My Birthday #1s

Happy Birthday to Me Pt. 2

Now we're getting into music that really resonates with me.  It was an era in which charts and lists still mattered -- I remember staying up until midnight every New Year's Eve with my neighbor and close pal Kay Wolf, waiting to find out what was the number one song of the year.  Wonder if any of these songs was in the year-end Top Ten...

1963: Bobby Vinton, "Blue Velvet"
Another one of the Bobbys!  Schmaltz and strings again, angel-choir backing vocals, and one of the most memorable vocal swoops in all pop -- "She wore blue-oooo VEL-vet." I very distinctly remember this drippy song on the radio, and being riveted for reasons I still can't explain.

1964: Roy Orbison, "Pretty Woman"
Legit rock & roll, at last. I saw Roy Orbison perform this song on the weekly music TV show Shindig, with his black pompadour and dark glasses, coolly standing center stage, no dancing or gyrating -- and oh, that knock-out voice. This song (Orbison's biggest hit ever) was clearly about a man on the prowl (he even purr-growls at one point) -- hardly the stuff this little 11-year-old wanted to hear at the time. But I couldn't turn away from it. Mercy!

1965: The McCoys, "Hang On Sloopy"
Granted, this was a blip on the charts -- the next day the new #1 was the Beatles' "Yesterday," which I yearned to write about instead, as the first of these #1s that I actually went out and bought as a 45. However, I cannot deny the McCoys their fleeting moment in the sun (especially since they, like me, were from Indiana). I'll admit, I always conflated this song with Snoopy, the dog from the Peanuts cartoons, and with the Beach Boys' goofy single "Sloop John B," which would hit the charts a few months later. Neither a boat nor a dog, however, Sloopy was a girl from "the wrong side of town," that all-American story line. At the time, I didn't know the song's backstory -- how the Strangeloves recorded it, but, not wanting to cannibalize their still-active hit "I Want Candy" (yes, that song), hired an unknown teen band to release it under their name, flying the lead singer into New York to overdub the vocals. As luck would have it, it leaped to the top of the charts, outselling "I Want Candy" by far. Who knew? And by the way, who was that 17-year-old lead singer of the McCoys? None other than Rick Derringer, who'd later under his own name have a hit with "Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo," and who also played guitar on Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart." More than you wanted to know, I bet.

 


1966: The Association, "Cherish"
Did I own this single? You bet I did. Although it was nowhere near as great as the Association's previous hit, "Along Comes Mary," this song was probably a better showcase for their plush vocal harmonizing (the Association's raison d'etre, I realize in retrospect). "Cherish," however, was tailor-made for a 13-year-old's hopeless crushes, with lyrics like "Well I'm beginning to think / That man has never found / The words that could make you love me / That have the right amount of letters / Just the right sound / That could make you feel / Make you see / That you are driving me out of my mind..." Well, obviously, even though I cannot remember the name of my current dentist, the date of my recent brain surgery, or what pills I need to take in the morning -- even though I still have not remembered to sign up for Medicare -- I still remember every word of "Cherish." Just sayin'.

1967:  The Box Tops, "The Letter"
Oh, sweet Jesus, here it is. My Number One Favorite Pop Song of All Time.  Just confirming my belief that 1967 was probably the greatest year in music ever. At fourteen, I was just on the cusp of appreciating the raw urgency and heat of Alex Chilton's lead vocal. How was I to know he was barely older than I was?

1968:  The Beatles, "Hey Jude"
Iconic. ICONIC. How much has been written about this song (although, oddly, it seems I never did a post on it before)?  It was Paul's song to comfort John's son Julian on his parents' break-up; John was convinced it was Paul's blessing on his relationship with Yoko; Paul himself may have been writing about the beginning of his great true love with Linda. The fact that it is all these songs at once testifies to its greatness. I've been a Paul girl from Day One, but honestly, you don't need to be a Paul girl to know this is a genius track. Even though it was more than 7 minutes long -- unheard-of in Top Ten radio -- it held the #1 spot for nine weeks in the US, the Beatles' longest #1 streak ever. We didn't know at the time that this was the first step in the Beatles' long goodbye. (There's a whole book in that.) But hey, on my 15th birthday, how could I know that my Beatles universe was about to fall apart? All I knew was that I had better start memorizing all the nah-ne-nah-nahs, to make sure I'd get them right when this came on the radio in a carful of us true believers.
   (Hang in there on this video clip, by the way -- it charmingly messes around a bit before the song takes off.)

