Another Alex Chilton post. This time, though, is the big stuff. This is the first album that the Box Tops made, and it is also their most famous - featuring the eponymous songs The Letter, and Neon Rainbow. Well, eponymous in the sense that the songs lend their name to the album. Not to the artists. This is the first time I've used the word, but I've seen it used in relation to music so often that I felt I had to. The Letter was #1 on some charts in US and Canada for a little bit. Neon Rainbow was a bit further down. Anyways, it's a pretty cool album. It's way hard to find, too, but it finally happened on a trip down to Burlington at Burlington Records.
The quartet is often classified as "Blue-Eyed Soul", a classification that I kind of like. It's not just saying that they're white, but that they're also...I don't know. And they are from Memphis, Tennessee and most of the music is written by their producer, Dan Penn, which is mentioned in an interview on the Big Star live album (below). Here, I think Chilton is only 16, but he died just recently (RIP). This record doesn't seem to feature his low growling voice as much as in Non-Stop, which is a little bit interesting. Another thing that's a little bit interesting is the way that Gonna Find Somebody was mixed. The vocals are way drowned out and echoey compared to the vocals on rest of the album.
See my other Alex Chilton posts:
Box Tops - Non-Stop
Alex Chilton - No Sex EP
Big Star - Live At Max's Kansas City (1973)
Track Listing:
Side One
1. The Letter
2. She Knows How
3. Trains & Boats & Planes
4. Break My Mind
5. Whiter Shade Of Pale
6. Everything I Am
Side Two
7. Neon Rainbow
8. People Make The World
9. I'm Your Puppet
10. Happy Times
11. Gonna Find Somebody
12. I Pray For Rain
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