Alphonso Houston, born September 13, 1941, in Ciudad Juarez, was taught to play Guitarrón and read music by his uncle, a Jack Mormon disciple of Augusto Navarro, the noted Mexican microtonalist. Unable to continue his education beyond the eighth grade (his family having moved to Yankton, SD), he was essentially self-taught as a composer. In order to earn a living in music, he hitchhiked to LA and started doing copying and arranging work for several of the better-known film composers, including a well-know ghosting for one of the James Bond films.All the while composing orchestral and chamber works that were never played, he gradually started getting involved in nightclub playing and songwriting, where he attained notoriety for the extremely slow tempi of his laments, particularly 1977´s "I'm in pain" and 1978´s "Do it again, but slowly, this time, please" and the colorful (or, at least, pastel), charanggo-and-harmon-muted-brass-dominated instrumentals. His real commercial breakthrough, came, however with his 1979 album of dance music, "(Put on that) Slipper", where such low amplitudes were used that it was necessary for dancers to step on the off beats in order to hear anything at all. The planned release in 1980 of the follow-up album, "Nothing Doing" was delayed again and again until that tragic night in April 1982, when Alphonso Houston and the Houstonettes failed to appear at their scheduled concert in Gilroy (thus creating the opportunity for the first public performance by the Gravity Resistors´ PFO). Since their tragic and mysterious disappearance, the master tapes of "Nothing Doing" have been held in salt cave vaults in Utah, awaiting a clear legal decision on what to do. AH and the Houstonettes (Ellen, Irene and little Naomi) have since been reported seen everywhere between Tasmania and Trieste, but no report has ever been substantiated.
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