Big Star

Well, I think Alex spoke that way, in that ultra-refined, indolent Mississippi-Memphis accent (which does not occur west of the Tennessee River, no one in Middle or East Tennessee speaks that way). So I think he was coached to sing differently by Penn and the material dictated he adopt a voice that sounded soulful. His voice almost isn't there on some of Radio City, it's in the stratosphere and strains against its range throughout. Most of all, I think Alex was sly and disaffected, and the Box Tops allowed for none of that, though I think I hear him parodying the conventions in "Turn on a Dream," a later Box Tops tune. You can hear him going into Box Tops voice at the end of "Thank You John," ("it's gonna be all right") from Feudalist Tarts--a moment that startled me when I first heard it, as if he'd finally integrated some shit.l

/Had the same thought about Big Star before hearing them as well, another surprise upon first listen. Wondered if he decides to sing high because/

... it was closer to his natural voice?

When I saw him do "The Letter" as encore to a solo set in a Tuscaloosa dive, mid-80s, he sounded like Jerry Lewis in the last hour of the Labor Day March of Dimes Telethon---which seemed deliberate, but didn't sound *that* different from the more agreeable, Big Star-y tenor of previous renditions---so yeah, can see why Penn wanted something different for Box Tops.

Denied!
http://www.furious.com/perfect/pennoldham.html

I found this in Sweet Soul Music:

To the outside world either was readily enough dismissed, Chips as a “hustler” with a complete set of homemade, “jailhouse” tattoos (Memphis was tattooed on his right arm, a big red heart on his left), Dan as a kind of eccentric redneck whose hayseed manner was so at odds with his intuitive genius that, as Jim Dickinson says, “I thought for years he was pulling a country boy act. I mean, God knows, I’ve gone to LA a couple of times wearing my overalls and shuffling my feet and saying, ‘I ain’t got no nothing’—I know where it’s at and how to do it, the country boy act. The thing is, Dan wasn’t acting, and it’s too bad he wasn’t.”

"I'm tired of that damn Alex Chilton sob story." That's so great. I like to imagine Dan listening to those Big Star records. Such a genius, but yeah, a natural man and all that.

In an alternate universe where money flowed plentifully, how would someone have approached producing Chilton (or Bell, for that matter)? Eno, Chips Moman and Alex, together in a little red house on the outskirts of Memphis, with Jon Hassell sitting in.

(Penn didn't come off like a rain man plowboy on that interview; did get from comments by both that he and Dickinson were not that crazy about each other, at least re the Chilton connection/love-tug o' war) In an alternate alternate, still no money, but on his way from school or hooky to the studio, Alex fell in with nascent Insect Trust, and thee rest is history---I just went back to the Insect Trust archives at Perfect Sound Forever, searching on term "Memphis", and wow----Nancy's version is a great place to start:http://www.furious.com/perfect/nancyjeffries.html (was thinking there was a picture of Dickinson and maybe his missus in the living room with some of them, ca. '66, but haven't found it yet)

I love Nancy Jeffries' singing on the Insect Trust albums, and think their version of "Special Rider" on the first, usually not cited LP is one of the finer late-'60s blooze reinterps. I can hear some affinity between her style and Chlton's for shure. No, Dan Penn didn't come across as a naif to me, either, so maybe it was just a matter of him not playin' the game and tryin' to keep up with the Big Boys in a way city folks can appreciate. Dickinson really loved to talk. Alex performed at a tribute-wake for Robert Palmer after he died in 1997. I saw Palmer play clarinet with CeDell Davis in Nashville in the '80s, butter-knife slide meets buttermilk licking stick, one of the most memorable avant-blues shows I ever saw.

Dickinson really loved to talk.
Indeed. I believe this is why Guralnick seemed to rely on so much for certain parts of Sweet Soul Music and, even through he refers to Dickinson as a "dedicated iconoclast," it is sometimes his point of view that comes through the clearest.

Dickinson's memoir, I'm Not Dead, I'm Just Gone, out next May from Univ. of Miss. Press.

Cool. Will check it out and take it with a grain of salt. Saw him in Austin once, well twice during the same SXSW. Have some mildly amusing story about it perhaps that I can't do justice to right now. btw have you read Country Soul by Charles L. Hughes yet?

Oh, I forgot, you hate that term.

The Hughes book is the work of an academic; he's situating soul and country in a space that includes questions about the recording studio as workplace and so forth. Fair enough. His point is that whites congratulated themselves for being open-minded about soul, thus leading to racial harmony but also to inequality because the equation didn't always work the other way.

