Biography
Arthur Lee Harper launched and concluded his recording activity during the closing years of the 1960s, issuing two understated psychedelic folk albums on Lee Hazlewood’s LHI Records. His singing featured a soft, elevated tenor that conveyed an almost hesitant closeness while delivering material centered on affection, tranquility, and unity, passages that occasionally turned elaborate and unusually gentle. Like countless other hopeful musicians of the period, he traveled to Hollywood carrying only his guitar, intent on securing a foothold in the industry. He shared cramped quarters at a YMCA hostel with fellow songwriters Mark Lindsey Buckingham and Stephen John Kalinich as the three sought placements for their compositions. Harper gained entry to Hazlewood’s office by knocking directly on the door, performed an audition that secured the producer’s interest, and began sessions for his first album, Dreams and Images, issued in 1968 simply under the name Arthur. Hazlewood extended a notably watchful regard toward the newcomer, describing him with the words “A man who will someday be a child again…A reason to cry and be unafraid…A bird with eighth-notes for wings.” Dreams and Images attracted scant attention, and the 1970 successor Love Is the Revolution met the same outcome, prompting Harper to abandon further efforts and return to Florida. In the years that followed he embraced the Christian faith, started a family, and earned his living as a rocket engineer and educator. He later recalled continuing to compose, perform, and document songs privately with friends, an activity that stayed central to his existence. On January 10, 2002, his wife Lora died in an automobile collision; Harper himself suffered a fatal heart attack the same evening. Both albums appeared together on a single disc from the small imprint Papa’s Choice later that year, while Light in the Attic Records supplied a further edition of Dreams and Images in 2015.
Albums
