Arthur Gunter
b. 23 May 1926, Nashville, Tennessee, USA, d. 16 March 1976, Port Huron, Michigan, USA. Gunter wrote and recorded Baby Let's Play House for Excello in the summer of 1954. That December, the Thunderbirds vocal group recorded their version, issued on DeLuxe, in Miami. Three months later, it was one side of Elvis Presley's fourth Sun single. That is when Gunter discovered that he had no ambition to write another hit. His father was a preacher; he and his brothers, Jimmy and Junior, and cousin Julian, sang spirituals as the Gunter Brothers Quartet. He learned guitar from another brother, Larry, and absorbed blues old and new—Blind Boy Fuller and Big Boy Crudup, Jimmy Reed and Blind Lemon Jefferson. He hung around the record store run by Ernie Young, founder of Excello and Nashboro. There he met pianist Skippy Brooks, and played gigs with Brooks' band, the Kid King Combo. Most of the time he performed with just cousin Julian on drums. Baby Let's Play House was his first record, and a hit in the Nashville area. None of his succeeding 11 singles did as well, and Excello dropped him in 1961. His brother Little Al also made two singles for the company. Al Gunter moved to Port Huron, Michigan in 1966 and lost touch with music. In 1973 he won $50,000 in the Michigan State Lottery, and played as part of the Ann Arbor Blues Festival's ‘Music Of Detroit’ afternoon.