Oh yeah, reminds me of my 2014 Scene ballot comment:

(various artists) Country Funk 2 (often very stoned, mainly too consistently happy (& sometimes self-congratz 4 bing funkee) to be more country than countryoid (...).
"Countryoid/Americana/Related" being my hacked-in ballot category for Rosanne etc; Sturgill will prob be in this year's Countryoid Top Ten, for inst. The "self-congratz 4 bing funkee" can get a bit too obtrusive sometymes, although, this being LITA, "often very stoned" and "consistently happy" save the day from sub-Martin Mull smirk. Fun, often enough, but mainly I prefer something like "Son of a Preacher Man", where the crossover etc. seems a given, and when Aretha does "With Pen In Hand", or Al Green's "For The Good Times", Anthony Hamilton etc., (or Elvis etc., for that matter), any point about musical flow vs. barriers is much more a point of departure than The Point (big ol' landmark).

LITA=Light In The Attic, invaluable reissue label, o course.

Definitely more for another thread and another time, the country-soul-funk thing is problematic at best. LITA does good work, but that Country Funk Vol. 2 comp confuses the issue beyond any understanding. Bill Wilson's "Pay Day Give a Way" ain't funk, it may be a kind of sub-Waylon country, but more likely it's just slightly rocked up folk. Billy Swan? Thomas Jefferson Kaye? Ian and Sylvia (Great Speckled Bird)?? Willis Alan Ramsey (a futuristic Texas-L.A. bit of studiomania and fancy guitar parts)? If you ask me, if it ain't a bit repressed, it's not country music.

No, and that's what I meant about " mostly too consistently happy to be more country than countryoid", and "confuses the issue beyond any understanding" goes w "often very stoned", but yeah, more for another thread and another time---we used to get into this subject on Rolling Country, some years---but mainly I'm procrastinating, before finally slogging off into the xpost reliquary box of the Third promo.

But wait, there's more! Speaking of country repression and compression, you've just reminded me of this, from xgau's 70s Guide:

Alone Again [Epic, 1976]
Although it sticks too close to heart songs, this comeback-to-basics statement is the best country album of the year and far surpasses the rest of Jones's recent work. I'm getting to like the over-forty Jones as much as the rawboned honky-tonker anyway--what's amazing about him is that by refusing the release of honky-tonking he holds all that pain in, audibly. The result, expressed in one homely extended metaphor per song (the only one that's too commonplace is "diary of my life"), is a sense of constriction that says as much about the spiritual locus of country music as anything I've heard in quite a while. A-

Not that there isn't or can't be more to it, but def pertains. (and there's an interest in writing like that: hold it in, let it leak, if it will, however it can, except not that way over there, yuck)

http://americansongwriter.com/2011/04/stroke-it-noel-big-star/

That article says "Stroke It Noel" was supposed to be the opener.

Don't know about that; the piece is from 2011 and my understanding is that Dickinson always said "Thank You Friends" was supposed to be first. So did Alex go with Dickinson to shop the record? Given that Dickinson took it away from Alex, I'd have to see some proof of that. Alex sitting in Lenny Waronker's office while Lenny got more and more perturbed with every song is something to mull over.

Ha, yes, indeed. Trying to remember my recent readings about two very different artists from Minneapolis interacting with Lenny and Mo. In any case, yes, that piece is from 2011, not familiar with the writer of what his source is for that information.

yall dismissing 2011, because?

Finally occurs to me that my foggy notion of what Big Star might sound like, before I heard 'em (not knowing that Chilton's voice was no longer Box Top), is sort of like Ian Curtis, already reaching past Brit-tries-to-sound-US-Southern, to something shared in the slightly halting I-can't go-on-I'll-go-on reporting.

yall dismissing 2011, because?

He seems to say that something in that particular package box set indicates that "Stroke It Noel" was indeed supposed to be the lead off track, but doesn't give further details. I was hoping you would shed some light based on the information in the latest package.

With the album “finished,” so to speak, and Ardent parent label Stax about
to go under, Fry and Dickinson went on a fool’s errand, flying to New York
and L.A. to play it for the major labels. Dickinson had vivid memories of
the bizarre experience. “Karin Berg [Chilton’s old friend and champion,
then at Elektra] accused me of destroying Alex’s career,” he began. “Lenny
Waronker [of Warner Bros.] said, ‘I don’t have to listen to that again, do I?’
[Atlantic’s] Jerry Wexler told me, ‘This record makes me feel very uncomfortable.’”
The responses were painful, but not unexpected.

