ALEX BRADFORD
Instruments: Vocals, Producer
Date of Birth: January 23, 1927
Place of Birth: Bessemer, Alabama
Date of Death: February 15, 1978
Professor Alex Bradford was one of gospel's most well-loved and versatile figures. A tireless singer, songwriter, and choir director, he was also a promoter and record producer for other singers. During the 1960s, Bradford traveled the world in Black Nativity, but his earlier Specialty recordings -- among them 1953's "Too Close To Heaven" -- are considered his greatest legacy.
At the age of 13 Alex Bradford joined the Protective Harmoneers, a children's gospel group in Bessemer, and had his own radio show on a local station. He attended Snow Hill Institute in Snow Hill, Alabama, and as a student teacher acquired the title "professor," which he maintained throughout his career. While traveling with Mahalia Jackson in 1941-2, he copied down the names of promoters from her address book and left her employ to organize his own group, the Bradford Singers. When they made no great impression on the gospel field, Bradford joined Willie Webb and his singers, with whom he recorded "Every Day and Every Hour" (1950). On the strength of its success he organized the Bradford Specials, an all-male group who sang in robes with pastel stoles and choreographed most of their songs. In 1953 Bradford wrote and recorded "Too Close to Heaven," which sold a million copies and received an award from the National Baptist Music Convention. A series of gospel recordings followed, and Bradford amassed a large following, not only for the beauty of his singing, marked by a throaty baritone and shrill falsetto, but his flamboyance as a stage personality and performer. In 1961 he turned to the theater and achieved a huge success in Langston Hughes's Black Nativity (1961), which then toured Europe and was broadcast nationwide on television in the US. In 1972 he appeared on Broadway in Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope, for which he won the Obie Award, and again in 1976 in Your Arm's Too Short to Box with God. He composed more than 300 gospel songs, including (besides Too Close To Heaven) "He'll Wash You Whiter Than Snow" (1955) and "After It's Over" (1963).
Horace Clarence Boyer
The New Grove Dictionary of American Music
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