The Alpha Band was a rock

Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...

 band

Musical ensemble

A musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles...

 formed in July 1976 from the remnants of Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

's Rolling Thunder Revue

Rolling Thunder Revue

The Rolling Thunder Revue was a famed U.S. concert tour consisting of a traveling caravan of musicians, headed by Bob Dylan, that took place in late 1975 and early 1976; the prevailing theory was that the tour was named after the Native American shaman Rolling Thunder. Others maintained that tour...

. Band members were T-Bone Burnett

T-Bone Burnett

Joseph Henry Burnett , widely known as T-Bone Burnett, is an American musician, songwriter, and soundtrack and record producer.He was a guitarist in Bob Dylan's band on the Rolling Thunder Revue...

, Steven Soles

Steven Soles

Steven Soles is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and guitarist.Known also as J. Steven Soles, he was asked by Bob Dylan to join the band for his 1975-1976 "Rolling Thunder Revue" tour, and he also played with Dylan on Street Legal and the following tour, including the live album Bob...

, and David Mansfield

David Mansfield

David Mansfield is an American violinist, mandolin player, guitarist, pedal steel guitar player, and composer....

, plus sidemen who differed from record to record and included: David Kemper

David Kemper

David Kemper is a drummer. He was a long-time member of both the Jerry Garcia Band and Bob Dylan's band . He was with the Jerry Garcia Band for the last eleven years of Garcia's life...

 (later drummer for Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

 and Jerry Garcia Band

Jerry Garcia Band

The Jerry Garcia Band was a San Francisco Bay Area rock band led by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Garcia founded the band in 1975; it remained the most important of his various side-projects until his death in 1995...

); gospel great Andrae Crouch

Andrae Crouch

Andraé Crouch is a seven-time Grammy Award-winning American gospel singer, songwriter, arranger, recording artist, record producer, and pastor.-Early years:Born Andraé Edward Crouch in San Francisco, California....

; and former Beatle

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

 Ringo Starr

Ringo Starr

Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...

.

The Alpha Band reputedly signed a huge-money deal with Arista Records

Arista Records

Arista was an American record label. It was a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment and operated under the RCA Music Group. The label was founded in 1974 by Clive Davis, who formerly worked for CBS Records...

, Clive Davis

Clive Davis

Clive Davis is an American record producer and music industry executive. He has won five Grammy Awards and is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a non-performer. From 1967 to 1973 he was the President of Columbia Records. He was the founder and president of Arista Records from 1975...

's label. But their three albums were remarkably obscure, even upon release: almost straight to the cut out bin. Somehow, the Alphas never gained traction. The group is now recalled mostly as a launching pad for Mansfield, and even more for launching Burnett. Soles's solo career never went anywhere outside of Christian record stores. When the band broke up in 1979, all three members began producing albums for other artists.

Albums

• Alpha Band
  Alpha Band
  The Alpha Band is the debut album by the rock band The Alpha Band, released in 1976. The band was formed in 1976 from the remnants of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue. The core band members were T-Bone Burnett, Steven Soles and David Mansfield....
  
  , 1976
• Spark in the Dark
  Spark in the Dark
  Spark in the Dark is the second album by the rock band The Alpha Band, released in 1977. The core band members remained T-Bone Burnett, Steven Soles and David Mansfield. No less than five drummers were used on the recording, including guest Ringo Starr....
  
  , 1977
• The Statue Makers of Hollywood
  The Statue Makers of Hollywood
  The Statue Makers of Hollywood is the third and final album by the rock band The Alpha Band, released in 1978.- Track listing :# "Tick Tock" # "Rich Man" # "Mighty Man"...
  
  , 1978
• The Arista Albums
  The Arista Albums
  The Arista Albums is a two-CD compilation by the rock band The Alpha Band, released in 2005. It contains all the material released in the band's three albums on the Arista label.- Track listing :# "Interviews"...
  
  , 2005, two CD set compiling the above three LPs