1969:  The Archies, "Sugar, Sugar"
Oh, Lord. Was this single the beginning of the end? A made-up band for a cartoon series based on a comic book -- and yet it hit #1? It's an earworm, yes -- but honestly, WHO BOUGHT THIS RECORD? But here it is, a milestone in bubblegum pop, proving that the music biz was still all over the map. 

1970:  Diana Ross & the Supremes, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough"
Was Diana Ross still a Supreme at this point, or not? It almost doesn't matter. Her diva status was already certified, and this overblown hit -- a remake of a 1966 Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell written by Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson -- claimed #1 as if it was Diana's due. Man, I loved the Supremes back when they were just the best of the girl groups, but the minute Diana went diva (enabled by a smitten Berry Gordy), Motown lost whatever credibility it still had with me. I'd follow Stevie Wonder to the ends of the earth, but Diana Ross? Count me out.

1971:  Rod Stewart, "Maggie May"
Freshman year of college, and I didn't buy singles any more; I bought LPs. And I bought this one. That raspy voice, that mandolin, those whomping drumbeats -- it was loose and sexy and boozy and everything that 60s pop was not. I listened to college radio stations now, which played entirely different music; I was beginning to leave chart-based radio behind. (Though there was still a station in Springfield, MA, with a pre-programmed playlist and no DJs, that kept me listening to "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone," "One Toke Over the Line," Cat Stevens' "Wild World," and all the Carpenters and Three Dog Night I could handle....) 

1972: Mac Davis, "Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me"
Are you kidding me? This cheesy country-crossover hit -- another of those "men got to be free, women just want to tie you down" songs -- was definitely not on my radar; or rather, I knew it was out there and it made my baby feminist flesh creep. Wikipedia duly tells me that Mac Davis wrote both "In the Ghetto" and "A Little Less Conversation" for Elvis Presley, and that raises Mac Davis multiple notches in my estimation. But in 1972, I wanted nothing to do with it.

1973: Cher, "Half Breed"
Okay, now I'm really getting annoyed. It was the 1970s, rock music was going in a million fascinating directions, and the chart-toppers were zigging and zagging. Good stuff from Carly Simon and Roberta Flack and Stevie Wonder, but we also had Dawn's "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" and Jim Croce's "Bad Bad Leroy Brown."  Look, I'd dug Sonny and Cher when they first landed on Shindig singing "I Got You Babe," but Cher's march into diva status left me totally cold. (Am I the only person who hated the fact that she was in Mamma Mia 2?)

 

But let's be honest -- I was 21 and no longer the pop charts' target audience. (How swiftly do we reach obsolescence....). From here on in, it would be the songs I DID care about that would make all the difference. 

Stay tuned.

The Saturday Shuffle

At last -- a free hour in my day!  Let's turn on the old shuffle machine and see what it yields...

1. Do You Want It All? / Two Door Cinema Club
From Tourist History (2010)
Tasty little morsel of British indie pop, sort like Death Cab for Cutie meets the Kooks. (And no, that's not a reference to the sadly kaput marriage of Ben Gibbard and Zoe Deschanel). The production values are quirky, almost lapidary, with fragments of phrases repeated urgently, like mantras, over a peppy rhythm track spiced with space-age sound effects. But absolutely radio friendly!

2. When in Rome / Nickel Creek
From When Will the Fire Die? (2005)
Sitting sweetly at the intersection of bluegrass and indie pop, this wonderful trio (also, sadly kaput) composed of fiddler Sara Watkins, her guitarist brother Sean, and mandolinist Chris Thiele (now of Punch Brothers) was a real find for me. Snarky lyrics and modernist rhythms, textured with Americana  instrumentation -- trust me, it's a winning combination.

