#lonerfolk

To me, Arthur’s compositions provide the soundtrack to a scene that looks a little something like this: An artist sits at a barren table in his garden-level flat. The floors of the abode, dirt. He’s wearing something flowing and made of a rough cotton. A framed photograph of Oscar Wilde hangs on his otherwise uncluttered walls. The scattered, blue eyed dreamer is eating spiders and absentmindedly playing with his collection of porcelain dolls while looking up at the feet of strangers walking by.

In contradiction, the drawing of Arthur on the cover shows more of a square jawed Gene Clark-type and from what I read on Light in the Attic’s website, Arthur Lee Harper was not a creepy cellar-dweller. He made this record in L.A. after showing up at Lee Hazlewood’s label headquarters and auditioning on the spot. At the time, the kind, shy, stuttering Arthur Lee Harper was living in a room at the YMCA, penniless, with two other musicians who went on to release some stuff of their own with the help of The Beach Boys.

Arthur Lee Harper was incredibly fortunate in finding Lee Hazlewood and gaining his supervision and guidance for this record. Hazlewood leaves Dreams and Images uncluttered, letting the songs speak for themselves. I find it ironic that many Hazlewood songs could have benefited from the same treatment, though Hazlewood’s Love and Other Crimes, released in the same year, is quite stripped down in its own right. When you look at the biggest hits of 1968, there really wasn’t too much happening (Hey Jude, Mrs. Robinson).

I like the consistency and brevity of this album. With the dreary album opener “Blue Museum” we find Arthur crying because he comes across someone or something (a statue/painting) that he feels he recognizes from another time in his life, subsequently causing all of his day to day problems to melt away. It becomes apparent early on that you are bearing witness to the introspective diary entries of a very frail man. “1860” sounds like if Art Garfunkel took a crack at “It Was a Very Good Year”. “Valentine Gray” and “Coming Home” are very pleasant folk songs, the latter benefiting so much from Arthur’s reserved style of performance and production. I could see many 60’s artists going in a different direction with a song so melodic, turning it into a bubbly singalong.

I would place Dreams and Images in the “loner-folk” genre. I see this genre coming up more and more to describe rereleased records by long lost, overlooked artists; records that were usually put out by private labels in the 70’s. (Stuff like Dave Bixby, Jim Sullivan, Robert Lester Folsom) I’m not surprised Arthur’s debut album went overlooked in 1968 and I wouldn’t be surprised if it continues to go overlooked upon its recent rerelease. Dreams and Images is just so overly unimposing that you have to take the time to quietly sit with it.

Rating: 5/10

Far Off Sounds - Dave Bixby: God's Singing Man

There is also a full length documentary coming out about the hauntingly isolated and beautiful music of Dave Bixby called Second Coming.