The running order for the test pressing they shopped was “Stroke It Noel,”
“Downs,” “Femme Fatale,” “Thank You Friends,” “Holocaust,” “Jesus
Christ,” and “Blue Moon” on Side One; “Kizza Me,” “For You,” “O, Dana,”
“Nightime,” “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” “Kanga Roo,” and “Take Care”
on Side Two. Pawelski has followed this initial sequence in her running order
for the album proper on Disc Three of the set, adding “Big Black Car,”
“Dream Lover,” and “You Can’t Have Me,” all of which first appeared on
the PVC release, “Till The End Of The Day” from the Rykodisc version, the
original “Lovely Day” from Rhino’s Keep Your Eye On The Sky box set, and
“Nature Boy” from the Ryko edition.

Possibly originally titled Beale Street Green, the album was given the title
Third when it was finally released, randomly sequenced, on indie label PVC
in 1978. A notably different 12-song version was released that year in the
U.K. on Aura, while 17-track compilations came out in Britain and Germany
nine years later. Rykodisc’s 1992 release, renamed Third/Sister Lovers,
was expanded to 19 tracks with the inclusion of “Till The End Of The Day”
and “Nature Boy,” the tapes provided by Dickinson, who was extremely
helpful, to a point. “The Rykodisc people asked me if I wanted to sequence
it,” he recalled, “but when I went back to my production notes, I realized
that my ideas and Alex’s were so different that it wouldn’t be fair. There is
no sequence.”

I personally have nothing against 2011, I was just confirming the date of origin, it was Edd who read significance into that fact.
ha xp

xpost From notes in box

Figured. Thanks!

Karin Berg didn't give up an Alex; she financed the Elektra demos he did in 1977. Still think that his demo of "She Might Look My Way" is one of the best things he ever did, all two minutes of it.

Dipping into the Holly George-Warren book, finding confirmation of some things, such as Alex intending "Thank You Friends" as the opener, and some some amusing anecdotes I may post later. Also keep meaning to ask if there is a meaningful comparison to be made of Alex and Peter Stampfel as song collectors.

Back in town, Dickinson had cut his own eclectic LP, Dixie Fried. He then spent months with Dan Penn producing his solo album Emmett the Singing Ranger Live in the Woods. That unreleased venture ended in a disagreement between the two. (“ I could have made him the psychedelic Dean Martin,” Jim later quipped.)

George-Warren, Holly (2014-03-20). A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, From Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man (p. 168)

Somebody asked Cropper if he would come in and put guitar on ‘Femme Fatale.’ He showed up at the appointed time. I already had a guitar lead to plug him in direct, I already had the level, he was in the speakers, we played the tape, and Cropper walked inside the door, plugged his guitar in, and didn’t come any closer into that control room but one step. He was freaked out. It was this bizarre song with Lesa singing— talk about some confused boys!” Later, when Alex tried to erase Lesa’s parts, Jim demanded they stay on.

George-Warren, Holly (2014-03-20). A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, From Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man (p. 173)

And third one is the charm:

Those early singles with the Box Tops were still remembered by Barry Lyons at tiny Amherst Records, which specialized in releasing LPs by ’60s stars like Jackie DeShannon. Based in Buffalo, New York, Lyons tracked down Alex in Memphis and sent him a plane ticket to fly north and discuss the possibility of cutting a record. He drove Alex to Toronto to jam with Bob Segarini, a like-minded musician from California who, since ’68, had been on several major labels, releasing albums with different bands including Family Tree (during which he collaborated with Harry Nilsson), Roxy, the Wackers, and most recently the Dudes, all with little or no commercial success. Lyons’s idea was to put together a pop-rock supergroup composed of Segarini, Alex, and possibly such players as former Raspberries bassist Wally Bryson and guitarist Nils Lofgren. Alex got together with the Dudes, but after they didn’t click musically, they instead got wasted.

George-Warren, Holly (2014-03-20). A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton, From Box Tops to Big Star to Backdoor Man (pp. 188-189).

(I baited the trap but the bears must be hibernating)

I like that version of "Femme Fatale", Lesa and all - its "confused", halting quality has a lot of charm - but her version of "That's the Story of My Life" (linked below) is rougher. I wonder how much more off-kilter the album would have sounded if her vocals were left on....

http://youtu.be/z0SbXKjUR94

I love the drum sound on "Femme Fatale"--Dickinson's close-miking (?) captures the texture of a drumhead unlike anything I've ever heard on a recording.

