instrument
was considerable. This blues influence was no fluke — "I'm Ready to Reform" from
the same session is a superb piece of white blues that can fool listeners as to
its origins as easily as Autry's or
Rodgers' best blues sides.
Griffin's records continued to sell well, and in May of 1937, this time in New
York, he cut two more sides, including his most famous number. "The Last Letter"
became his biggest hit, a suicide note set to music. Stories vary as to its
origins, the most commonly circulated one being that Griffin, who had a taste
for alcohol that would later blight his life, was in a drunken depression over
his failing first marriage when he wrote the note, and later set it to music as
sobering up. Whatever the circumstances of its composition, the record caught on
and became a hit throughout the South, and also brought Griffin the adulation of
many of his colleagues, most notably Ernest
Tubb, whose 20-year friendship with Griffin began over "The Last Letter."
The song was covered by other artists, including
Jimmie Davis, soon after its
release. Gene Sullivan also covered three Griffin songs, including "Everybody's
Tryin' to Be My Baby," in the late '30s, and even bandleader Bob Crosby cut
Griffin's "I Told You So." Griffin's own career kept moving forward, with
concerts and radio performances throughout the South that made him one of the
more popular performers of the era.
Griffin's next recording sessions in September of 1939 yielded a dozen songs,
including the follow-up to his biggest hit, "Answer to the Last Letter," and his
recording of "Lovesick Blues," which was to be the model for
Williams' recording nearly a decade
later that made Hank a star. Also
recorded at the session was "Nobody Wants to Be My Baby," a fast, breezy honky
tonk-style number and one of several songs on which Griffin was backed by
guitarist Ted Brooks and bassist Smitty Smith. The latter is also a beautiful
piece of bluesy honky tonk and deserves to be better known.
Despite the success of "The Last Letter," Griffin's record sales were too poor
overall to justify the label keeping him, and he was dropped by Decca after
1939. In the mid-'30s, he had played with
Billy Walker and Her Texas Cowboys in New Orleans, and in 1940 he rejoined
her band in Memphis. He later moved back to Alabama to spend more time with his
ailing mother and appeared locally for the next few years. Among the places he
played often was the notorious crime-ridden Alabama town of Phenix City, which
would later become the subject of two feature films. In Gasden, he performed
with a group called the Melody Boys, which included two future members of
Tubb's Texas Troubadours.
In 1941, following the death of his mother, Griffin moved to Dallas, where he
had a regular spot on KRLD's Texas Round-Up. His popularity from these
broadcasts made Griffin a natural to take over the Texas Round-Up. This was to
be his best broadcast showcase, and had it not been for the war, Griffin
might've become a major star from his work on KRLD. As it was, the show ended in
1943 as the available talent dwindled amid continued military call-ups.
Griffin moved to Chicago in 1944, and it was there that he made his next batch
of recordings. These 16 sides — recorded with a band that may have included
Red Foley on guitar — were not intended
for commercial release. Rather, they were made for Decca Records' World
Transcription Services, for broadcast over the air by radio stations that
licensed them.
Despite these recordings for the company's transcription division, there was no
interest at the time in trying to release new commercial sides by Griffin. To
hear the material today is to glimpse some of the best honky tonk-style music of
the era — by that time, Griffin had taken on a more modern style, and he had
even cut his Rodgers-inspired yodeling
to a minimum. In addition to capturing Griffin performing "live" in the studio,
these are among the few sides he left that feature him working with a band and,
thus, show something of the sound he must've had during that early-'40s Dallas
period.
The oversight by the record company, in terms of offering him a new contract, is
difficult to explain. It is possible, however, that the wartime rationing of
shellac (a key ingredient in 78 rpm records) had so dampened interest in any
risky new ventures (the record business at one point seemed doomed to shut down)
that Griffin never had a chance with his old label.
He made his last recordings in 1946 for Cincinnati-based King Records, which had
previously recorded Grandpa Jones,
the Delmore Brothers, and
Merle Travis, among others. Griffin cut
eight sides for King, backed by Homer &
Jethro on guitars and mandolin. The sides showed Griffin in decent form, an
easygoing honky tonk singer with a smooth style and a good voice, but lacking
the sharp edge to his singing and playing that sparked his earlier work, clearly
on the decline by this time.
These proved to be his last recording sessions. His worsening diabetic
condition, complicated by drinking and other dietary abuses, forced an end to
Griffin's career, and the collapse of his second marriage late in the 1940s sent
him into a personal tailspin. He moved to Dallas and still wrote songs, and when
his health allowed (he was hospitalized several times), he pitched them actively
to singers who had recording contracts, including
Ray Price, who cut "Answer to the Last
Letter," "Beyond the Last Mile," and "I Saw My Castles Fall Today."
His friendship with Tubb blossomed into a
profitable professional relationship for both, as
Tubb recorded many of Griffin's songs, and
Griffin also became close to Tubb's nephew,
Douglas Glenn Tubb. Their interest, coupled with the quality of his work,
sustained Griffin during the 1950s, and in 1955 he wrote "Just Call Me Lonesome,"
his last hit, recorded by Eddy Arnold and
Red Foley. His last years were blighted
by further ill health, as Griffin was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He was
confined to a New Orleans hospital for what proved to be the final months of his
life, and died in October of 1959.
