Arthur Lee Harper

Arthur Lee Harper's brief career began and ended in the late '60s with a pair of gently psychedelic folk albums recorded for Lee Hazlewood's LHI Records. With a hushed, high tenor voice that was almost apologetically intimate, he sang songs of love, peace, and harmony that were at times ornate and strikingly tender. Like many aspiring artists of his time, he made the pilgrimage to Hollywood chasing his musical dream with little more than his guitar case in hand. Along with friends Mark Lindsey Buckingham and Stephen John Kalinich, two other like-minded songwriting hopefuls, Harper scraped by, living at a YMCA hostel and trying to find a home for his music. After literally knocking on the door of Hazlewood's LHI office, Harper won the producer over with an audition and they set to work recording his 1968 debut, Dreams and Images, which was released simply under the name Arthur. Hazlewood took an almost protective attitude toward the young Harper, recognizing his fragility with comments referring to him as "A man who will someday be a child again...A reason to cry and be unafraid...A bird with eighth-notes for wings." Sadly, Dreams and Images made little impact and after his 1970 follow-up Love Is the Revolution fared similarly, Harper packed it in and returned to his native Florida. Following his musical career, he became deeply involved in the Christian faith, raised a family, and worked as both a rocket engineer and a teacher. In a later interview he claimed to have continued writing, playing, and recording music for and with friends and it remained an important thread throughout the rest of his life. On January 10, 2002, his wife Lora was killed in a car accident and in a tragic and unexpected coincidence, Arthur Harper died that very same night of a heart attack. Later that year, his two albums were reissued on a single disc by a small label called Papa's Choice. Dreams and Images was given a second reissue in 2015 by Light in the Attic Records.