Nashville-based songwriter Alex Harvey, the man behind such classic hits as Delta Dawn, Tell It All Brother, Reuben James, Tulsa Turnaround, Rings and Catfish Bates, passed away on April 4, 2020 in Bluford, Texas. He was 79. Over the years such diverse performers as Kenny Rogers. Peggy Lee, Alan Jackson, Sammy Davis Jr, Tanya Tucker, Three Dog Night, George Hamilton IV, Eydie Gorme, Billy Ray Cyrus, Jimmy Buffett, Ed Bruce, Scott Walker, Conway Twitty and Don Williams have all recorded his songs with sales around the world estimated to be in excess of 300 million copies. Over the years he recorded a dozen albums and also turned his hand to a highly successful acting career.

I first came across Alex Harvey as a songwriter in the late 1960s via recordings by Jim Glaser, Kenny Rogers & The First Edition, Billy Edd Wheeler, George Hamilton IV and David Houston. As the years went by I continued to take notice of the songs that he was writing, so much so that I was eager to get hold of his first self-titled album that was released by Capitol Records in 1971. That album, and his follow-up, SOUVENIRS, from a year later have remained firm favourites in my listening canon ever since.

Thomas Alexander Harvey was born on March 10, 1941 in Dyersburg, Western Tennessee near Brownsville. His rural upbringing played a pivotal role with a slap of reality in the lyrics of his songs that always rung true. He was proudly rooted in country music, having grown up in the south hearing both country and rock’n’roll and some blues and gospel which gave his music a strange hybrid that’s both soulful and country styled.

His mother, Emily Jeannette, was a sharecropper’s daughter from Sun Flower County, Mississippi. His father, who came from the right side of the tracks in Western Tennessee, was a travelling salesman who drove a truck from town to town across the southern states. During his teens Alex played in various bands around his hometown and started dabbling in songwriting. It is just possible that he might be the writer behind Janie Please Believe Me, a single by pop singer Johnny Crawford from 1963, which is credited to Alex Harvey.

Alex attended Murray State University in Kentucky, graduating in 1964 with a master’s degree in music and education. For a couple of years he taught music, but he was also working on his songwriting and travelled to Nashville to pitch his songs. An early supporter was Billy Edd Wheeler who recorded Alex’s The Edipunt Song for his PAPERBIRDS album in 1966 and It’s More Than Honey (That I’m After) two years later. The veteran folk singer was working at United Artists Publishing and signed Alex to a writer’s contract and also as an artist with United Artists Records.

Alex only released one single for the label, It Takes A Lot Of Tenderness coupled with I’ll Be Your Tomorrow, co-produced by Wheeler and Don Tweedy in November 1968 and issued early the following year. Alex was earning a living on Music Row adapting songs from tapes into musical lead sheets for aspiring writers like Kris Kristofferson, who couldn’t read or write music. In the evenings he was singing in a rock’n’roll club six nights a week, four sets a night.

Eventually, after years of grafting, people started to take notice of Alex Harvey’s songwriting and once again it was that odd situation where his songs were being picked up simultaneously by both country and pop artists. Early supporters of his songs were the Glaser Brothers. Jim Glaser on one of his rare solo recordings, cut Molly, a minor country hit in late 1969. A couple of years later, Tompall & the Glaser Brothers had a top 10 country hit with their version of Rings, a song that Alex co-wrote with Eddie Reeves as a wedding song for Reeves’ friend Bob Hamilton and his fiancée. They never pitched the song, which was first performed by Alex and Eddie at the wedding reception following the Venice Beach ceremony.

The two writers made a recording of the song at the end of one of Alex’s publishing demo sessions as a gift for the newlyweds. The demo was heard by singer-songwriter Mike Settle, who instigated the first full recording of the song featuring Settle and the two writers and credited to Running Bear and Goldstein. Reeves then pitched the song to Russ Miller, Lonnie Mack’s producer, and Mack recorded the song for his 1971 INDIANA HILLS album. Around the same time, the rough demo gifted to Bob Hamilton reached Memphis producer Chips Moman who had recently signed a trio of session musicians to record as Cymarron. Moman persuaded the group to cut the song. Not having heard the Lonnie Mack version, their rendition was quite different. Rush-released their single of Rings reached No. 17 on the American pop charts in the autumn of 1971.

