100 Songs That Have Moved Me | Song #021: "The Letter" (1967)

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Title: "The Letter"
Artist: The Box Tops
Composers: Wayne Carson Thompson
Producer: Dan Penn
Release Date: August 1967
Peak Chart Position: #1 (Hot 100)
Album: The Letter/Neon Rainbow (1967)

"" (Watch on YouTube)

Rolling Stone metadata:

Rank: #372

Blurb: On "The Letter," Alex Chilton moans like a gruff soul man, though he was just 16. He credited the performance to his producer, Memphis legend Penn. "[He] coached me pretty heavily on singing anything we ever did," Chilton said. “In a lot of cases, it sounds more like him singing than it sounds like me.” Chilton went on to front Big Star but participated in Box Tops reunion tours until his death in 2010. (Source)

Words from the artist:

Penn recalls: "Finally, I just told [Moman]...'Look, we can't produce together...I think I can produce records [alone]...But I do need somebody to cut. Give me the worst one you got'." Moman suggested Penn record a local five man outfit who had been pitched to him by disc jockey Roy Mack (Penn - "Chips was just graspin'. He'd never heard [the group]") and also passed on to Penn a demo tape of songs cut by his friend Wayne Carson Thompson which included "The Letter". Thompson's father dabbled in songwriting and would suggest ideas to his son, who had written "The Letter" after his father had suggested: "Give me a ticket for an aeroplane" as a potential opening line for a song.

[...]

The session for "The Letter", with Box Tops members Alex Chilton (vocals), Danny Smythe (drums), Russ Caccamisi (bass), John Evans (keyboards) and Richard Malone (guitar) began at 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning and took over thirty takes wrapping at either three or five o'clock that afternoon. Penn met Box Tops' vocalist Alex Chilton for the first time at the session: "I coached him a little...told him to say 'aer-o-plane", told him to get a little gruff, and I didn't have to say anything else to him". (Composer Thompson, who says he played guitar at the session, was thrown by Chilton's vocal, having imagined the song being sung in a higher key.)

Penn - "[Chilton] picked it up exactly as I had in mind, maybe even better. I hadn't even paid any attention to how good he sang because I was busy trying to put the band together...I had a bunch of greenhorns who'd never cut a record, including me...I borrowed everything from Wayne Thompson's original demo - drums, bass, guitar. I added an organ with an 'I'm a Believer' lick." Penn added the sound of an airplane take-off to the track by recording off of a special effects record played in an office adjacent to the recording studio. When the track was previewed for Chips Moman he suggested the take-off sounds be excised, to which Penn responded: "Give me that razor blade right there...[and] I'll cut this damn tape up! The airplane stays on it, or we don't have a record." (Source)

How this song moves me:

This is one of those songs that immediately makes my heart start pounding. The beautiful mix of the gruff vocals with the youthful swagger of the lyrics on top of that fast, pulse-pounding beat is just magic. This is one of the shortest songs to ever top the Billboard 100, but it certainly packs a punch.

When I listen to this song, I hear that sort of invincible confidence that can only come from a sixteen-year-old - like his "baby"'s changing her mind settles it, she wants him back and that's that. He'll do whatever it takes to get back to her, because obviously they belong together. That is such a difficult emotion to capture and keep authentic, but it's here, in this neat little package. This is a song I like to sing along with in the car, but also break out when I'm in a particular pickle with characters who are fighting their way back to each other. Sometimes you just need to be reminded that this sort of feeling exists in the folly of youth, before experience has a chance to work its cynical sorcery.