The Box Tops

In other words, it's about recognizing that a person you trusted has gone off course.

Alex Chilton had already topped the charts as the teenage voice of the Box Tops with the song The Letter, but with his next band, Big Star, great songs did not translate into big sales.

Their engineer, John Fry, thought this one would be the breakthrough, but distribution and promotion troubles kept it from reaching the audience he imagined.

From the album Radio City, here's September Girls.

My baby just wrote me a letter.

The Box Tops, The Letter.

A chick wrote him a letter.

Yeah.

Uh, Keezy kicked us off with a bit of old-school music.

[laughs]

That's right, The Box Tops, The Letter.

[upbeat music]

With a checker from Memphis, Tennessee, my hometown.

These are the box tops to cook.

You ball like a baby.

That's the Box Tops 908 at KFRC on the Chuck Browning Show.

Sitting here completely nude, folks, except for my jam-up Levi's.

I'm incredible.

Yeah, so Big Star were formed in Memphis in 1971.

Lex Chilton was formerly of the Box Tops, with whom he had a number one hit when he was just 16 years old, actually, with The Letter, a very famous song.

But he invited fellow Memphis songwriter Chris Bell to form a duo.

Bell declined his offer, but asked Chilton to join his band Ice Water, which already included drummer Jodie Stevens and bassist Andy Hummel.

But on to my number two, which is from 1972, and it is the debut album number one record, which I have at four and a half stars.

So one of my favorites.

favorite ever debuts and you know for any other band would probably be my number one i totally accept that for lots of people this is their high watermark What I will say is for Alex Chilton to go from in the late 60s, that kind of slightly formulaic guitar pop of the box tops to essentially inventing the power pop genre with this only a couple of years later is a huge leap forward for me.

It sets out its stall really early with the great opener feel, which is driving, but slightly held back.

To me, to convincingly pull off a Seeds cover, you got to be a little... out there and a little enigmatic yourself.

And I think that those are apt descriptions for Alex Chilton in the mid to late 70s, who was now by this time a decade on from his own teenage hit making days with the Box Tops and after the demise of his critically adored but commercially DOA cult band, of course, the mighty around these parts, Big Star.

Chilton was, by his own admission, a lost soul during this era.

He admitted that his life was on the skids, and most of the sessions ended up being drunk, sloppy messes.

Ain't got time to take a fast train Lonely days are gone, I'm a-goin' home My baby just wrote me a letter

And that's a 16-year-old Alex Chilton singing the letter, a number one hit in 1967 by the Box Tops.

But a few years later, he wanted something different.

So he joined Bell, Hummel, and Stevens, and now he had two very different creative forces in the same band.

And I, um, you know, it was written by Wayne Carson or Wayne Carson Thompson who wrote the letter.

And, uh, I just always wondered what, I'm sure at some point the Box Tops producer said, well, we need another hit.

And when he turned in Neon Rainbow, which was not anything like the letter, I wonder what they thought.

But I have a...