Tompall & the Glaser Brothers recorded their version around the same time in June 1971 and reached the country top 10 and it was included on their RINGS & THINGS album released in 1972. They adjusted the lyrics slightly from ‘Got James Taylor on the stereo’ to ‘Got Merle Haggard’ to appeal to country listeners. There were several more versions of Rings over the years including British model Twiggy in 1977.    

Alex Harvey was a part of the new breed of songwriters that had come to Nashville in the late 1960s and early 1970s bringing new attitudes to country lyrics whilst maintaining the traditional roots. Writers like Mickey Newbury, Bobby Bond, Jim Weatherly, Billy Joe Shaver, Lee Clayton and of course Kris Kristofferson were exploring new ways to create inventive and meaningful country songs.

For more than six decades Alex Harvey turned out a multitude of songs full of imagination, humour and perception, but most of all stamped with his own originality. The songs touched on most areas of music: rock, pop, pure southern soul and straight country, but the single over-riding fact was that Harvey was a writer who wrote memorable melodies, not just thoughtful lyrics.

Unusual at the time for a country music songwriter. Alex Harvey was well read, being a particular fan of poets such as Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost and Arthur Rimbaud for their simple but profound poetry and romantic classical composers including Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Beethoven for what he described as their moving and simple melodies.

Though renowned for his southern rooted songs, he was extremely adept at writing some gorgeous lesser-known romantic songs not to mention humorous ditties that were more light-hearted in nature.   

Vicki Carr released the poppy Dissatisfied Man as a single in 1968 and with a few other album tracks under his belt Alex was beginning to find his feet as a songwriter. He approached Kenny Rogers with Reuben James, a song that he’d written about racial tensions. Suitably impressed Kenny Rogers & the First Edition recorded Reuben James in June 1969 the first of around 18 Alex Harvey songs Rogers was to record over the years and the beginning of a lengthy association between the pair. The single reached number 26 on the pop charts and number 46 on the country listings, and the song has since been covered numerous times over the years by such diverse performers as Conway Twitty, Lester Flatt, Scott Walker, Wanda Jackson and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Rogers & the First Edition also scored a pop hit with Alex’s Tell It All Brother in 1970. The song was the title track of the group’s sixth album which featured a couple more of Alex’s songs Molly and The King Of Oak Street. The First Edition’s next album included All God’s Lonely Children another of Alex’s songs. One of his most covered songs, Someone Who Cares was recorded by Kenny & the First Edition for the soundtrack of the 1971 film Fools, a low-budget movie starring Jason Robards and Katherine Ross that was rated as one of the worse films of the year. Alex’s song appears to be the film’s only saving grace, having reached number 51 on the pop charts and later being recorded by Dusty Springfield, Peggy Lee and Percy Faith among others.

By the time Kenny Roger & the First Edition got around to recording the aptly titled I’M NOT MAKIN’ MUSIC FOR MONEY, their final album in 1974, the group was literally on its knees and close to bankruptcy. The album was only released in New Zealand and Alex provided them with Making Music For Money, which when released as a single in New Zealand, became a top 20 hit.

Jimmy Buffett recorded the song that same year as the opening track of his A1A album and would often sing Making Music For Money in concert. The lyrics summed up both Harvey’s and Buffett’s approach to their music careers with the chorus -

 

I said I know that this may sound funny
But money don't mean nothin' to me
I won't make my music for money, no
I'm gonna make my music for me

 

Kenny Rogers had become a good friend and he persuaded Alex to move out to the West Coast to pursue an acting career. He studied acting alongside such future stars as Michelle Pfeifer, Patrick Swayze and Priscilla Presley. He went on to appear in such TV series as Dallas, The Dukes of Hazzard and Walker, Texas Ranger as well as movies like The Blue and the Gray, Parent Trap II, the Dollmaker and Country. 

Meanwhile he still maintained his songwriting passion. The ever-astute George Hamilton IV picked up on Alex’s It’s More Than Honey (That I’m After) from Billy Edd Wheeler and recorded the song for his IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION album in 1968. Some years later he returned to the Alex Harvey songbook for Cornbread, Beans and Sweet Potato Pie and Till the Fiddle Comes Off That Wall a couple of rustic singalongs full of good ol’ fashioned sagacity for his 1977 FINE LACE AND HOMESPUN CLOTH album. A couple of years later he included the down-home yarn of Catfish Bates on his FOREVER YOUNG album, the song was also released as a single in America and in 1992 Don Williams recorded the song for his CURRENTS album.

