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| From | "Sager, Greg" <greg.sager@bankofamerica.com> |
| Subject | The Box Tops |
| Date | Thu, 29 Sep 2005 07:10:59 -0500 |
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> Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 13:11:46 -0000
> From: "floatingunder" <Steven.Durben@cignabehavioral.com>
> To: audities@smoe.org
> Subject: Re: Big Star - In Space
> Message-ID: <dhe4qi+sk6m@eGroups.com>
>
> --- In audities@yahoogroups.com, "Stewart Mason" <craigtorso@v...>
> I'm really enjoying this discussion. Many great points and counter
> points. The first thing I ever heard by Chilton was The Letter. I
> loved the song and still do. I've, ahem, never picked up anything by
> The Boxtops. Have I been foolish?
If you love "The Letter", then the answer to your question is "yes". The Box Tops were a terrific blue-eyed soul outfit that effectively blended the Stax/Volt sound of their Memphis contemporaries with some very good pop material and occasional tinges of psychedelia. And they weren't just a singles outfit; aside from the three big hits ("The Letter", "Soul Deep", and "Cry Like A Baby") they had several other top-notch songs ("Sweet Cream Ladies, Forward March", "I Met Her In Church", "Neon Rainbow", "Choo Choo Train", the Chilton-penned songs "Together" and "I Must Be The Devil", etc.).
Nothing else they ever did topped "The Letter", but that's an unfair standard. IMHO, "The Letter" is two of the most sublime minutes ever stamped into polyvinyl chloride. And the song bestowed upon callow singer Alex Chilton a bottomless reservoir of cool that hasn't dried up no matter how many musical dead ends and questionable moves he's made over the years.
Get their Arista comp, *The Best Of The Box Tops: Soul Deep* rather than any of the Sundazed reissues of their original albums. Their albums were very uneven and full of filler.
> Also, can anyone give me a brief history lesson. I'm curious
> about how
> Penn screwed over Chilton? I just don't know the history. I was
> recently loaned a CD by Penn, singing his material, from
> someone I work
> with.
>
Dan Penn was a typical '60s producer -- a studio despot who dictated what songs the band would record and how they would record them, going so far as to substitute studio musicians for some or even all of the members of the band on numerous Box Tops tracks (Chilton excepted, of course). He thwarted Chilton's efforts to record his own songs; Chilton finally got three songs onto the final Box Tops album, *Dimensions*, but that was after Penn had parted company with the band. Penn even coached Chilton's singing style; that famous whiskey-and-cigs growl affected by the 16-year-old Chilton on "The Letter" and most of the rest of the Box Tops' material is Chilton imitating Penn's voice rather than the natural tone that he would use in Big Star and his solo work.
In retrospect this would all be forgiveable if Penn had personally given the Box Tops more consistent material. Alas, most of the stuff written by Penn and his songwriting partner Spooner Oldham for the band was not up to their usual level. Which is a shame, because Penn and Oldham are two of the all-time great songwriters of Southern soul ("I'm Your Puppet", "It Tears Me Up"; Penn also co-wrote the Southern soul standards "The Dark End Of The Street" and "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" with fellow Memphis soul producer Chips Moman). If that Penn CD you borrowed is *Do Right Man*, you can hear for yourself what an impressive figure Penn is among the Southern soul ranks.
(Penn and Oldham did write "Cry Like A Baby" for the band; the other two big Box Tops hits, "The Letter" and "Soul Deep", were written by Wayne Carson Thompson, who also gave the world the evergreen ballad "Always On My Mind".)
Gregory Sager
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