Local Attorney King Alexander Often Trades His Briefcase For The Blues
By Todd C. Elliot
Few people blur the line between vocation and avocation quite like King Alexander. By day, he’s a staff attorney for the Calcasieu Parish Public Defender’s Office; by night, he slips back into an older, truer skin — musician, bandmate, timekeeper.
Alexander refuses to choose between the law and the music, carrying one into the other until the courtroom itself begins to feel like a stage. His story is not about balance as much as resonance, a life lived just beyond the bar, where rules end and improvisation begins.
Edward King Alexander, Jr., was born in DeQuincy, a railroad town where time moves a little slower and stories tend to stick. It’s the kind of place that teaches you early how to listen — really listen — to the rhythms of people, work and silence. Long before he ever stepped into a courtroom in Lake Charles, he learned cadence another way: through music.
He became a professional musician at just 16, cutting his teeth on stages while most teenagers were still figuring out who they were. Decades later, it’s still the identity that comes first. Music, for Alexander, was never a phase or a detour; it was the main road. Law came later, not as a replacement but as a parallel calling — one that, oddly enough, relied on the same instincts; timing, tone and the ability to read a room. Those instincts matter just as much in a courtroom as they do on a stage.
ALEXANDER PERFROMING WITH GOOD FEELIN’ IN DEQUINCY IN 1971
Alexander’s musical instincts quietly follow him into his legal work. He approaches a case the way a seasoned bandleader approaches a song — listening closely, knowing when to press and when to pause, and understanding that sometimes restraint carries more power than volume. Clients notice it. Colleagues do, too. There’s a calm deliberateness to the way he speaks, a sense that he’s already counted the beats before delivering a line.
Now 70, Alexander remains something of an outlier. Many would see the law as the culmination — a career aspiration fulfilled. He sees it as a side hustle. His heart still belongs to the music, and he continues to perform with the band Robin in the Woods, proving that creative fire doesn’t dim with age — it deepens. The band’s sound carries the marks of experience: reflective, rooted, and unafraid of space between the notes.
In a world that often demands singular identities, Alexander. has never felt the need to choose just one. He is both advocate and artist, defender and performer. From DeQuincy to Lake Charles, from smoky stages to courtrooms, his life has been shaped by the same guiding principle: listen first, then respond with intention. For Alexander, the music never stopped — he’s simply found new rooms to play in.
“I’ve been a professional musician since 1971,” he said. “And the business model that we learned was from my brother’s band. My brother was four years older than me. They would rent the local recreation hall and charge admission. Parents would chaperone and also sell (soft drinks) to the kids. My band, Good Feelin’, eventually did the same thing, and that gave us some pocket money.”
As the 1960s came to a close, the band took their name, Good Feelin’, from a Three Dog Night song. Alexander claimed that his first band was inspired by the group known for their hit single “Joy to the World.” By 1974, Alexander, by then a freshman at McNeese State University, found himself playing with local guitarist and band leader Eric Sylvester in a project known as Bayou Symphony. That’s the year that Alexander claimed that the “music bug” bit down hard on him; it’s stayed ever since.
“That summer, I would transfer from McNeese to the University of New Orleans, but the music bug got me,” said Alexander. “I don’t consider music as a hobby. It’s just that music is the kind of thing that, if you do it, it won’t leave you alone. It keeps drawing you back in. And it’s a good balance-of-life thing.”
After starting in Southwest Louisiana as a musician, evolving as a musician, and then moving to a musical city such as New Orleans, for Alexander there was no going back from the life as a working musician. When asked which he preferred more, music or law, he talked about the line between passion and profession.
“I can reliably say that I have made a better living for myself, and for those who depended on me, by practicing law than if I had stayed exclusively as a musician,” he said. “Some (musicians) hit it big and become wealthy, but that’s so extremely rare. Most musicians I know, when it comes down to them being paid musicians … they aren’t really doing it for the money. Because when you add up the time and the expense that you put into it, your return is very small.”
At the time of this writing, Alexander was booked for a show with Robin in the Woods at Breaux Bridge. The band first took him in as a harmonica player for a one-night show in Lafayette. He’s been an active member since 2022.
Over the years, Alexander has broadened his musical tastes. From a young age, he was first introduced to The Beatles; one of the first albums he ever owned was a Beatles release. He began with the foundation of rock music that led him to the Southern-based blues rock, which he now settles into very comfortably as a noted harmonica player.
“The benefit for me in coming of age during the 1970s blues revival was that I was privileged to hear and see B.B. King perform with his big band at the height of his powers,” Alexander said. “I was privileged to see Gatemouth Brown, who was born in Calcasieu Parish and raised in Orange, Texas. He was New Orleans-based and LeRoux (or Louisiana’s LeRoux) was his backup band.”
Alexander played bass guitar for the New Orleans Bluegrass All-Stars, at one point in the late 1970s, gracing the stage of The New Orleans Jazz Festival. Playing on the main stage to an ocean of people, it remains the largest crowd he has had the pleasure of performing for.
“I’m just grateful for having been able to do it all,” he said. “I passed the Louisiana State Bar exam in 1984. So, I’m 41 years now a lawyer but 54 years a professional musician. I’ve gotten a great deal of enjoyment from it. Fortunately, I have worked with people who tolerate my playing music. It doesn’t interfere with my work. Obviously, as a trial lawyer, the court really rules your schedule. Scheduling can be difficult. But it’s something that I enjoy, and I’ll keep doing it. Some people play golf, some people play music.”
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