Alex scored his first number one single as a writer in 1970 with Baby, Baby (I Know You’re A Lady), a song he co-wrote with Norro Wilson. Recorded by David Houston, the song spent four weeks at the top of the country charts and was also recorded by Ferlin Husky. A year earlier, cult country/soul singer-songwriter Jim Ford had recorded Alex’s soulful To Make My Life Beautiful for his HARLAN COUNTY album, a long-lost gem which didn’t resurface until almost forty years later. Another obscure Alex Harvey song is the truck-drivin’ number Hold On Ma’am (You Got Yourself A Honker) recorded by Red Simpson in 1972 for his THE VERY REAL RED SIMPSON album.

In the summer of 1969 Alex was signed to Metromedia Records and worked with legendary guitarist Tommy Allsup on a couple of singles, Louisiana River Rat coupled with King Of Oak Street followed in 1970 by his version of Merle Haggard’s Mama Tried and his original version of Tell It All Brother. Early the next year Alex was back in the studios with Kenny Rogers in the producer’s chair, recording at Cinderella Studios, Madison just outside of Nashville. He recorded ten tracks including a version of Me And Bobby McGee, which has never been released.

Shortly after this session he was signed to a recording contract by Capitol Records on the West Coast. During June and August 1971 he recorded six tracks at Quantum Studios in Torrance, California. These included the original version of Delta Dawn plus Alex’s renditions of Tulsa Turnaround and To Make My Life Beautiful, a pair of his songs that had previously been recorded by others.

  

 

 

Capitol purchased the masters from the Nashville sessions held earlier that year and included four of those songs alongside the six Californian recorded songs on ALEX HARVEY his debut LP released towards the end of 1971. Throughout the album he is blessed with some fine musicians and back-up singers. Helping to add brilliance to Alex’s writing and singing are the steel guitars of A1 Perkins and Weldon Myrick, the gut string guitar of Wayne Moss and banjo work of Bobby Thompson, plus members of Barefoot Jerry.

It’s the recordings from Music City that really holds the album together. Tulsa Turnaround, a contemporary country classic that proved so successful for Three Dog Night, really zings along, while So I’m Down (But I Ain’t Out) really proves the brilliance of a Nashville production. Bobby Thompson’s banjo brings a hoe-down feeling to the song, and Harvey’s vocal is earthy and tinged with a pain that’s missing on so many recordings. He wasn’t a man who wallows in his songs, witness the soulful To Make My Life Beautiful, a melody and a feeling that will live forever in my memories. At the other extreme is the two-part, seven-minute spine-chilling saga of Miss Fanny DeBerry, which conjures up mind-pictures of swamp water and bayous that other writers are barely able to equal.

To Make My Life Beautiful was released as the first single in September 1971 with Lady, one of Alex’s songs from the Nashville session on the B-side. In May 1972 13-year-old Tanya Tucker released her version of Delta Dawn, her debut single which reached number 6 on the country charts and 72 on the pop charts. Alex’s original version was rush-released as a single with the Kenny Rogers-penned Momma’s Waiting on the B-side.

Inspired by his late mother’s hard life, Alex’s version of Delta Dawn is sung in a pure-toned folky style. Many people never really grasp the meaning of the song, just drawn in by the memorable chorus, an indication of the beauty and the strength of his melodies. Helen Reddy turned the song into a massive pop hit the following year and there have since been dozens of recordings by such diverse singers as Loretta Lynn, Waylon Jennings, Bette Midler, Charlie McCoy, Kitty Wells, Dottie West, Teresa Brewer, The Statler Brothers and many others.