So Dickinson starts working with Penn on the Emmett the Singing Ranger record, and Penn's written a song called "Tiny Hogs and Hinys," about how ladies love motorcycles. They're at Sam Phillips with Knox Phillips and Knox is as crazy as Penn and Dickinson, so he lets Dickinson bring in a couple of Harleys to provide the rhythm track for the song. One of the guys doesn't quite get it, he's just kind of idling, but the other guy--from the local Nomads, apparently--is into it, and the beat is great. The studio is filling up with smoke, because Campebell Kesinger was playing lead Harley and choking out the bike by using a screwdriver, and Mike Post, who was going to use the studio the next day, comes by, is appalled but then realizes what a great idea this is. Gene Chrisman plays drums to the Harleys and Dickinson says the track turned out great. "What, did you think I was going to use amateur Harley riders?" Where the fuck is this album??
I've heard the late-'60s Bob Segarini stuff with the Family Tree. Kinda psych-sunshine-pop. I do like the Wackers OK and I have a soft spot for the Dudes' album (which apparently was screwed up by producer Mark Spector to the point that the Dudes were very unhappy; there seems to be a second Dudes album out there on a collection that includes some of the original mixes of We're No Angels). I recall reading an interview with Chilton in which he said he "knew more" than Segarini. The Segarini style was a lot closer to Tiven's than to Chilton's. Apparently Segarini's still around, working in radio.

Family Tree: "so run along," FLOMP, "after it's warm..." Aerial Pandemic Ricky-Tick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4i78Qoaa7M

Read about Dickinson and Penn at Sam Phillips here.

Robert Gordon says Emmet the Singing Ranger Live in the Woods is languishing in an unknown corner of the Arista vaults

This thread has been a revelation. The recent flurry of posts has led me back into listening to Big Star for the first time in a while - a band I've always liked a good deal, without ever really 'holding' as a complete thing, if that makes sense. This weekend (my last before going back to school - teaching) I've gone down a complete rabbit hole, listening intensively (in various settings), watching the documentary and reading, reading. It's been one of those periods where you come close to somehow regrowing your ears, and I feel like I've finally made sense of the band's architecture: that moment in listening where time seems to pause and expand and you step inside, walk around, look into the eaves - for crows, for glyphs, for spent carnival balloons. Third has always been 'the one' and it's where I'm still getting those vital, disturbing punctum moments, but they've been coming at regular intervals, right across the three albums. Thanks for the thread. I love the internet.

There needs to be a collection of 'smirks on record' - Chilton's at the end of 'Nature Boy' is a masterpiece of the genre.

Also, it was great, after following various routes down the wormhole, to end up at the Everlys' 'Pretty Flamingo': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j2D0mQWExg

Ha, I believe I many have gone down that particular rabbit hole a decade ago. Over that decade I finally came to grasp the concept of the composite minor scale and learned the technical name of that particular harmonic trick I was asking about.

One more bit of trivia I dredged up/was reminded of last week. Bill Cunningham, bassist for The Box Tops, concentrated on the upright and went on to a career as a classical player, and used his relevant skills to arrange the strings for Chris Bell's "You and Your Sister."

Another, unrelated song, called "You and Your Sister" that sounds a little like the Everly Brothers backed by the VU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghf6u9NEodg

The Vulgar Boatmen are a fascinating (well, sort of) lack of success rabbit hole in their own way.

Had the same thought about Big Star before hearing them as well, another surprise upon first listen. Wondered if he decides to sing high because

... it was closer to his natural voice?

I barely remember one or two of the reunion gigs I saw, but iirc the Posies guys sung the higher stuff and Chilton the other songs? I got the vibe he had them singing the songs he did not want to sing, even though he could.

Alex Chilton is the Goldilocks of vocalists, range-wise.

Also, now have this image of Alex and Prince having a conversation and then singing together, having an amusing discussion about how to divvy up the vocal parts.

That Vulgar Boatmen made me think of Gary Louris (or do I mean Mark Olson?) - something in that melody and the cadences. Great track.

Thanks for those links, JamesRedd. This wormhole is deep, deeeeep. (Idle musings, but do these things 'lead' anywhere, as such? By which I mean, does having the tools to decode the relative patterns in harmonic scales etc, lead to anywhere definitive, or do the songs, the patterns just evaporate the closer you get to the source? I suppose it's a question of music's ultimate lack of concrete reality and how it remains a non-representative medium (notation aside). I'm babbling.)

Chinaski, a little bit of theory goes a long way, unless of course you have signed up for some kind of classical composition class and need to know exactly what is required to get your voice-leading right for the form you are studying.