Junk Box Jury

Taken from the LP ‘Best Of The Box Tops’ | (Sounds Superb SPR 9005) 1974

The Box Tops may not have received world-wide recognition on the scale accorded to the Beatles and the Beach Boys yet they were in many ways the definitive pop group of the Sixties.

They had a lot going for them: great songs with unusually strong lyrics, many contributed by co-producers Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, intriguing arrangements by Mike Leech and the services of some of the finest Memphis session-men.

Most important of all though was the group’s own innate talent. Lead singer Alex Chilton possessed one of the finest voices in the so-called “blue-eyed soul” idiom, a husky, rasping, high-powered tone yet one which could be gentle and sensitive as well as punchy and direct.

It was in 1967 that the Box Tops took the effective “The Letter”, a clever song written by Wayne Thompson, and turned it into a million selling hit record.

Just a year later they came up with another million seller “Cry Like A Baby”, one of the first records to put country guitar stylings into a soul setting and come up with a pop classic.

Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham had worked with many of the best soul singers who came to Memphis, notably James Carr, Oscar Toney jnr. and Solomon Burke, but they themselves were white and strongly influenced by the sounds emanating from the nearby country-music capital of Nashville.

Add to that the Box Tops own pop-orientated appeal and you had a pretty powerful format which was to produce a widely diverse crop of hit singles yet, different though they were from each other, every one of them had an instantly recognisable and unique Box Tops Sound.

The clever time changes of “I Met Her In Church”, the driving funk of “Choo Choo Train”, the gentle “Sandman” and their own distinctive stamp on “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” are ample evidence of what made the Box Tops a great group.

The Box Tops broke up in 1970 when Chilton went solo, but they’ve left behind a rich legacy of recordings which still sound as valid today as when they were first released. (Roger St. Pierre)

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cost of record: £5
from: charity shop