Alex Chilton

Alex Chilton (born William Alexander Chilton; December 28, 1950 – March 17, 2010) was an American musician, singer-songwriter and record producer, best known as the lead singer of the Box Tops and Big Star.

Chilton's early commercial success in the 1960s as a teen vocalist for the Box Tops was never repeated in later years with Big Star and in his subsequent indie music solo career on small labels, but he drew an intense following among indie and alternative rock musicians.

A local band recruited the teenaged Chilton in 1966 to be their lead singer after learning of the popularity of his vocal performance at a talent show at Memphis's Central High School.

This band was Ronnie and the Devilles, which was subsequently renamed the Box Tops.

The group recorded with Chips Moman and producer/songwriter Dan Penn at American Sound Studio and Muscle Shoals's FAME Studios.

Chilton was 16 when his first professional recording, the Box Tops' song "The Letter", became a number-one international hit.

The Box Tops went on to have several other major chart hits, including "Neon Rainbow" (1967), "Cry Like a Baby" (1968), "Choo Choo Train" (1968), "Sweet Cream Ladies, Forward March" (1969), and "Soul Deep" (1969).

Aside from the hits "The Letter", "Neon Rainbow", and "Soul Deep", all written by Wayne Carson, many of the group's songs were written by Penn, Moman, Spooner Oldham, and other top area songwriters, with Chilton occasionally contributing a song.

By late 1969, only Chilton and guitarist Gary Talley remained from the original group, and newer additions replaced the members who had departed.

Chilton began recording his own solo material in the fall of 1969 at Ardent Studios with local musicians including producer Terry Manning (who had worked with Chilton as an engineer on the Box Tops' recordings) and drummer Richard Rosebrough, and producing a few local blues-rock acts.

His 1969–1970 recordings were released in the 1980s and 1990s on albums such as Lost Decade (New Rose Records), 1970 (Ardent Records), and Free Again: The "1970" Sessions" (Omnivore Recordings).

Chilton was considered as a replacement vocalist for Al Kooper in Blood, Sweat & Tears.

The group decided to disband and pursue independent careers in February 1970.

After deciding against enrolling as a student at Memphis State University, Chilton began performing as a solo artist, maintaining a working relationship with Penn for demos.

During this period he began learning guitar by studying the styles of guitarists like Stax Records great Steve Cropper and Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys.

Influenced by the performers in New York's CBGB scene, Chilton's late-1970s recordings abandoned the multi-layered pop production of his Big Star albums and utilized a more minimalist punk and psychobilly-influenced performance style.

His songs during this period were often recorded in one take and featured few overdubs.

In New York, he met the members of the Cramps, a formative psychobilly group.

After a period in New York City, during which Chilton worked on his guitar technique and singing style (some of which was believed to have been influenced by a chance meeting with Roger McGuinn at a friend's apartment in New York where Chilton was impressed with McGuinn's singing and playing), Chilton returned to Memphis in 1971 and co-founded the power pop group Big Star, with Chris Bell, recording at engineer John Fry's Ardent Studios.

Chilton and Bell co-wrote "In the Street" for Big Star's first album #1 Record, a track later covered by Cheap Trick and used as the theme song of the sitcom That '70s Show.

The group's recordings met with little commercial success but established Chilton's reputation as a rock singer and songwriter; later alternative rock bands like R.E.M. and the Posies would praise the group as a major influence.

During this period he also occasionally recorded with Rosebrough as a group they called the Dolby Fuckers; some of their studio experimentation was included on Big Star's album Radio City, including the recording of "Mod Lang".

Rosebrough would occasionally work with Chilton on later recordings, including Big Star's album Third and Chilton's solo record Bach's Bottom.

Moving back to New York in 1977, Chilton performed as "Alex Chilton and the Cossacks" with a lineup that included Chris Stamey (later of the dB's) and Richard Lloyd of Television at venues like CBGB, releasing an influential solo single, "Bangkok" (with a cover of the Seeds' "Can't Seem to Make You Mine" as the B-side), in 1978.

After moving back to Memphis in April 1978, Chilton produced music by the Cramps that appeared on the group's Gravest Hits EP and Songs the Lord Taught Us LP.

In 1979, Chilton released the album Like Flies on Sherbert in a limited edition of 500 copies.

Produced by Chilton with Jim Dickinson at Phillips Recording and Ardent Studios, it features Chilton's interpretations of songs by artists including the Carter Family, Jimmy C. Newman, Ernest Tubb, and KC and the Sunshine Band, along with several originals.

Sherbert—which included backing work from such notable Memphis musicians as Rosebrough, drummer Ross Johnson, and Chilton's longtime on-again/off-again companion, Lesa Aldridge—has since been reissued several times.

Beginning in 1979 Chilton also co-founded, played guitar with, and produced some albums for Tav Falco's Panther Burns, which began as an offbeat rock-and-roll group deconstructing blues, country, and rockabilly music.

Chilton spent most of 1980 and 1981 living in Memphis and staying off the road, except for a trip to London in May 1980 to play two shows with bassist Matthew Seligman and drummer Morris Windsor of the Soft Boys, and guitarist Knox of the Vibrators.

Chilton toured briefly in 1981 as a solo act, backed by a trio of musicians who played at different times with Tav Falco's Panther Burns: guitarist Jim Duckworth, bassist Ron Easley (with whom Chilton would tour and record extensively in the 1990s and 2000s), and drummer Jim Sclavunos.

The group played a string of shows in the fall in Chicago, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York, and New Jersey; this would be Chilton's last tour for three years.

The second show, at the Camden club Dingwalls, was recorded, and was released in 1982 on Aura Records as Live in London.

He also continued to work with Tav Falco's Panther Burns on stage and in the studio during this period.

Chilton moved to New Orleans in 1982, where he spent much of 1982 and 1983 working outside music: washing dishes at the Louis XVI Restaurant in the French Quarter, working as a janitor at the Uptown nightclub Tupelo's Tavern, and working as a tree-trimmer.

He resumed playing with Panther Burns in 1983.

His new association with New Orleans jazz musicians (including bassist René Coman) marked a period in which he began playing guitar in a less raucous style and moved toward a cooler, more restrained approach, as heard in Panther Burns's 1984 Sugar Ditch Revisited album, produced by Jim Dickinson.

He moved back into playing music full-time in the summer of 1984, when he and Coman began a four-month stretch playing in a cover band called the Scores, working in four-hour shifts at the Bourbon Street tourist bar Papa Joe's, and taking requests from a printed list of songs placed on the customer tables.

He is frequently cited as a seminal influence by influential rock artists and bands, some of whose testimonials appeared in the 2012 documentary Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me.

Chilton grew up in a musical family; his father, Sidney Chilton, was a jazz musician.