The pinnacle of artistic success arrived for Alex Harvey with his second album, SOUVENIRS released in the autumn of 1972. The title song is beautiful with a fine arrangement by Alex. The bass and guitar slide in behind the strings all the way through until the piano breaks in near the end, and just catch these lyrics: –

Suffer no more, close the door on your heartaches

For with the passing of the years,

You'll come to think of all the things that hurt you as souvenirs

Pianist, Pete Sears, has a sympathetic ear and his playing throughout is good. Harvey has a voice that is rich and gruff and can handle his soul material with as much sensitivity and feelings as he does the slower numbers. The female backing is provided by Clydie King, Vanetta Fields and Shirley Mathews and comes over as a full-blooded gospel chorus that really enhances the bayou flavoured Eva And The Evangelist.

Many of the songs from this album you could have picked out as future country hits and indeed some of them were covered by other artists. Alex’s songs did not always turn out the way he intended when handled by other singers, but he depended on the commercial recordings in order to live. Someone Who Cares lost all of its delicate feeling when jazzed up by Peggy Lee. Even Tompall and the Glaser Brothers took the emotional edge out of Rings, a simple little song that meant so much more when handled by the author.

Other highlights on the album included If I Could Tell You Why, a quality ballad that smacks of the early Kristofferson successes, Don’t Require Me To Love You and When We Both Had The Time To Love a pair of heartfelt soul-tinged ballads. The latter was recorded by Anne Murray for her HIGHLY PRIZED POSSESSION album in 1974. Capitol released Alex’s third single Angeline, a track recorded at his Madison session in early 1971 coupled with Devil On My Shoulder, a song left off the SOUVENIRS album in October 1972.

A fourth single in December 1972 coupled Goodtime Christmas with his version of Someone Who Cares. Despite his lack of chart success and relatively low album sales, Alex was back in the studios in May 1973 recording tracks for TRUE LOVE, his third album that was released later that year.

He had what we’d now refer to as a crack studio band featuring guitarists James Burton, Richard Bennett and Larry Carlton alongside fiddle player Billy Armstrong, steel guitarist Buddy Emmons, pianists Glen D Hardin and Michael Omartian, drummer Ron Tutt, bassist Wilton Felder and Jim Horn on horns. Production was handled by Michael Stewart, younger brother of singer-songwriter John Stewart and renowned later as Billy Joel’s producer.

Alex included his version of Making Music For Money, which Jimmy Buffet popularised the following year, alongside his usual soulful Southern gothic tales The Liberation (Of Lady Jane) and Goodbye Miss Caroline. The Song Just Kept On Playing (Summer Days) was the first single off the album released that June. A second single, You Don’t Need A Reason, followed in August, but both failed to make much of an impact.

That October Alex was in the studios in Nashville where he recorded four songs, all unissued. These included a new version of Reuben James along with Swannanoa Morning, Close To Home and I Want To Keep You All To Myself. January 1974 found him in the studios in Los Angeles when he recorded eleven tracks, but only two, Jody’s Face and Tangerine, were released as a single that March. It was to be his final release for Capitol, though he did undertake another session for Capitol in Nashville in November 1974 to record Sleep All Morning, which remains unissued. The song was to be recorded a couple of years later by Ed Bruce, who included it on his self-titled United Artists album and reached number 57 on the country charts in the autumn of 1976 when released as a single.

Alex was signed to Buddah Records in 1976 as Alexander Harvey and co-produced PRESHUS CHILD with Ben Tallent. The sessions were held at Mountain Sound, Swannanoa, North Carolina and included were songs like Catfish Bates, Till The Fiddle Comes Off That Wall and Lonesome Cup Of Coffee that were later to be recorded by Don Williams, George Hamilton IV and others.

A second album for Buddah, PURPLE CRUSH, produced by Lewis Merenstein followed in 1977. Alongside Alex’s own songs like Mama Didn’t Raise No Fool and Someone I Didn’t Know he included a fine rendition of Arthur Alexander’s Every Now And Then I Have To Cry. Buddah released three singles with little or no success, but Alex’s main focus during this period was on his acting career. James Garner took him under his wing and featured him in the 1982 TV film The Long Summer of George Adams.

Subsequent movies cast him alongside Jane Fonda (1984’s The Dollmaker), Sharon Gless (1984’s The Sky Is No Limit), Jessica Lange (1985’s Country), Hayley Mills (1987’s The Parent Trap II), Daniel J. Travanti (1983’s Adam), Stacy Keach (1982’s The Blue and the Gray), Michael Pare (1987’s Houston Knights) and Kristofferson (1997’s Fire Down Below).

