THE BOX TOPS:
JOURNEY IN THE SHADOW OF THE MEMPHIS MAFIA

Memphis Press-Scimitar Photo, Robert Tomb Collection

If there were an "Around the World in Eighty Days" whirlwind dash for the most coveted cover of Burt Bacharach's & Hal David's pocket weepie, the prize handkerchief would have to go to these five boys from Memphis.

Alex Chilton pulls out all the stops with a plaintive, raw vocal
that nudges ahead of Dionne Warwick's distinctly cooler performance by a country mile at least; if not an entire midwestern state. It's hard to believe that Chilton was just sixteen years old when this was recorded. Lester Bangs would later take cough syrup just to get high - one suspects Alex Chilton perhaps initially imbibed a linctus purely to soothe his prematurely worn larynx. Inevitably, "the harder stuff" lay just around the next bend.

Cue Elvis and "Mystery Train", if you follow my drift.

Better known for their smash "The Letter", the Box Tops were a teen phenomenon that would abruptly implode before the decade's close as the increasingly frustrated Chilton dissolved the group and went on to form the more self-aware Big Star with songwriting partner, Chris Bell - twisting a ride from New York City back to Memphis - and immediately upped the ante.

Add a liberal dose of self-prescribing.

When you're properly drunk and remorseful, this blue-eyed gem can't fail to make you cry. And that's a confession.

Recorded at American Recording Studio in Memphis, Tennessee.
Produced by Dan Penn and released on Bell Records in 1967:
The Letter/Neon Rainbow (Bell 6011).

download: THE BOX TOPS: TRAINS & BOATS & PLANES


posted by ib