3. The Rat's Prayer / The Soft Boys
From A Can of Bees (1980)
And now for something completely different -- at least on the surface -- Sir Robyn Hitchcock's first band, psych-folk-punk renegades the Soft Boys. Garage-y guitars and drums, herky-jerky tempos, folky harmonies, and best of all, wickedly absurdist lyrics.: My. Cup. Of. Tea.

4. Better Days / Roseanne Cash
From This One's For Him (2012)
No, not the Kinks' "Better Things," but a wise and rueful Guy Clark song, covered here by real Nashville royalty, Twitter queen Roseanne Cash. This new tribute album is one of the finest country albums of many a year -- with Clark's warm and witty songs as the foundation, it should be brilliant, and it is.

5. Martha My Dear / The Beatles
From The White Album (1968)
Paul McCartney in full music-hall mode -- scrumpdillyumptious.  I say music-hall, but alongside the oom-pah/ragtime beat Sir Paul can't help tossing in a bossa nova groove here and there.  And yes, we all know he really wrote this about his Old English sheepdog ("hold your head up, you silly girl / Look what you've done" -- poop on the carpet!), but it's still a crazy mad wonderful song.

6. (I Wanna) Call It Love / Sondre Lerche
From Duper Sessions (2006)
Remember the Steve Carell movie Dan in Real Life? Probably not; it was highly missable.  But I loved the soundtrack tunes by this sweet Norwegian singer-songwriter, and immediately plucked several other tunes out of his slim catalog. There's a little soft-shoe jazziness here too, a smooth strain of Cole Porter romanticism, but with a touch of Scandi angst, too.  Well, why not?

7. Groovy Movies / The Kinks
From The Great Lost Kinks Album (1973)
Sorry, no link -- it's a bootleg. (Got to solve this mp3 posting conundrum...) This album only hit the market for a nanosecond before the horrified Kinks demanded it be withdrawn; most of it was discarded demos, scraps of songs that Ray Davies had written for other projects, padded out with some Dave Davies solo work.  This is one of the Dave tracks, sloppy rather than whimsical, but kinda endearing all the same.

8.  Cry Like a Baby / The Box Tops
From The Best of the Box Tops (1968)
Hard to believe this came out the same year as "Martha My Dear"; it's soul-saturated Memphis pop, with horns instead of oom-pah, Farfisa organ instead of plinky piano, and a raft of gospel back-up singers.  And the divine vocals of Alex Chilton...

9. I'm a Soldier in the Army of the Lord / Lyle Lovett
From Smile: Songs from the Movies (2003)
Full-on gospel -- whoever said Lyle Lovett could only do country?  This track appeared in the 1997 Robert Duvall film The Apostle (searing performance, Bobby D!) and it sure enough gives me that old-time religion. Do I love this cat's voice or what?  That supple vibrato with just enough creak and twang -- there's no one else sounds even remotely like him.

10. We Should Be Making Love / Huey Lewis & The News
From Hard At Play (1999)
Lazy, loungy, soulful pop, as easy on the ears as Huey himself is easy on the eyes (Huey and Daryl Hall: my two big 80s music crushes.)  And one of my favorite song premises:  Our singer hero is always listening to his woman friend's romantic issues, until now he's finally 'fessing up that he longs to BE her romantic issue.  You could slide into this like a pair of warm moccasins, girl.  Why not?

WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

Even though I'm off in New Orleans for the week -- bring on the po' boys and jambalaya! -- I'm still listening to my iPod. Here's a little Shuffle to tide us all over...

1. "I Gotta Go Now" / The Kinks
From The Kinks (1964)
A slight, obscure, and absolutely delicious early Kinks track. Most of the lyrics consist of "I gotta go now" over and over, with a few "whatcha gonna do about it nows" and "hey little girls" thrown in. A strange and wonderful concoction of blues lingo, jazz syncopation, and folk harmonies, served up with effervescent pop charm.

2. "Warming Up to the Ice Age" / John Hiatt
From Warming Up to the Ice Age (1985)
And now some early Hiatt, prowling through relationship angst with stuttering tempos, lashing drums, and a barrage of pun-larded lyrics. Amazingly, this was the album whose failure killed Hiatt's contract with Geffen Records, but the seeds are here -- next he would make Bring the Family for A&M, and the rest is history. All told, I think I like grown-up happy John Hiatt better than young angry John Hiatt, but man, he was already gooooood.