Kenny Rogers had included three of his songs – The King Of Oak Street, Making Music For Money and The Hoodooin Of Miss Fanny Deberyy on his multi-million selling THE GAMBLER album in 1978 followed by Tulsa Turnaround on KENNY a year later. This was a big boost for his writing reputation not to mention the healthy royalties that he earned. Kenny’s duet partner Dottie West recorded Alex’s What’s Good for The Goose (Is Good For The Gander) for her 1984 JUST DOTTIE album.

Alex moved back to Nashville in 1983 mainly to resume his songwriting. He reacquainted local audiences with his songs and showmanship as he augmented his distinctive, bluesy vocals with flamboyant costumes and handed out buttons, ribbons and printed programmes at gigs. As he built something of a cult following, so it was that he returned to making records, something I hadn’t realised until many years later.

In 1986 he released NO PLACE LIKE TEXAS on the independent Tam Records. Produced by John Hobbs, who was an in-demand session piano player and songwriter, the title song was revived by Willie Nelson for his 1992 THE PROMISELAND album and led to Alex being mistakenly referred to as a Texan songwriter.

Though he had mainly been a solo songwriter, down through the years Alex has occasionally done some co-writing. In 1986 he teamed up with country-soul singer T. Graham Brown on Hell And High Water, which became Brown’s first number one country single that summer. In 1990 Alex teamed up with Montana cowboy singer-songwriter Tim Ryan and over the next several years they co-wrote several songs together beginning with Dance In Circles, which reached number 42 on the country charts that year for Ryan.

Seven of Alex’s songs appeared on Tim’s TRIED. TRUE & TESTED album in 1997, a mainly cowboy collection featuring such songs as Horse With No Rider, Golden Harvest and Say Goodbye to Montana. The latter was later recorded by western singer Don Edwards. Maintaining his connection with western singers, Chris LeDoux also recorded several of Alex’s songs including Five Dollar Fine, included on 1996’s STAMPEDE.

Alex was splitting his time between Nashville and Hollywood as he balanced his acting and singer-songwriting career. In 1993 Billy Ray Cyrus was at the peak of his career when he recorded Alex’s Somebody New for his big-selling IT WON’T BE THE LAST album. Released as a single it made the country top ten that same year. Cyrus also recorded Alex’s Bluegrass State Of Mind for his 1997 album COVER TO COVER: THE BEST OF BILLY RAY CYRUS, but surprisingly the song was never released as a single.

Country band Frazier River included Birmingham Steel¸ a song that Alex co-wrote with John Brannen on their 1997 self-titled album and Ty Herndon recorded Somewhere A Lover in 1998, a song that Alex had co-written with Tim Ryan.

In the mid-1990s Alex started recording self-released albums that he sold at gigs and via his website. These included BLACK AND RED (1995), EDEN (1997), ARMS OF AN ANGEL (2001). LUMINARY (2002), PEACE (2003) and GALILLEE (2005). The latter was mainly a gospel collection featuring such songs as I Love To Talk About Jesus, The Belly Of the Whale and Finally Down On My Knees.

THE SONGWRITER, released in 2006 was a collection of newly recorded versions of some of his best-known songs like Delta Dawn, Rings, Five Dollar Fine and Hell And High Water. That same year he released PARACHUTE with a mix of songs old and new like When You’ve Got A Heartache, Somebody New and Prime Of Your Life.

In 2015 he created a book as well as an album titled TEXAS 101: What Every Non-Native Needs To Know, and for a few years he also hosted a syndicated radio and TV series in the Lone Star State. Alex released HEART OF THE ART IN SONG, his final album in 2018.

A multi-talented artist, Alex Harvey nurtured his passion for music throughout his life despite detours down other artistic avenues. There was a sadness in much of what he wrote; a longing for better things, but a sadness you could find real beauty in. Some might call him Delta blues or country-rock; depending on the song he was singing, but the one consistent thread was definitely passionate deep south soul.

Alex Harvey himself could never get his own songs into the country charts. His voice sounded so sincere it hurts, it came from years of listening to Negro blues singers, a voice  full of life, joy, hurt and loving—but most of all he was a hillbilly singing country music, and I’m sure that’s why I’ve long loved the soul singing of Alex Harvey so much.