Emry Arthur was born around the turn of the century in the Elk Spring Valley in Wayne County, Kentucky. His father collected old traditional songs from Kentucky and the entire family was known for their music in the area. Young Arthur and learned to play instruments like his brothers Henry and Sam, but after a hunting accident he was restricted to playing harmonica and strumming simply on the guitar. As a singer he built up a repertoire from different eras: the archaic local tradition; nineteenth century popular song and more contemporary gospel. One influence was probably the Wayne County singer and musician Dick Burnett, who claimed to have taught young Emry I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow. Arthur was unable to earn a living from music, and work in general was hard to find, so in the mid 1920s he migrated to Indianapolis.
After a few years in Indianapolis, Arthur auditioned successfully for Vocalion Records. For his first sessions he summoned his brother Henry from Kentucky. With unidentified guitarists and with Henry on banjo, the brothers recorded vocal duets and solos by Emry, on some playing harmonica. One of Emry's solos was the first recording of "I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow". Vocalion was impressed by good sales, particularly of the religious sides, and by the fact that Emry was Southern singer living conveniently in the North, so he was invited back to record frequently through 1928 and 1929. As with his first sessions, he recorded a mixture of solo songs and vocal duets, employing first Frank Owens then William Rexroat in place of Henry Arthur. In addition, he recorded with a succession of choirs led by Arthur and one led by Rexroat, as well as with a group singing in a non-Southern idiom led by Floyd Thomson. In 1929, Emry's marriage broke up. Abandoning everything, he moved to Wisconsin, where he secured contacts with Paramount Records as a singer, and with their parent Wisconsin Chair Company as a factory hand. As before, he recorded a mixture of solos (including a second version of I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow) and vocal duets. But now his singing partner was Della Hatfield, who became his second wife. They continued to record for Paramount until the near collapse of the recording industry in 1931. Also in 1929, Arthur was involved with William Myers, a songwriter in Richlands, Virginia. Previously, Myers had posted his songs to singers he admired, including Mississippi John Hurt and Dock Boggs. Now he decided to start a record label, named Lonesome Ace. This folded after three recordings: one by Arthur and two by Boggs with Arthur accompanying. In 1935, the recording industry had recovered somewhat, and Emry recorded a final session with Decca Records. At some point, Emry and Della moved back to Indianapolis, where they lived for the rest of their lives, about which nothing is known. Emry Arthur died in 1967, survived by Della for almost four decades. Old Homestead Records collected some of Arthur's recordings on I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow in 1987.
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By Eugene Chadbourne
The family background of this 1920s Paramount recording artist is a pretty familiar combination for Appalachia. On one side, there is tragedy, in this case the mother of Emry Arthur dying when he was only a year old. On the other side, of course, is music. Arthur's dad was a respected bass singer in their county, promoting an active interest in a musical career for his son and proud of the several dozen recordings that were the result. His brothers were also all singers, and one of them, Henry Arthur, played fiddle with him. Emry Arthur sang and accompanied himself on guitar, proving not everyone can be a Django Reinhardt. While that gypsy guitar stylist's loss of several fingers did not prevent him from playing faster than most guitarists on the face of the earth, having a finger shot off in a hunting accident prevented Arthur from ever developing much more than a simple style of rhythm playing, although it is extremely effective. He married three times, finally winding up with a wife who could sing with him on records, as Della Hatfield did for both the Paramount and Vocalion labels. Indianapolis was this artist's home for most of his life, and it was labor such as working as an elevator operator that paid the bills, not his recordings or performances. A pity that he was not able to collect in advance for all the influence he would have on the music scene, just one large example of which was his popularizing the traditional ballad "A Man of Constant Sorrow" through his recordings. Some old-time music scholars actually credit him with authorship of the song, although a question mark is always attached to this claim as firmly as a tail to a dog. He never established a legal copyright to the song, which is for example what his fellow Appalachian musician Frank Proffitt was able to do with "Tom Dooley." In the late '20s, he played backup guitar on some Dock Boggs sessions, material that was reissued to great acclaim by the Revenant label in the '90s. But by 1932, the current demand for his style had become miniscule and he was forced to sweat it out full-time in a meat packing plant. He made his final studio recordings in 1935 for Decca. He did not make his presence felt during the folk revival of the '60s, and it is assumed he had completely stopped playing by then.