Rex Griffin

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Rex Griffin
Rex Griffin in 1939
Background information
Birth name	Alsie Griffin
Born	(1912-08-12)August 12, 1912 Gadsden, Alabama, United States
Died	October 11, 1959(1959-10-11) (aged 47)
Genres	Country
Instrument(s)	Guitar
Years active	1930s – 1950s

Alsie "Rex" Griffin ((1912-08-12)August 12, 1912 – (1959-10-11)October 11, 1959) was an American country musician and songwriter.

Early life

Griffin was born in

Griffin started playing professionally in 1930, and shortly thereafter moved to

Career

Griffin's first recordings followed in 1935 for Decca Records, with Johnny Motlow playing banjo on his first session of ten songs. He recorded alone the following year for Decca, with one of the songs being his own composition, "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby". These songs were a huge influence on Hank Williams and one of them was "Lovesick Blues" which Williams covered for his first big hit.

Griffin found some success in the latter part of the decade, and recorded his biggest hit, "The Last Letter", in 1937. The tune, whose lyrics were a hypothetical suicide note, was popular throughout the South and was covered by Jimmie Davis and others. Gene Sullivan and Bob Crosby also covered Griffin-penned songs in the 1930s.

Griffin recorded for Decca through 1939, after which time he was dropped due to slacking record sales. He rejoined the band of Billie Walker and Her Texas Cowboys in 1940, having previously played with them in the middle of the 1930s. He played with his own Melody Boys in Alabama not long after, which featured musicians, Vernon "Toby" Reese, Chester Studdard and Ray "Kemo" Head who later played with Ernest Tubb's Texas Troubadours.

In 1941, his mother died, and he moved on to

Griffin's last recordings followed in 1946 on

The ill effects of a second divorce, alcoholism, and diabetes took their toll on Griffin, who could not continue active performance after the late 1940s. He contracted tuberculosis in the middle of the 1950s, and died near the end of the decade in New Orleans.

Legacy

By the time of his death he was largely forgotten, due in no small part to the fact that his hits had come before the era of the

• Bruce Eder, Rex Griffin at
  Allmusic
• Pugh, Ronnie (1996). "First Year In Nashville". In Ernest Tubb: The Texas Troubadour. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. pp. 88.

External links

• Rex Griffin Discography