Griffin's death at the age of 46 was a great loss to country music. Moreover,
his lack of any hit recordings of his own after 1939 resulted in there never
being an LP release of his songs — there was no impetus on the part of Decca
Records to explore his recording history, and he was left in limbo as a
recording artist, a distant memory to older listeners. The possibility of
Decca's successor, MCA Records, doing anything with Griffin's music in the 1990s
or beyond seems even more remote.
The songs he wrote, however, have endured over the 40 years since.
Hank Thompson recorded "An Old
Faded Photograph" in 1960, and "The Last Letter" was re-recorded by
Jack Greene in 1964 and became a hit
once again. Soon after, Tubb cut an entire
album of Griffin songs, and other artists who have covered "The Last Letter"
include Willie Nelson,
Asleep at the Wheel,
Waylon Jennings, and
Merle Haggard. At the time of his death,
Griffin's quarterly royalty statement from the publisher of his newest songs was
18 dollars and change, a situation that had changed drastically by the 1960s.
Additionally, his song "Everybody's Tryin' to Be My Baby," as appropriated by
Carl Perkins — the inability of the
family to protect the copyright probably cost his daughters millions in
royalties — and later covered by the Beatles, has become a rock & roll standard
only slightly less familiar than "Blue Suede Shoes" or "Maybelline." And then
there was his version of "Lovesick Blues," which
Williams freely admitted to having
learned from Griffin, even though Hank
was also familiar with the Emmett Miller original — Griffin did make changes in
the lyrics and structure of the song that
Williams kept in his version.
In 1970, in recognition of his achievements as a composer, Griffin was among the
very first composers inducted into the newly founded National Songwriters' Hall
of Fame in Nashville. In 1996, Bear Family Records of Germany released a long
overdue triple-CD career retrospective on Griffin entitled The Last Letter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Griffin
Talents : Vocals, Guitar, Songwriter
Style musical : Traditional Country, Honky Tonk
Trail To Home Sweet Home
(1935)
WALKING
BLUES (1936)
EVERYBODY TRYIN' TO BE MY BABY
(1936)
THE
LAST LETTER
(1937)
JUST
PARTNERS (1939)
LOVESICK
BLUES
(1939)
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Years in activity :
| 1910 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 60 | 70 | 80 | 90 | 2000 | 10 | 20 |
DISCOGRAPHY
78 t. & Singles
| 04/1935 | 78 t. DECCA 5088 (US) | Love Call Yodel /
Trail To Home Sweet Home
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| 04/1935 | 78 t. DECCA 5089 (US) | I Don't Love Anybody But You / Blue Eyes Lullaby |
| 07/1935 | 78 t. DECCA 5118 (US) | Why Should I Care If You're Lonely / Mean Woman Blues |
| 10/1935 | 78 t. DECCA 5147 (US) | Just For Old Times Sake / Let Me Call You Sweetheart Again |
| 04/1936 | 78 t. DECCA 5202 (US) | I'm Just Passing Through / Setting On The Old Settee |
| 06/1936 | 78 t. DECCA 5227 (US) |
Walking Blues
/ Would You Leave Me Alone |
| 08/1936 | 78 t. DECCA 5250 (US) | I Love You Nellie / If You Call That Gone Good |
| 10/1936 | 78 t. DECCA 5269 (US) | Old Faded Photograph / Last Love Call Yodel |
| 11/1936 | 78 t. DECCA 5294 (US) |
Everybody Tryin' To Be My Baby
/ I'm
Ready To Reform |
| 06/1937 | 78 t. DECCA 5383 (US) |
The Last Letter
/ Over The River |
| 07/1937 | 78 t. DECCA 5395 (US) | Yodeling Cowboy's Last Song / Sweet Mama Hurry Home |
| 11/1939 | 78 t. DECCA 5745 (US) | Answer To Last Letter /
Just Partners
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| 12/1939 | 78 t. DECCA 5764 (US) | An Old Rose & A Curl / Beyond The Last Mile |
| 12/1939 | 78 t. DECCA 5770 (US) |
Lovesick
Blues
/ My
Hill Billy Baby |
| 01/1940 | 78 t. DECCA 5786 (US) | I'll Never Tell You / Nobody Wants To Be My Baby |
| 02/1940 | 78 t. DECCA 5798 (US) | You Got To Go To Work / Maybe You'll Think Bout Me |
| 03/1940 | 78 t. DECCA 5814 (US) | I Think I'll Give Up / I Love You As Before |
| 1947 | 78 t. KING 584 (US) | How Can I Be Sure / I'm Free As The Breeze |
| 1947 | 78 t. KING 594 (US) | I Don't Mean To Be Mean / I Lost Again |
| 1949 | 78 t. & SP CORAL 64007 (US) |
The Last
Letter
/ The
Lovesick Blues |
| 1949 | 78 t. & SP DE LUXE 5061 (US) | I'm Crying Inside / A Thousand Times Or More |
| 1951 | SP FEDERAL 10009 (US) | Don't You Know Me Anymore / Heart To Heart |
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Album
| 1996 | CD BEAR FAMILY BCD 15911 (GER) |
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THE LAST LETTER :
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© Rocky Productions 18/07/2008
