Alex Chilton
Bar/None Records
Alex Chilton has worn a lot of hats in his three-plus decade career -- from
teenage pop-soul hitmaker to overlooked pop genius/cult figure to iconoclastic recluse to
veteran singer-songwriter. It's the second of those guises -- as the frontman for the
legendary underground power-pop combo Big Star -- for which he is probably now the most famous. But even before that, he was the star singer of the Memphis-based white R&B group The Box Tops, who scored a number one single with "The Letter" in 1967 when Chilton only 16.
Shortly after The Box Tops disbanded in 1970, Chilton embarked on
the tragic odyssey of Big Star, one of the most influential and
commercially overlooked American rock bands that ever lived. In the early '70s, Big
Star released two huge glorious records, #1 Record (1971) and Radio City (1974),
which were full
of sweet majestic pop perfection that would influence everyone from Tom Petty to R.E.M. to The Replacements to Teenage Fanclub. Sadly, Big
Star's label, Ardent (a subsidiary of Stax), completely mangled
the distribution of those records and the
band never made any money. Financial difficulties and infighting would eventually lead
to Big Star's dissolution, though a posthumous third album, Third,
would follow in 1978.
After the breakup of Big Star, Chilton began producing a breathtakingly
eclectic array of records, including his most famous recording, The Cramps'
psychobilly 1980 debut record, Songs the Lord Taught Us. Over the next two decades
he recorded sporadically, with most of his releases consisting of cover
songs. That's the case of 2000's Set (called Loose Shoes and Tight Pussy
outside the U.S.), a collection of loose,
bluesy ragged reworkings of a few famous songs and some more obscure ones. The
featured track, "Oogum Boogum," was written and originally recorded by pop-soul
vocalist Brenton Wood in the late '60s.
Jesse Ashlock
last updated:
08/16/01
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