3. "Boring Enormous" / Paul Westerberg
From Stereo (2002)
Post-Replacements Paul Westerberg, strumming his guitar in his basement and singing about his contented home life. I can see why Replacements fans must have been baffled by this development. I came late to the party, though; this is the Westerberg I first knew and adored. Hey, Bob Dylan was from Minnesota, too -- why shouldn't Paul Westerberg find his inner folkie?

4. "Who Can I Turn To?" / Van Morrison and Georgie Fame
From How Long Has This Been Going On? (1995)
Van Morrison in full jazz crooner mode, scatting along to the keyboard stylings of Mr. Clive Powell, a.k.a. Georgie Fame, who lends a layer of honeyed elegance to Morrison's whiskey-and-soda vocals. An entire album of songbook standards, big-band arrangements and all -- and I'd pit Van against Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra any day.

5. "Queen of Sheba" / Nick Lowe
From Nick the Knife (1982)
The romantic philosophy of Nick Lowe -- she's not Queen of Sheba, or Mona Lisa, but he still adores her, and there's a place that they can go where that thing will grow. The bass line's springy as a rubber band, and Nick cheekily lounges his way through this generic love song with considerable aplomb. (Always wanted to use that word in a review...)

6. "Jungle Song" / Chilli Willi and the Red Peppers
From Bongos Over Balham (1974)
A congenial little soul jam, with some killer harmonica, by these talented pub rockers, erstwhile colleagues of Mr. Lowe in his plaid-shirt days. A notable incubator of New Wave talent -- bassist Paul Riley went on to play in the Rumour behind Graham Parker, and drummer Pete Thomas ended up in Elvis Costello's Attractions.

7. "Dead End Street" / The Kinks
From Face to Face (1966)
Any shuffle that has two Kinks songs is a good shuffle. And this endearing soft-shoe is one of my favorites -- a perfect song for these recessionary times, about a middle-class couple just scraping by. "What are we living for? / Two rooms apartment on the second floor / No money coming in / The rent collector's knock is trying to get in." Even better: "We both want to work so hard / And we can't get the chance." I love that dramatic French horn fanfare; even better is the boozy Dixieland trombone in the fade-out...

8. "I Must Be the Devil" / The Box Tops
From Best of the Box Tops: Soul Deep (compilation)
Throw the irony out the window -- Alex Chilton groans and moans his way through a pitch-perfect blues number, complete with slouchy guitar. "I can't stop, I can't stop, I ca-a-a-n't stop!" Who knows what he's apologizing for -- "I can't bear to see my face, / Wrongs done I can't erase, / It's all wrong, it's all wrong, it's aa-ll-ll wrong!" But I bet you anything she forgives him.

9. "Youth Culture Killed My Dog" / They Might Be Giants
From They Might Be Giants (1986)
Oops, irony's back! A bit of sublime silliness from the Johns, our leading purveyors of comic catchiness. Don't let that Peter-Gunn-like bass riff deceive you -- it's really about his dog committing suicide because of trashy modern music. Or something like that. "But the hip hop / And the white funk / Drove away my puppy's mind." Who else could deliver such goofiness with so much zest?

10. "Try Not To Cry" / Greg Trooper & the Flatliners
From Everywhere (1992)
Back to earnestness -- a passionate alt-country anthem, injected with an R&B howl, about the sorrow that lies deep down things (or lachrymae rerum, for you Latin scholars). This is what the world looks like from the other shore of heartbreak -- pair this with "Don't Think About Her When You're Trying to Drive" and we'd have the whole territory covered. Of course, you HAVE to cry when you hear this song. This guy is just so damn good...

"Cry Like a Baby" / The Box Tops

I might as well give in to it. The second wave of Alex Chilton nostalgia has hit, and I simply can't get this particular song to stop playing in my head.

Released in 1968, "Cry Like a Baby" only hit #2 on the charts, never quite equaling the chart-topping success of the band's debut single "The Letter" from the previous year. It was written by two stalwarts of the Memphis scene, Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham (for all you Lowe-aholics out there, the same guys wrote Nick's "Time I Took A Holiday" -- a lush groove indeed).



It begins urgently, with a drawn-out minor-key discord on the organ, joined by throbbing guitar notes, but when Alex Chilton's voice bursts in it switches to major key, as he declares, "When I think about the good love you gave me / I cry like a baby." That past-tense "gave" tells us that this is a break-up song, but "cry" is still present tense. There's lots of moping, but very little hoping going on here. He's not even pleading with her -- no, it seems that the axe has irrevocably fallen. You have to admire this girl for cutting him off this cleanly.

Given that major key and the energetic rhythm, I never really felt this was a Misery Song -- he's fretting and regretting, but not totally depressed. Still, Alex Chilton's rasp-edged voice adds a rawness and desperation the song really needs. Too late, he realizes his mistakes -- as he says in the bridge, "I know now that you're not a plaything, / Not a toy, or a puppet on a string." He's young, though, still learning about love, and those buoyant guitar licks tell me that he will survive. After all, how old was Alex Chilton when he sang this -- sixteen? Seventeen? Even as he mourns his loss, the music's charging him up for the next love.

Listening to this as a teenager, I remember wanting to dry his tears. What girl doesn't love a guy sensitive enough to cry? Almost as a throwaway, at the end he tosses of "You left the water running now / I cried like a baby." At last it's past-tense "cried" -- he's ready to move on. And all the teenage girls listening fluffed their bangs, adjusted their sweaters, sat up straight, hoping Alex would notice . . .

"Back of a Car" / Big Star

R.I.P. Alex Chilton 1950-2010

I'm pretty good at resisting the knee-jerk commemoration posts (how long did it take me to get something up on Michael Jackson?). But fer chrissakes, this is Alex Chilton we're talking about. Only a few days ago, I anointed his first hit single, "The Letter," as my favorite 45 of all time. And now he's dead of a heart attack, at age 59. I'm in shock, and I see most of my fellow bloggers are as well.

I've certainly given Alex his due here. Besides gushing over "The Letter," I've written about another Box Tops number, "Sweet Cream Ladies," as well as one song by his second band, Big Star -- "I'm In Love With a Girl". But in this hour of mourning, let me offer one more Alex Chilton gem: Another Big Star track, also from their second album, Radio City.



Part of Alex Chilton's genius -- whether he had any control over it or not -- was the raw emotion of his voice, a perfect vehicle for expressing the inchoate passion of teenagers in love (or at least in lust). Has there ever been a teenage necking song so steamy as "Back of a Car"? He gets it exactly right, all the surging hormones and messed-up feelings. Without bothering with an intro, he launches right into things: "Sitting in the back of a car / Music so loud, can't tell a thing" -- and indeed, the metallic tangle of guitars creates an immediate wall of sound. (I'll bet the windows are fogged up too.) There's no scene setting, no pretty description, no romantic speeches -- he can't tell the girl what he feels because he doesn't know himself. "Thinkin' 'bout what to say / And I can't find the lines . . . ."

There's no doubt he wants sex -- that's written all over those woozy swoops of melody, the churning chord changes, the swelling crescendos of volume -- but he does love her, or at least he thinks he does, as he declares in the second verse. Yet he's afraid, and indecisive, and, well, all mixed-up. After all, there's the future to consider ("waiting for a brighter day") and he's longing to escape ("trying to get away / From everything").

As the song morphs on, though, I get the idea that desire is going to win the day. Listen to the earnest, yearning harmonies of that bridge -- "I'll go on and on with you / Like to fall and lie with you / I'd love you too" -- it's almost as if he's talking himself into it, never mind convincing the girl.

So do they or don't they? The last verse isn't at all clear: "Why don't you take me home / It's gone too far inside this car / I know I'll feel a whole lot more / When I get alone." Maybe that's the girl talking, wanting to flee back to her pink bedroom to sort out her emotions. But surely a boy can feel that way too. (Exhibit A: Brian Wilson singing "In My Room.")

Of course it's murky. Teenage love is always murky. In less than three minutes, we've been pulled so deep inside this heavy petting, we don't know where we are either. That's some songwriting, eh?

The 100 Best Singles In My Head
Nos. 1-5

AND THE WINNER IS . . .

[ . . . drum roll, please!]

Well, I told you it would be subjective. These are not the top five singles of all time on Rolling Stones' list, or Mojo's list, or any other list put together by rock snobs or music pundits. I haven't jiggered it to showcase my favorite bands (look, no Kinks! no Nick Lowe!) or to make a political statement or to show off my superior taste. You'll notice I've already written about all of these songs -- BUT OF COURSE!! These are simply the five singles that knocked me hardest off my feet in the course of my life.

And yeah, they're all from the 1960s, because that was the decade that made me the music fan I am. Or more importantly, that made me the person I am. Which is really what the music's all about, isn't it?

[Click on the highlighted links to read my earlier posts on those songs]

1. "The Letter" / The Box Tops (1967)
I hear those knocking lead-in drum beats, and I am GONE. When all is said and done, the essence of rock and roll is nothing more or less than hormonal teenage cravings, and nobody has ever expressed that randy yearning better than an absurdly young Alex Chilton, fronting this seminal Memphis pop group.



2. "Happy Together" / The Turtles (1967)
They were hardly one-hit wonders, but even the Turtles never again hit such a sweet spot, a magical convergence of lilting melody, playful rhythms, and intimate vocals that will forever be the soundtrack of my eighth-grade nirvana.



3. "She's Not There" / The Zombies (1964)
The first 45 I ever owned -- if only my taste had always been this impeccable!



4. "If I Fell" / "And I Love Her" / The Beatles (1964)
Desperately in love with the Beatles -- okay, okay, in love with Paul McCartney, who was in 1964 the most beautiful man on the planet -- of course I had both of these tracks on the Hard Day's Night album, the first LP I ever owned. But I simply had to buy the single too, so smitten was I with this matched set of John/Paul declarations of love.

5. "Wouldn't It Be Nice" / "God Only Knows" / The Beach Boys (1966)
Honestly, I wasn't a Beach Boys fan, not really. And by 1966, I already had the Beatles to keep me warm -- what did I need with these clean-cut California boys in their squaresville striped shirts? But then they unleashed this pair of gloriously inventive tracks, back and front of one 7-inch vinyl masterpiece, and set a new gold standard for rock-pop brilliance.

And now, YOU tell ME -- what would your #1 be?

"Sweet Cream Ladies, Forward March" / The Box Tops

Forever and always, my favorite Boxtops song is "The Letter" -- one of my top candidates for Most Perfect Single Ever -- but when I entered the digital age and acquired a Box Tops greatest hits CD, just to have "The Letter" on my iTunes, I discovered all these tasty Box Tops tunes that I had completely forgotten about. In fact, I may never have known they were by the Box Tops; they were just familiar sounds from the vast sonic stew of the late 60s. "Cry Like A Baby"? That could have been by Tommy James and the Shondells, for all I knew. "Sweet Cream Ladies"? With its campy marching band arrangement, it couldn't have sounded less like the urgent bluesy wail of "The Letter."

Salvation Army-style horns, ploppy organ chords, a tramping bass drum -- the sound of this song telegraphs "good-time music," or at any rate the post-Sgt. Pepper's interpretation of that. For some reason I can't hear this song without thinking of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, with all its subversive smirk. It's possible that the Box Tops performed it on the show -- it was released in early 1969, before CBS abruptly cancelled the show in April.

Now of course I see that the "sweet cream ladies" of the title are prostitutes -- DUH! That went right over my head in 1969. (Give me a break; I was a sheltered Midwestern kid.) I guess I just thought they were generous hippie damsels who gave away wonderful pastries for free. After all, the song does say "Think of what you're giving /To the lost and lonely people of the night" -- late-night giveaways at the Haight-Asbury bakery shoppe?

Okay, I should have figured it out from the lines "They will love you in the darkness, /Take advantage of your starkness, /And refuse to recognize you in the light," not to mention phrases like "It's instinctive stimulation you convey," "Puritans ignore them," and "Let them satisfy the ego of the male." But then I must have gotten thrown off by the lines, "It's a necessary function / Meant for those without compunction, /Who get tired of vanilla every day." See there, vanilla -- I rest my case.

Still, it's a toe-tapping gem, a snappy artifact of its pre-AIDS time, when it was possible to wax romantic about hookers. The barriers of society were toppling on all sides -- why not see whores as standard-bearers of the sexual revolution, and victims of an unfair class system? And yet somehow, for me the coy wink of this song doesn't quite cancel out its lecherous undertone. Or is that just an inevitable consequence of Alex Chilton's shivering vocals? He's preaching tolerance, but you just know he plans to avail himself of their services, and sooner rather than later.

Well, I liked the song better when I thought it was about pastries. But then, I really liked the song when I thought it was about pastries. It's still a great little example of late 60s pop. You gotta love the Box Tops.

Sweet Cream Ladies, Forward March clip

"The Letter" / The Box Tops

When this single came out in late 1967, I'm surprised I paid it any attention. Sgt. Pepper's had been released the preceding summer, changing the pop music landscape forever; besides, I was still at least partly a Tiger Beat-programmed adolescent, who'd evolved (if you can call it that) from the Fab Four on to Herman's Hermits, the Monkees, and Paul Revere and the Raiders.

But I know I was hearing other tracks on the radio, primarily a lot of Motown -- hits like "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "I Was Born to Love Her," "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," and "I Second That Emotion." Some part of my brain was wired to love that sweet soul music too. So when this single by a new band called the Box Tops rocketed onto the air waves, how could I not love it?

I didn't know that the lead singer, Alex Chilton, was just a teenager, barely a couple of years older than me. I didn't know the band was from Memphis; I doubt I even knew whether they were white or black. I sure didn't read about them in Tiger Beat. But this was a song you could not deny. I bought the single (which, given my paltry allowance, was a serious vote of faith) and listened to it so often, every beat was branded on my memory. It's one of my candidates for Most Perfect Single Ever.

It's only 2:03 and it doesn't waste a second; the drummer knocks half a dozen brisk strokes on the rim of his set, the guitar nimbly plucks another half-dozen notes, then Chilton's voice rips in urgently, "Give me a ticket for an aeroplane / Ain't got time to take a fast train," the melody jittering back and forth between two notes, words accented off-beat, everything jumpy as hell. He's at the ticket window, hair rumpled, out of breath -- a man on a mission. "Lonely days are gone, I'm a-going home" he proclaims, then his voice drops into an awestruck growl: "My baby just wrote me a letter" -- and his hoarse shiver on the word "letter" seals the deal for me.

That explains why he's hopping from one foot to the other, telling the ticket agent, "I don't care how much money I gotta spend / Got to get back to my baby again." He doesn't even need to tell us what the letter said, though he does in the bridge: "Well, she wrote me a letter, said she couldn't live without me no more / Listen, mister, can't you see I got to get back to my baby once a more" -- pregnant pause here, while the horns swing around, the drummer knocks twice, then Chilton's voice swoons wildly -- "Any way, yeah!" That's pretty much it, except for a long fadeout where the oddly perky electric organ repeats its calliope-like refrain and you hear a jet take off (I've always heard a seagull squawk too, though I could be wrong).

Though this wasn't released in the summer, it still feels like a summer song to me -- I have a distinct memory of standing on the midway at the Indiana State Fair, eating a corn dog, watching the Tilt-A-Whirl, standing transfixed while this song blared over the PA system.

Nobody writes letters anymore, I know -- but I just can't imagine this song being updated to "My baby just sent me a text message." Just like Paul McCartney asking to hold your hand, that letter is code for the whole sexual shebang, and it's Chilton's gritty, earthy voice that puts in all the subtext. He may have just been imitating the Muscle Shoals and Sun Records r&b singers he'd grown up around, but that groan of longing, that husky urgency, means just one thing. I was even younger than Alex Chilton when I first heard this record, but I could feel the heat all right. Whew.