Rex Griffin

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

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

Griffin was born in Gadsden, Alabama as the second of seven children to Marion and Selma Griffin. He grew up on a farm and received little schooling, eventually finding work in the factory where his father worked as a teenager. He played harmonica initially, but picked up guitar soon after, playing locally in a style heavily influenced by Jimmie Rodgers. Griffin started playing professionally in 1930, and shortly thereafter moved to Birmingham, where he joined the Smokey Mountaineers and adopted the name "Rex", since the Mountaineers' announcer found it difficult to pronounce his given name. Throughout the first half of the 1930s he played on radio stations throughout the American South.

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". He 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 Dallas, working at radio station KRLD until 1943; from there he moved to Chicago. In 1944 he recorded again for Decca on a series of transcription discs, which were never commercially issued by Decca. His last recordings followed in 1946 on King Records out of Cincinnati. Griffin sold many of his songs with no credit or recognition and collaborated on many without recognition. One possible collaboration is "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus".